Games Distribution

Games Distribution

1. Who will be the distributors for GTA V?
Take-Two interactive will be the distributors for GTA V. Take-Two interactive is a major American publisher, developer, and distributor of video games. The company owns Rockstar games, this means that Rockstar only have one company, Take-Two interactive, to pay for the distribution of their games.

2. Who are the distributors for Skylanders: Giants?
XPEC Entertainment are the distributors for Skylanders: Giants. The company also distributes Skylanders: Spyro's adventure, so just like Rockstar, Activision may also have chosen one company to distribute all of their games instead of paying out for other companys.

3. Who were the distributors for the original Angry Birds game on iPhone?
Chillingo distributed the original Angry Birds games for apple on the iPhone. Chillingo is a part of the EA family, but being a part of such a large company brought some problems to Angry Birds.

MMORPG- The Sims Online

The Sims Online

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation game, in this genre of games, they attempt to copy the activities 'in real life'. These games have no defined goal or aim, it is just running around and playing as the virtual characters you have created.
A free trial of The Sims, allows you to play the games for free as a trial for 14 days. After the 14 days if the player wants to continue playing, the user will need to purchase a subscription for £6.30 a month.

SkyLanders Giants

Skylanders: Giants is a video games released this year, it is a sequel to Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure released in 2011. The title gives away the change in the game, which is that the characters are now 'Giants' and there is also new gameplay mechanics.
The games was released October 19^th in Europe, and in many other countries around the same time. By releasing it in many countries around the world increases its popularity and must also mean that Spyro was a success in many countries too.
The main target audience is those in the younger generation, this audeience is one of the biggest selling target audience which might help the games increase their profits. The games is unique in many ways, as it is the only games were you have to by characters seperately as you get further through the games and also because it has made links between the physical toy and figures and the in game characters and stories.
The characters bought play a part of the video games; the players choses the character they want and then place it on 'The Portal of Power' and then watch the figure come to life on the screen. Players resume their roles as a portal master and control the team of Skylanders (Giants, mythical and powerul heroes). Players navigate perilous lands, collecting treasures and soving interesting puzzles along the way and battle powerful enemies.
The Skylanders: Giants starter pack/booster pack inclding the game and a giant figure costs £36.99 on the Wii, £39.99 on the Xbox 360 and £39.99 on the PlayStation. It costs £52.47 to buy the starter packs, 3 characters and the games from amazon which many people think is a good price. To buy extra figures is costs £17. Although many adults do not agree that there should be a need to pay more to continue the game once you have already paid for it, children become addicted to the game and make sure they get the figures they need, which proves to make a profit for the company.

'Indie' Games

Indie Games

Independent games, mostly known as 'indie games' are the games that are created and designed by an individual or a small team (mostly about 3 people but can be as many as 10 people) without any financial support of video game publishers. Depending on the complexity of the game, it can take up to just only a few days or if it is more complex game it could take a few years. Indie games rely a lot of digital distribution for their funding and marketing as they don't want to pay a lot of money for the shipping or manufacturing of the game because indie games are not as known as the big company games so therefore they will not get much money or possible no money at all of gamers do not take to their game, but because indie games don't need to pay license fee's etc the games a generally cheaper than mainstream games so this might help their profits increase.

Indie developers do not need approval from publishers and do not have any limitations so they are known to be very creative, artistic and have unique ideas for games, also because possible anyone can be a game developer in the indie game industry their is a wide variation in the types of games. The games within the individual industry have their own section on game consoles such as the xbox live, which will help increase the amount of gamers that play the games to give it more popularity and get it known more.

Although indie games are expected to be small in the gaming industry, games such as minecraft, super-meat boy and braid prove that indie games can become massively known and used by many gamers across the world.

Braid

Braid is a video game developed by an independent developer called Jonathan Blow who funded the three year project with his own money. It was release on August 6th, 2008 for the Xbox 360 Arcade Service. This game was one of the small indie games that became a massively known game as it has a Microsoft Windows version released on April 10th, 2009. Although this is the only game Jonathan Blow has developed he is currently developing a new game; The Waitress which has been planned to hopefully release by the end of this year.

