Services Marketing

The Gaming Industry

Video 1
 What’s out there?
• Consoles: Xbox Playstation, Nintendo

• PC Games: Runescape,
World of Warcraft

• Handhelds: Palm Pilot, Play Station Portable,

Nintendo DS
• Card Games
 Genres
• Fighting
Platformer
• Adventure
Novel or manga
• Role-playing game (RPG)
action
• (MMORPG)
puzzle
• (MMOSG)
Sim
• first person strategy
turn-based shooter game
(FPS) (TBS)
• thirdTime
Real person
Strategy
shooter
(RTS)
• sports
Stealth-based game
• racing shooter
Tactical
• shooting
Action adventure
 What’s the Appeal?
You control the game environment

You pretend to be someone else through your game character

You can interact with people from anywhere around the world

You get instant gratification and feedback

You have fun from the adrenaline rush

 What do games do for you?

You comprehend complex story lines and track inter-personal interactions with other
players

You learn social norms and rules beyond those of your physical community

Your self-esteem builds as your skill level increases

 Developmental Assets

Gaming helps to develop these Internal Assets…

Commitment to Learning

Social Competencies

Positive Identity
 Value of Games to Educators

Encourage collaborative problem solving

Require development of literacy skills across multimedia platforms

Teach the player to coordinate characters, manage time and virtual tools, and
communicate clearly and quickly

Help the player build empirical models and develop abstract thinking
 The Gaming Industry
PC Games, Console games, MMORPG, Mobile games, Motion sensor

How many people play video games – worldwide ?

40%- women and 36% of parents play video games

Gaming and Recession DO go hand in hand

Cost of Labor and cost of producing a game-$10-$50miliion

Worldwide gaming market

Gaming as a service
 What is a Service

“A type of economic activity that is intangible, is not stored and does not result in ownership. A service is
consumed at the point of sale. “

Hospitality sector

Consulting,

Appliance repair

Computer support

Health care

Business services

Real estate
 Gaming as a Service

Its an Experience

Gaming Is an interactive process

Game Publishers constantly provide updates, expansions and add-on’s

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG’s) present the next generation in

gaming

Online Gaming Sites like Zapak present new challenges and opportunities

An average movie may run two to three hours, a new game may take an expert player
100 hours to finish, an MMOG, lasts forever.
The Gaming Distribution Channel & Trends
What do users expect from a game?
 How many hrs/week do you play Video
Games
hrs/week

8
7
6
5 hrs/week
4
3
2
1
0
5 5 to 10 > 10
 Perception for games
Perception

14
12
10
8
6 Perception
4
2
0
al e r v v n t
n sh De De xa
tio u y ic la
c a Cr la it e g Re
E du im
e
so
n rt a
t
T r S
Pe
 Type of game preference
Type of Game

14
12
10
8 Type of Game

6
4
2
0
Shooting Role Play Strategy Arcade Racing
 Factors Consideration
Factors

16
14
12
10 Factors
8
6
4
2
0
Story Game Play Graphics Ease of playing
 Platform Preferance
Platform

16
14
12
10 Platform
8
6
4
2
0
Developer/Publisher Preference
Preference Share

EA Games
Bioware
Activision
Microsoft Games
Capcom
Gameloft
Konami
Others
Price Sensitivity
Price Sensitivity

Yes
No
VIDEO 2
 Electronic Arts (EA)

Is one of the largest game publishers in the world

Revenues of $ 5.3 Bn, but losses of $ 1.08 Bn

Owns Bioware, Maxis, Criterion

Often called the “Evil Empire” for gobbling up smaller studios!

