Level Up

Level Up's Top Four Gaming Tidbits for May 16th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:47:22 GMT

EGO...trip: Come for the Level Up mention, stay for the dissection of the NPDs
HMM...Chris Kohler offers psych eval of Xbox's Don Mattrick--is he licensed to do so?
TEN...Point Plan, or is it time for Huey P. Newton to star in his own sandbox game?
RND...This proposed "early VOD" window could give 360 an edge over PS3

Exclusive: Playstation's Peter Dille and Level Up Discuss GameStop's 64-36 First Week Sales Split For Grand Theft Auto IV

N'Gai Croal — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:20:26 GMT

On Monday, GameStop exclusively revealed to Level Up that during the first week that Grand Theft Auto IV was available in its U.S. stores, 64 percent of all copies sold were for Xbox 360 and 36 percent for Playstation 3. We sought reaction from both Microsoft and Sony to GameStop's results and our impromptu analysis, a portion of which we shared with you on Monday. Today, we're publishing our conversations with the two console manufacturers in their entirety. We spoke by phone with Peter Dille, senior vice president for marketing at Playstation. Here's what he had to say:

GameStop has exclusively provided me with the percentage split on their first week sales figures for GTA IV. According to them, 64 percent of the copies they sold were for Xbox 360, and 36 percent were for PS3. So given that Grand Theft Auto has primarily been associated with PlayStation platform since GTA III in 2001, are you surprised that the PS3 wasn't able to corral a higher share?

I'll take a couple steps back. First of all, we're not in a position to share retailer specific information. I'm not sure if you got that from Microsoft or Rockstar or GameStop themselves.

No, I got it from GameStop.

Okay. It's our experience that GameStop probably does a little bit better with the early adopter crowd. There's a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it's not surprising that there's going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we're really excited about the ratio. If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn't be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage. We think it's not as high as what GameStop's telling you, if you look at [the full picture on] the national level. They're outselling us, but not by that same margin, and it's because of their installed base lead. With an installed base lead that's close to 3-1, if you're bragging about a 60-40 software split, it's clear evidence that the Playstation 3 consumer is overindexing on GTA IV, and the Playstation brand loyalty that we've been talking about is bearing itself out in the marketplace as we speak.

So when you were looking at the release of the game, you didn't think that the history of GTA on Playstation was necessarily going to bring you guys to 50 percent parity or more [in terms of GTA IV market share]?

To read the rest of our conversation with Dille in its entirety, click on the link below.

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Exclusive: Xbox's Aaron Greenberg and Level Up Discuss GameStop's 64-36 First Week Sales Split For Grand Theft Auto IV

N'Gai Croal — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:15:06 GMT

On Monday, GameStop exclusively revealed to Level Up that during the first week that Grand Theft Auto IV was available in its U.S. stores, 64 percent of all copies sold were for Xbox 360 and 36 percent for Playstation 3. We sought reaction from both Microsoft and Sony to GameStop's results and our impromptu analysis, a portion of which we shared with you on Monday. Today, we're publishing our conversations with the two console manufacturers in their entirety. First up is Aaron Greenberg, director of product management at Microsoft. Here's what he told us via email:

GameStop has exclusively provided me with the percentage split on their first week sales figures for Grand Theft Auto IV. According to them, 64 percent of the copies of GTA IV sold were for Xbox 360, while 36 percent were for PS3. Given that Grand Theft Auto has been primarily associated with Playstation platforms since Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, are you surprised that the Xbox 360 was able to corral this high a share?

I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero. As you have covered on Level Up in the past, the majority of third party franchises are being developed first on our platform so they end up playing best on Xbox 360 and when you combine that with Xbox Live, we expect this trend to continue as more multiplatform releases hit the market. With that said, it is fantastic to hear that we beat PS3 two to one on Grand Theft Auto sales from a major retailer like GameStop.

Do you expect this gap to widen or narrow over the rest of the year, and why?

It's tough to say, I think GTA IV will have a much longer tail than some of the other blockbuster titles that have released on our platform. I expect that even this holiday as a lot of new console buyers enter the market we will see GTA IV remain a top title they purchase for the console. Then you also have to consider the excitement and buzz that will be generated when Rockstar starts to promote more details around the exclusive episodes coming to Xbox 360. However, it is clear that there is going to be a completely new Grand Theft Auto IV experience coming to Xbox 360 this fall and I think it is fair to expect that it is going to be a driving factor for another big round of sales of the game.

I did a little math of my own with the help of NPD, which says that through the end of March 2008, 9.9 million Xbox 360s and 4.1 million PS3s have been sold in the U.S. That's a total of 14 million units, of which 70.7 percent are Xbox 360 and 29.3 percent are PS3. When I compare this to GameStop's split of GTA IV sales--64 percent on Xbox 360 and 36 percent on PS3--it's clear that GTA IV underperformed on Xbox 360 relative to Microsoft's pre-April installed base, while it exceeded expectations on PS3 relative to Sony's pre-April installed base. What's your reaction to this, and to what do you attribute this result?

