Archive for April, 2009

1. Nearly 1 in every 3 game sales at GAME Group is pre-owned

   April 22, 2009

   Game Group announced its preliminary results today and for the first time separated out the gross margin of its pre-owned sales. At the revenue level, roughly one in every three pounds spent on a game is spent on a pre-owned title, and as the table below shows, the margins are nearly double those of new [...]

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   Posted in: Sales

   Tagged with: game group, retailing, second hand, statistics

   1 Comment

2. Did The9′s relationship with EA cost it 90% of its revenue?

   April 22, 2009

   Last week, Activision announced that it would be shifting the Chinese licence for World of Warcraft from The9 to Netease. This is pretty bad news for The9. To quote their 2007 20-F annual report filed with the SEC: “99% and 92% of our total revenues in 2006 and 2007, respectively, were attributable to the operation of WoW [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: activision, starred, the9, world of warcraft

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3. Ascaron files for bankruptcy protection

   April 21, 2009

   Developer of Sacred Ascaron has filed for bankruptcy protection in the German courts. The company said that 94 staff worked on Sacred 2, so I’m estimating the staff size at 100 for now. Pessimistically, I am not sure that the company is strong enough to emerge from bankruptcy protection, so I am adding all 100 [...]

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   Posted in: Game Over Zone

   Tagged with: ascaron, closures, job loss tracker, redundancies

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4. The iPhone hasn’t actually changed the game at all

   April 21, 2009

   New analysis shows that the impact of the iPhone on the mobile games business is much smaller than previously thought. I’ve been trying to get hold of demographic data for the iPhone from a number of sources. Combining it all lead to a surprising conclusion, and suggests that the impact of the iPhone on consumer [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: iphone, starred, statistics

   3 Comments

5. Turns out the Nintendo DS isn’t the place to sell Mature titles. Surely not?

   April 20, 2009

   The latest NPD data shows disappointing data for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on Nintendo DS. It sold a “pathetic” 89,000 and “bombed”, according to Variety. Game Platform US Installed  Unit  Penetration   base (m)* sales** rate (%) GTA: Chinatown Wars Nintendo DS 26.3 89,000 0.3% Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox360/PS3 14.4 2,850,000 19.8% GTA [...]

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   Posted in: Sales

   Tagged with: ds, gta chinatown wars, starred, wii

   1 Comment

6. Is the iPhone really a kid’s console?

   April 20, 2009

   Leapfrog, the company famous for games for pre-schoolers, has just launched an iPhone game. This is a massive shift for a company that has previously created its own hardware (such as My My First Computer, aimed at 3-6 year olds) and has never produced content for another platform. What is most surprising is that the [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: iphone, leapfrog, starred

   2 Comments

7. iPhone demographics

   April 18, 2009

   Earlier this month, comScore released some of the first iPhone demographic data for the UK. Key points: 75% male Of those men, users are “mostly between the ages of 18-44“. (Love the accuracy of the statistic.) 93% of iPhone users have used data services 37% of iPhone users have downloaded a game 18.6% of iPhone users [...]

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   Posted in: Distribution

   Tagged with: demographics, iphone, starred

   2 Comments