The main aim of the game is to help Tim attempt to rescue a princess from a monster.  Their is a story behind the game and text passages from the story are laid throughout the games which unfolds the story and gives clues to help Tim. The player progresses by finding jigsaw puzzle pieces and assembling the puzzle after collecting each piece, using the traditional aspects of the platform genre within the game and the various powers of time-manipulation. 

The games received highly positive reviews from critics, eventually becoming the highest critically rated title on Xbox live.

                                              

"Reality is Broken"

Reality is Broken- Jane Mcgonigal
Facts about the gaming industry

• More than 10 million hard core gamers in the UK, France and Germany spend 20 hours at least every week playing games and more than 5 million extreme gamers in the US play an average of 45 hours a week  playing video games.
• There is 183 million active gamers in the US alone.
• 5.93 million years have been spent playing World of Warcraft which is the same amount of which is the same amount of years ago our first human ancestors stood up right, which just shows how much time people spend video gaming in the modern world.
• An averaging gamer spends 10,000.
• 40 percent of gamers are actually women.
• 69% of all heads of households play video games.
• 97% of young people play video games.

Hot Coffee Mod

The Hot Coffect MOD is a built in mini-game, in the 2004 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game, develpoed by Rockstar North. The mini-game included the sexual relationship between Carl Johnson and his girlfriend, where his girlfriend invites Carl into her house for a 'coffee' (used as an euphemism for sex). 
The Hot Coffee mini-game was supposedly inaccessible but when the MOD was released for the PC version of the GTA game the MOD was discovered. Once people knew about it's existence a hacking tool was used to enable it on the Playstation 2 and Xbox versions of the game too. Once the public knew about the mini-game, a lot of controversy was caused. Lawmakers and politicians forced Rockstar to re-rate the game because the adult content within the mini-game meant young gamers could not play the game, so the game was re-rated as an 18 and had to be taken of the shelves for a while until the newly updated version was released. Although the minigame meant Rockstar and GTA games were negatively shown in the media for a while, it also meant that it would get the company known so may gain some popularity, increasing the sales long term. 

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy means the cooperation of two or more part of a company/organisation to produce a better effect as one rather than two separate effects. For example; there is a synergy between the James bond films and Shirley Bassey. Shirley Bassey sings some of the soundtrack music for the James bond film, so the two industries are film and music. It is the strategy of synchronizing and actively forging connections between directly related areas of media.

Symbiosis means working together as a cross promotion between one or more industry to achieve an objective or goal that couldn't be achieved independently. An example of this within Rockstar is the release of merchandises of their games; Mug and T-shirts with the Rockstar logo on, and even mugs, action figures, t-shirts, caps etc with GTA logos on which is their most popular game.
Lately Mountain Dew has paired up with Halo which is an example of symbiosis. They have a similar audiencem, as most people that play Halo are hardcore gamers who spend a lot of hours playing so they will be the type of people who drink energy drinks to keep them awake and alert. The Mountain Dew sales will increase as people who are fans of Halo will buy it.

 

The Rockstars Are Taking Over

Rockstar Studios

 Rockstar Japan-  Joined the Rockstar division in 2005.

 Rockstar Leeds- Previously known Mobius Entertainment, they joined the division in 2004. They created Grand Theft Auto-Liberty city stories and Vice city stories, Grand Theft Auto-Chinatown wars and also Max Payne, and they have recently worked with Microsoft to create to a new version of LA Noire.

 Rockstar Lincoln- One of the first companies to join Rockstar (in 1999), they were recently known as Tarantula Studios.

 Rockstar London- It was formed in November 2005, they took over the development of Manhunt 2, and recently developed a new portable adaption for Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

 Rockstar New England- It is the latest one to join the Rockstar family as it only joined in 2008, previously known as, they developed the Xbox and PC version of 'Bully'.