To read the rest of what Greenberg had to say, click on the link below.

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Level Up's Top Four Gaming Tidbits for May 14th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:53:42 GMT

MEM...ory lane: the first two minutes of gameplay from the last three GTAs
WHO...'s the man? Just whip out your earnings and compare notes
THE...re is nothing to fear but fear itself when you're making a game
RND...S--t just got real in the world's realest borough, for real, son

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180 Degrees: How Vic Davis Forged a Template For Indie Success With Armageddon Empires, Part II

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:45:55 GMT

Diagram of the influenza virus, courtesy Chris Bickel/Science

In Part I of Bill Harris' 180 Degrees column, he and Armageddon Empires' creator Vic Davis discussed how Davis got into game development, as well as the gamer interest and sales pattern for AE during its first three months of release. In today's second and final installment, the two examine the impact of influential journalists and outlets had on AE's sales in the months that followed. Finally, Harris steps back from his interview to extract some lessons that are invaluable to understanding how independent developers must approach their publicity and marketing campaigns differently from their peers at the big publishers--what Harris calls "the infection vector." Enjoy.

***

Part Three: Post-Release, Four to Six Months

At the end of October, Armageddon Empires was selected as "Indie Pick of the Month" in Games for Windows magazine. With that mention, page views on the website went up sixty percent in one week.

Yes, it was a real boost. Breaking the downward trend was a huge morale booster. The sales benefit was not immediately noticeable and still pretty modest, but it was a definite turning point. I'm still trying to figure out a model for how customers come to make their purchase decision for AE. You could probably identify sub-groups of customers... those who bought within the first 48 hours, those who spend a week with the demo, those who needed to hear something positive from a third party, and those who are still on the fence but might revisit it when their gaming backlog gets whittled down...that type of thing.

Then, in December, there were three prominent mentions. First, in the "Tom vs. Bruce" feature in Games for Windows. A week later, Kieron Gillen posted a highly favorable review at Eurogamer. At almost the same time, Tom Chick put AE as #4 in his top games of 2007 list.

There was more. In early January, Gamasutra/AIGameDev.com gave Armageddon Empires the "Best A.I. in an Independent Game" award, and Bill Trotter posted another highly favorable review at The Wargamer.

Here's what page views and sales look like with the second three months added (the arrow marks three months from launch):

To read the second and final part of Harris' column in full, click on the link below.

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Level Up's Top Four Gaming Tidbits for May 13th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:01:25 GMT

GTA...IV's Metacritic takes a hit; said hit is defended
HMM...Building a more civil gamer for more civil discourse
POP...Cap goes all Dr. Evil with the budget for its next casual game
RND...What would Charlie Rose say about this Fortune story?

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Scoop: GameStop Reveals That When It Comes to Grand Theft Auto IV, Xbox 360 Has a 2-1 Advantage Over Playstation 3 In First Week Sales

N'Gai Croal — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:30:38 GMT

Before the April 29th launch of Grand Theft Auto, industry observers declared their intentions to use the sales as a way of determining the state of the ongoing battle between the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. After all, the Xbox 360 has the installed base advantage, with 9.9 million units sold since its November 2005 debut as compared to 4.1 million units of PS3 since its arrival November 2006, according to the market researchers at the NPD Group. What's more, savvy gamers would certainly know that Xbox 360 would be the exclusive home for Rockstar Games' planned-but-as-yet-unrevealed downloadable content. But the last five major Grand Theft Auto games either premiered on or remained exclusive to PS2 and PSP, and the bulk of those sales took place on PlayStation platforms. So could consumers' perception that GTA is somehow a PlayStation franchise give Sony the edge in unit sales, or at least enable the installed base-lagging PS3 to punch above its weight and take a greater share of GTA IV units sold than its market share would suggest?

We won't have a complete answer about how things shook out here in the United States until later this week, when the NPD Group releases its sales data for the month of April. But thanks to the kind folks at GameStop--North America's largest specialty videogame retailer--we've got a partial answer. According to sales information that GameStop has released exclusively to Level Up, 64 percent of the copies of Grand Theft Auto IV sold during the first week were for Xbox 360, while 36 percent were sold on PS3. Put another way, that's a roughly 2 to 1 sales advantage for Xbox 360.

To read the rest of our exclusive report about the first week sales split for Grand Theft Auto IV at GameStop, along with reactions from both Microsoft and Sony, click on the link below.