Major competitors in Ubisoft (Tried an hostile takeover) and Activision

 History

Founded by Trip Hawkins in 1982

Couldn’t be called Electronic Arts till 1997 because the name existed

Expanded by leaps and bounds and had revenues in excess of $ 4 Bn by 2007

Economic crisis in 2008, cut 1100 jobs, might close India studio

Cut 1500 jobs in 2009

7 P’s for Electronic Arts (EA)
 Possibly the most visible of all game publishers

Need for Speed Series

The Sims series

Battlefield Series

The Command and Conquer Series

Products

The Burnout series

FIFA Series/ Cricket Series/ NHL Series

The Medal of Honor Series

Dragon Age Series (with Bioware)

Mass Effect Series (with Bioware)

Crysis Series

Left 4 Dead Series (with Valve)

 Product

More stress on releasing new versions of games yearly

Few changes/ innovations

Present in all categories, but famous for sport

 Price

Often Criticized

Mass Effect 2 (90$ a box)

FIFA/ Cricket/ NHL

 Promotion

Heavy marketing

Advertises games on TV/ Newspapers

Special Editions/ Limited Editions/ Add-Ons/

Expansions
 Place

Digital: Online Downloads (Direct2Drive)

Retail

Direct Shipping

Updates are downloadable

Add-On’s/ Expansions can be bought online and downloaded

Activision – A different ball game
 FACT FILE
American video game developer and publisher

majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA

Headquarters: Santa Monica, California, US

Networth: $18.9 billion

Revenue: USD $2.9 billion (2008)

Major Rival: Electronic Arts , valued at $14.1 billion

Largest “third party” video game publishers in the world

 HISTORY

Founded on October 1, 1979 by former music industry

executive, a venture capitalist & Atari programmers

World's first independent developer and distributor of video

games for gaming consoles

First products were cartridges for the Atari 2600 video console
system

In 1982 a highly successful and one of the first platform game

Pitfall! was released.
RECENT NEWS & LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

On July 9, 2008 Activision was acquired by Vivendi,

contributing gaming division and cash

New company is Activision Blizzard

Entered into multiyear agreement with Microsoft on

June 15, 2010
 FAMOUS PRODUCTS
With Raven Software:

Soldier of Fortune sequel

Quake 4

With Neversoft:

line of Tony Hawk skateboarding games

With Gray Matter Interactive:

Wolfenstein 3D

With Infinity Ward & Valve:

Medal of Honor

Call of Duty series (except for CoD 5)

7 P’s for Activision
 Continuing 7 P’s
Place:

Located at Santa Monica, California

Key operating areas: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia, Sweden,
Spain, the Netherlands and South Korea

Distributed through retail, direct downloads, direct shipping

Price:

focus on increasing its margins

Involves independent third-party interactive entertainment software developers and

reduce internal cost
 Continuing 7 P’s

Promotion:

Publishes licence with 3rd party publishers for,

marketing, and sale of products directly
 PEOPLE

Website of the game which act as the sales and service

distributors

The developers of the game as well as the

troubleshooters

The current CEO of Activision Blizzard is Robert Kotick

 Process
Central idea and the theme of the game

Development of the story line and the Graphics

Coding and testing

Publishing and licensing

Distribution

Feedback and troubleshooting

After sales service: expansion pack, updates etc

Physical Evidence
The website of the company

Logo of the company

Company’s annual report

Game feed back and portal, website and game

thread
GameLoft – Pioneers in Mobile Gaming
VIDEO 3
 Fact File
Gameloft is a French publisher and video game developer headquartered in Paris, France

Primarily creates games for mobile phone handsets equipped with Java, BREW and
Symbian OS, as well as the N-Gage platform

Gameloft also develops games for dedicated games consoles such as the Sony PlayStation
3, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Wii/Wiiware, Xbox 360, Zeebo and for other
platforms including iOS, WebOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Windows PCs

Gameloft has many game engines specifically dedicated to some platform family Java ME
mobile phones, Nintendo DS, PSP, N-Gage, Cell Phones, iPod Touch, iPhone, Nintendo DSi,
PS3, X360, Nintendo Wii and more

The company also offers the users to play games online by Gameloft Live
 History
Founded in 1999 in Paris, France

Gameloft has expanded to employ a staff of 4,000 at the end of 2007, up 59% over the end of 2006.