 Rockstar North- Founded in 2002, the company was previously known as DMA design. They are famous for GTA and Manhunt franchises and the original Lemmings games.

 Rockstar San Diego- They were previously known as Angel Studios before joining Rockstar in 2003, they have developed many games including Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, the Smuggles Run and also the first two Midtown Madness games.

 Rockstar Toronto- They're mostly known for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City and also The Warriors. They joined in 1999 and were known as Rockstar Canada before become Rockstar Toronto.

 Rockstar Vancouver- Recently merged with Rockstar Toronto, after joining in 2002. They created the PlayStation 2 title of Bully and Max Payne 3.

 Rockstar Vienna- Previously known was Neo Software, they ported Max Payne series consoles and created some of Manhunt 2 before close on May 11th, 2006.

Notes by Laura and Nick

Tentpole business model - a game that is the best seller in the market, that boosts funds to promote other games, for example, rockstar games uses the GTA series to fund games like LA Noire and bully.
The hollywood model - GTA is an example of a hollywood model, it uses a number of different departments to design the game, for example paying people in the art department to help design certain scenes.
The indie games- Games that aren't produced by a multi national business, and instead cheaply designed by 1 to a few people that pay the likes of apple or xbox to host there games on there marketplace/app store, these tend to be more arcade type games that couldnt be released on disk due to funding.

The controller revolution: Gesture controllers

Introduction

The controller revolution has changed a lot over the past 6 years from the Nintendo Wii to the Kinect and the Move. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all adapting their controllers to modern technology and competing against one another to be the best in the gesture controller market and finding new ways to excite the gaming world. In my essay I will analyse the ways in which each company has changed their controllers over the years, and how the gaming industry has became more competitive and constantly changing.


Nintendo Wii (and Wii Motion Plus)

Nintendo Wii was released in November 2006 in North America and within the next two months it was selling millions worldwide.  The Wii Remote, can be used as a handheld pointing device and detects movement in three dimensions. Games for the wii are normally  first party developed which means they are produced by themselves;these include wii sports resort, Just Dance 2 and others, which Sony and Microsoft decided to make their own of and copy this made the competition more competitive. The Wii motion plus is an add on to the wii controller, this was released in 2009. The add on allows the user to have a more accurate motion copied by the console.

Kinect

Kinect is a motion sensing input device introduced by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and has now became the fastest selling consumer electronics device. It enables gamers to play and interact with the Xbox 360 without needing to touch a controller, by using natural user interface using gestures and spoke commands. It is based around a webcame style add on peripheral for the Xbox. Kinect competes with Wii and Wii Motion Plus and Playstation Move. The target audience for Kinect is mainly families, as the games used for Kinect such as; Kinect Sports  get family members to join in and compete against each other. The games made for the Kinect are also produced by themselves making the a third party developer just like Nintendo Wii. 

Move

Move is a motion sensing game controller platform for the PlayStation 3, released in September 2010. It is based around a handheld wand, JHardware available at launch included the main PlayStation Move motion controller,  a supplementarty Playstation Move navigation controller. Playstation move is targeted mainly to families but also to many adults and children which shows it is a game for any generation.

Conclusion
So you can see that the competition between each of the companies is at it's peak now after the releases of their new controller, they are constantly trying to beat each other in the gaming industry.  

My Gaming Experience/History

Although I don't play games often, the games I have experiences of are; Fifa 12, Call of Duty and Sims. In my house we have PS2 and PS3, Wii, Nintendos and iPods and laptop so I have a range of games consoles to play games on but I mainly use the Wii to play Mario Kart, or the laptop to play Sims. I have also experience playing Fifa 12 and CoD on the Xbox 360.
When I was younger and played on the Nintendo, the games I mostly played were Nintendogs, Mario Kart, but since the more modern game consoles have came out I don't use my Nintendo.

Introduction

This is my media studies blog.