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180 Degrees: How Vic Davis Forged a Template For Indie Success With Armageddon Empires, Part I

N'Gai Croal — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:45:57 GMT

Armageddon Empires, developed and published by Cryptic Comet

It's been almost three weeks since we unveiled our plans to add a select group of columnists who would contribute monthly posts to Level Up. Today, we're pleased to introduce our third columnist: Bill Harris of the blog Dubious Quality. "Smart and caustic" is how we described Harris' writing when he made his Level Up debut last fall with a provocative post titled "How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding." The Austin, Texas-based analyst (who does not cover videogames in a professional capacity) will share his thoughtful, acerbic and often contrary observations with the Level Up faithful in a monthly series titled 180 Degrees. In his first column, which we're presenting to you in two parts, Harris speaks with designer and developer Vic Davis about the unusual path to success for his independently released turn-based strategy game Armageddon Empires, complete with charts derived from sales and site traffic data that Davis helpfully provided. For some excellent insights into how an indie developer can overcome the challenge of reaching an audience, read on.

***

On July 18, 2007, Vic Davis and Cryptic Comet released Armageddon Empires, a turn-based strategy game in a post-apocalyptic setting.

There was very little pre-release publicity, which is not unusual for an indie game. And like most indie games, the initial interest in Armageddon Empires steadily dropped in the first three months following release.

At this point, Armageddon Empires was on a very traditional arc for an indie game. This arc would end, soon, in game death.

Then, a funny thing happened. It didn't.

Instead, Armageddon Empires became the surprise indie hit of 2007, and sales have continued to increase into 2008. What made this game different is an interesting case study for indie developers who are having difficulty getting traction with their own games. I interviewed designer and developer Vic Davis, who shared his insight on the process of getting an indie game noticed.

Part One: Pre-release

You're 39 years old and you're tired of working for someone else, so you decide to make a game. That really sounds quite insane.

After I got out of the military I had intended to go back and work in the intelligence community when I finished my graduate degree. After my first child was born, though, I started re-evaluating priorities. I wanted to control my own fate and make my own decisions. I also had to come to grips with the fact that I enjoyed work more as a craftsman (even if digital) than a leader.

What made you decide to get into gaming development?

To read Part I of Harris' column in its entirety, click on the link below.

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Level Up's Top Four Gaming Tidbits for May 12th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:25:02 GMT

EGO...trip: Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes note of our MSM reviews lament
GAM...e recognize game: Sam Houser calls EA's Riccitiello "the real deal"
CAN...BioShock survive being spliced with Hollywood's DNA?
RND...Stringer Bell, Al Swearengen and Tony Soprano on iTunes?

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Things You May Have Missed: Will Criterion Games' Alex Ward Ever Say Never Again? We Think Not.

N'Gai Croal — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:20:09 GMT

Promo image for the 1983 film "Never Say Never Again," courtesy The Nostalgia Factory

When we saw the news this morning that Criterion Games' much-debated-then-much-praised Burnout Paradise would be coming to PC, we were more than a little surprised. That's because in the past, the studio's creative director Alex Ward has made some playfully disparaging comments about gaming on PCs. So as we were Googling for one of his previous statements on the matter to throw into this morning's High Score post, we came across a statement that he had made previously to...us. Here's the exchange we had on the subject back in the fall of 2006:

What about PC gamers? You've been critical of the PC in the past. What would you say to someone who's finished F.E.A.R., they've finished Half-Life 2, they've finished Quake IV. They've seen their little brother rocking out with Black on the console, and they want to know, "When is Alex Ward going to show me some love?"
Never. I'm just being totally honest. I could lie, right, and say "Maybe you'll see a PC game from us in the future." No.

To see the rest of what Ward told us back in Fall 2006, along with some screenshots and the full text of the press release, click on the link below.

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Level Up's Top Six Gaming Tidbits for May 9th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:10:13 GMT

EGO...trip: The gospel of Level Up leads to faith-questioning and public stoning...
HMM...while the PCGA unexpectedly turns a former blasphemer into a convert
THE...80-20 rule, as re-envisioned by the mad geniuses at Rockstar Games
KIC...k in the door, wavin' the four-four/All you heard was "Poppa don't hit me no more"
MEA...nwhile, over in Europe, Sony's claim of "Victory!" goes unrefuted
RND...The must-see movie of holiday 2008. But will there be Happy Meals?