Gameloft has posted consolidated revenues of

$92m in 2006

$140m in 2007

$147m for the year 2008

The company, founded by the Guillemot brothers, founders and owners of video games leader Ubisoft

The company is listed in EURONEXT stock exchange

Many of the Gameloft games has won awards from the recognized Awards Functions like

Spike TV video games award

IGN (Imagine Games N/w) Awards

 Latest News & Developments
13% of the company’s revenue is generated through iphone

Sales increased by 8%

Gameloft scores best iphone game publisher

Gameloft sells 400x more iphone games than andriod

Concentrating more on graphic centered games

Launched Real Football 2010

Producing 3D games

The company is getting into PSP games development

Developing more realistic games for mobile phones

7 P’s for GameLoft
 PRODUCT

Asphalt

Midnight Pool, Bowling, Magic

Prince of persia
7 P’s of Gameloft

Real Football

Splinter Cell

More than 500+ games available online

PRICE
The price of the games published by company varies from region to region across the globe

In India ₨ 50-100 approx

In Europe €2-5

In rest of the world $ 1-3

The price of the games are excluding the data charges

Free games are also available online as promotional offer

PROMOTION

Online Advertising

RSS Feeds

Free preloaded Games, Demo Games, Full Games

Word of mouth

Pirated Games

Place

Through agreements with major telephone wireless carriers, handset manufacturers, specialized
distributors and its online shop, Gameloft has a distribution network in over 80 countries

Games can also be purchased online through many other websites

PEOPLE

Technically very strong

Creative

No direct interaction with customers

PROCESS

Generation of central Idea

Development of game

Coding & Testing

Publishing & Licensing

Distribution (online)

Feedback & Troubleshooting

Updates & Expansion Packs

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

The Website of the company

Logo of the company

Companies annual report

Vision, Mission & Punchline of the company

Online Gaming Portal

Zapak.com
 Fact File
Zapak.com is a privately-held, online gaming portal, with browser games in India
(services provided Globally)

promoted by the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group's subsidiary company Reliance Big
Entertainment

They claim to host the largest collection of online casual games

compared to any gaming website in India and are also among the top 50 portals
according to Alexa ratings

This gaming site is meant for all kids and teenagers between the age of 8-25 years
 History
The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group's Reliance Big Entertainment got the idea of a mass
gaming website when its designers noticed the Internet boom in China since 2001

Reliance Big Entertainement brought this gaming Revolution to India in 2006.

In its way, India had "walked the path of the Chinese". The number of Indian mobile
phone users was near 90 million in 2005 and about 1,05,000 Internet cafes.

So, to cash in on India's developing and booming gaming industry, Reliance Big
Entertainment launched Zapak.com in November 2006.
 Latest News & Developments
Zapak is considered to be the largest online casual gaming website in India, after
Miniclip.com.

Zapak hosts more than 600 games[3], and has a unique policy of adding a new game
everyday.

Thus the increase in the number of games.

Zapak is also a highly visited site, currently having over 6 million registered users and
over 60 million visitors[, with an estimated potential of 20 million registered users by
2010

Recently Zapak also launched RuneScape

7 P’s for Zapak
 7 P’s of Zapak.com
PRODUCT

Variety of flash games from different categories viz- a-viz sports, puzzles, racing &
other casual games

PRICE

The services provided by the company is free of cost

The revenue is basically generated by advertisements

 7 P’s
PROMOTION

Online Promotion

Mass Mail’s

Initially advertised on Television

Word of mouth

Free Gaming 24 X 7

Place

Present only in WWW (World Wide Web)

 7 P’s
PROCESS

Generation of central Idea

Development of game

Coding & Testing

Uploading in server

Feedback & Troubleshooting

Updating (from company side)

PEOPLE

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
Massively Multiplayer Online Games

World of Warcraft
 What is an MMO Game?
40,000 + Players on One server

An entire new world

In game aspects like

Currency, Banks

Items, Equipment

Houses

Friends, Enemies, Teams, Guilds, Masters and Followers

 World of Warcraft (WoW)
MMORPG by Blizzard Entertainment (2004)

4th Game set in the Warcraft Universe

3 expansions have been released

11.5 million monthly subscriptions

Guinness World Record for the most popular MMO

Holds 62% of the MMO market

 People

Interaction is through the website

Support Personnel

Item shop
Process Blizzard
WoW Server

Login Server

GameClient
On the
Forum Customers
PC
Item Shop
 Physical Evidence

Blizzard Logo before the Client starts

Logo on the website, merchandise

Forums, Discussion Boards