Video-game Industry context

Macro facts

  • Video-games are a young industry, much younger than film and tv, growing through the arcade of the 70s and into home consoles in the 80s
  • Consumer game software market as valued at £4.28bn in 2021
  • It has grown 11.4% i comparison to a £3.84bn total from 2019 figures 
  • Spend on digital console games reduced by 5.59% to £1.65bn. this is mostly due to the lack of huge releases (animal crossing and the last of us 2) driving sales, although it is still impressive in context of video game performance during the pandemic
  • Video games outstrip the profits of music, tv and film 
The Switch is a hybrid console, both a console at home and a handheld device.

Monetization - 
  • How businesses make money from selling a product, nothing is truly free.
  •  Games no longer need a physical disc. 
  • 70% of sales in 2022 were digital. Over 90% during the pandemic. Video game producers take a bigger cut of the profit, SONY released the digital only PS5 in 2020. 
  • Physical discs are still valued by some and are collector items.
  •  'free to play' games originally a feature of mobile phpen games are often rampant through the industry eg FORTNITE. 
  • Games are often seen as a live service , constantly updating with downloadable content. 
  • 'Loot box' or 'card packs' are in game purchases that people can buy to upgrade weapons, change clothing or get different players eg Fortnite, you can buy clothes and items. In Fifa you can buy card packs =  THE GREATEST FIFA 22 PACK OPENING SO FAR!!
Consumers vs prosumers - 
  • Consumers are no longer passive in their consumption of media, many want to interact, share and shape their media consumption, these are called prosumers, 
  • consoles have built in 'share' buttons making it easy to share content with friends. 
  • Creator codes are used so when someone spends money on a game eg Fortnite, when using this code, some of the money will go towards the creator, for example on Fortnite, when buying a 'skin' or a weapon, you can use a code which can send money to a streamer eg Ninja. Despite Fortnite being a free game to play, Fortnite made more money than any other game for two years running because creators want you to buy these products as they will also make money
Console wars - 
  • three big players in console market - Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo,
  •  competition is known as console wars, part of this competition is driven by technological advancements, the race for better graphics, faster processing. 
  • Console producers create First party games made in house by the company. eg TLOU can only be played on Play-station, Mario can only be played on a Nintendo Console 
  • Third Party Games are made by companies who don't manufacture consoles; Activation's call of duty represents an economic boom for all consoles
  • Microsoft have recently leveraged their gigantic wealth to purchase activation for £68billion
  • Exclusives - things/titles only available on certain devices and consoles 
  • Game-pass (The Netflix of video games) - the ability to buy games and play them across more devices
I don't think you have to buy a console to experience games as there are certain streaming services that will offer games you may want to play without having to buy a console, eg Gamepass and GeForce which offer thousands of games in one site. However, exclusive games such as Mario, Animal Crossing will only be able to be played on Nintendo consoles.

Digital Convergence - 
  • when one media device can access multiple media platforms. 
  • You can know listen to music , play games and browse on twitter all from your phone video games are a perfect example of this, you can play games, access social media and surf the internet. 
  • the first console that was digitally convergent was the play-station 2, it could play games and dvds
  • The increased share ability of media has lead to issues with distribution and consumption, many video games are spoiled before release.

One of the noticeable differences between the East and the West is the prevalence of the handheld device, the popularity of the handheld device is understandable. for one, high population density makes open space one of the islands most precious commodities, also the widespread use of public mass transit leads to people having to spend more time among strangers in crowded trains. Japan sells 20% more handheld consoles than the US with less than half the population.






 






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