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Level Up's Top Six Gaming Tidbits for May 7th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:53:18 GMT

EGO...trip: We fake it so real, we are beyond fake
EGO...trip: Our recent post on the MSM and game reviews, considered
TEN...The Bo Derek age of videogames is officially upon us
WHE...n, oh when will the PCGA smite the blasphemers?
GTA...IV failed to respect Shaolin. Will Shaolin have its revenge?
RND...Safe for work porn? Only the best for you, Dear Reader

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Level Up's Top Four Gaming Tidbits for May 6th, 2008

N'Gai Croal — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:01:36 GMT

EGO...trip: Level Up's dirty little secret, under the microscope
EGO...trip: EA's Kotick rebuttal gets pickup; others struggle with attribution
NOT...hing like a good, old-fashioned blogfight
RND...In which we belatedly welcome a fellow critic to the 'sphere

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Objection: What's Missing From Mainstream Reviews of Videogames? Oh, That's Right--Gameplay

N'Gai Croal — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:15:09 GMT

Anyone who's been a faithful reader of Level Up knows we have some pet themes to which we keep returning. Among them: games are not a fundamentally narrative medium; we all "see" games with our hands; we videogame journalists need to develop a critical vocabulary that will enable us to better explain the unique qualities of this art form. This week, we managed to smuggle some of that thinking into the pages of NEWSWEEK by means of a page-long essay on Grand Theft Auto IV, in which we wrote:

When I write a post about videogames on my NEWSWEEK.com blog, Level Up, my target audience is the sizable one that's already knowledgeable about the medium. The real challenge, however, comes when I return to the pages of the magazine. It's not easy to explain a game like Grand Theft Auto IV to an audience that's not native to this art form. Yes, I said art: to draw an analogy or three, Grand Theft Auto is to videogames what "The Sopranos" was to television--a sprawling, operatic crime series that has elevated the genre and made its creator very rich in the process (Rockstar Games took in more than $1 billion in the United States for the last three GTA games alone). But on the TV show, you only watch Tony and his minions kill their enemies. In Grand Theft Auto IV, you also direct and star in a story that unfolds over as many as 100 hours, depending on your skill as a gamer.

The experience is hard enough to sum up that I'm tempted to put novices at ease by writing something like this: a first-person, here's-what-I-did-in-the-game introduction, followed by a colorful précis of the Grand Theft Auto IV story and characters, then a recitation of the numerous landmarks and radio stations that give this skewed facsimile of New York City--called Liberty City in the game--its authentic flavor. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't begin to give you a feel for what it's actually like to play the game. Just as the majority of movie reviewers still struggle to find a meaningful critical and technical language with which to discuss actors' performances, we who write about videogames have yet to find a vocabulary that enables us to thoroughly engage the medium. One that will allow us to examine the mechanics, visuals, sounds and narrative elements of videogames not in isolation, but in concert.

When we wrote those two paragraphs, we did so specifically in response to several reviews of GTA IV that we'd read in the mainstream press, where the need to distill a game's essence for non-initiates is the most acute. Take, for instance, the ecstatic review that ran in the New York Times. Only two almost-throwaway sentences--"The point of the main plot is to guide Niko through the city’s criminal underworld. Gang leaders and thugs set missions for him to complete, and his success moves the story along toward a conclusion that seems as dark as its beginning"--describe the main thrust of the game. The rest of the review, though artfully written, starts with that "here's-some-of-what-I-did" intro we mentioned in our excerpt, and then follows it up with a laundry list of adjectives, characters, locations and narrative elements.

To read the rest of our post, click on the link below.

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War of Wordcraft: After Repeated Shots From Activision CEO, Electronic Arts Finally Fires Back

N'Gai Croal — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:03:04 GMT

When the CEO of the world's largest videogame publisher takes repeated shots at the runner-up, even a journalist must eventually take note and seek comment. That's exactly what we did after noticing three separate statements in which Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had taken a dig at Electronic Arts, including an accusation that EA has been "taking the soul" out of a lot of the studios it purchased. To address this string of criticism, we sent some questions over to Jeff Brown, EA's vice president of corporate communications, for the company's official response. Here's what he wrote back:

In a recent Q&A with Portfolio, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick had the following exchange with the interviewer:

Is there a key to Activision's growth?

It's about really being considerate of the culture in the game studios that Activision buys. That's the biggest difference between us and any of our competitors. We built a model that celebrates entrepreneurial, opportunistic, independent values. It's almost the opposite of Electronic Arts, which has commoditized development. It did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired.

What was the reaction of the executives at Electronic Arts when they read that quote?

The truth is, everyone laughed. In the past year EA has made radical changes to decentralize the company and put creative control back in the hands of development teams. It's too early to declare victory but if you talk to people like Patrick Soderlund at dice in Stockholm, Mark Jacobs at Mythic in Virginia or Josh Resnick at Pandemic--they'll probably tell you that it's working. They get a lot of resources and creative freedom. That freedom has already contributed new start-ups like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Boom Blox and there's a lot of others to be announced soon.

EA CEO John Riccitiello has made numerous recent remarks about EA's shift away from a command-and-control model towards a city-state model, in which individual studios and teams have more control over their own destiny. Do remarks like this suggest that he has more to do to change the perception of EA among his peers, or is something else at work? Which studios would you point to at EA that still have their souls intact?

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