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Entering blindly into a new industry can often be quite
a daunting experience. Regardless of preconceived knowledge or
interest, sitting on the consumer side-of-the-fence will always be
.jpg) drastically different to following a career path in the selected
industry. And the videogames industry is certainly no exception to
this rule.
Four-score years and some change and things have
drastically changed since the conception of
Electronic Theatre.
Not only are we now in a new generation of home console, but we’ve
also seen four new entrants in the handheld console market, the
arrival of mobile phone gaming as a serious alternative, and
launches of some of the largest, fastest and greatest games in
history;
The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess,
God Of
War, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,
WarioWare:
Touched!,
Mario KartDS,
Test Drive: Unlimited and
The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay to name
but a few sterling moments. Over that time, Electronic Theatre
has seen the launch of the Game Boy AdvanceSP, Game Boy Player,
N-Gage, Eye-Toy, PlayStation2 Slimline Model, NintendoDS, PSP,
Game Boy Micro, Xbox360, NintendoDS Lite, Wii and is about to launch
the PLAYSTATION3; and with each new console/peripheral, the system
seems to become more confusing, more unintuitive and filled with
more holes.
March 28th, 2003: the Game Boy AdvanceSP
launched. With Electronic Theatre only having been in service
at this point for three months, the first stock allocation the
company received was in time for the launch of Nintendo’s latest
Game Boy iteration, and stock-levels were buoyant. Demand greatly
outstripped supply, as would be expected, yet from conception to
launch, few problems muddied a respectable working arrangement
between Nintendo and Electronic Theatre. Later launches would
prove to be more unreliable in structure, both from Nintendo and
other hardware manufacturers.
Microsoft’s Xbox360 launch was plagued with errors.
While both the NintendoDS and PSP had been made readily available to
Electronic Theatre – both experiencing turbulence, yet both
arriving in quantities far surpassing those originally discussed
between the hardware manufacturers and retailer – Microsoft simply
weren’t in a strong-enough position to cater for the demand they
themselves had created. Continual delays in delivering the details
on pricing, software line-up, allocation and expected arrival dates,
coupled with an about-turn on allocation only days before launch
resulted in some hair-raising experiences. Days of communications
flowing in-and-out between retailer and manufacturer eventually
resulted in deadlines being met, and consumers being satisfied; but
the path to completion had proved to be a very rocky road.
And onto Nintendo’s Wii. Nintendo had promised that Wii
would be readily available, and that there shouldn’t be too much
problem in consumers managing to obtain a unit close to launch. It’s
now March – four months later, and things are yet to settle. Units
are invariably difficult to obtain and the slew of promised launch
titles has evaporated in typical Nintendo fashion, and has been
spread across an eighteen-month period from the fourth quarter of
2006, till the first quarter of 2008; resulting in Wii succumbing to
the same software draught both the GameCube and the Nintendo64
suffered under. Add to this the fact that the launch was again
marred by unreliable shipping dates and constantly fluctuating
allocations, as well very hefty limitations on the software
quantities available - including
The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess - and it’s easy to see that things certainly
didn’t “go without a hitch”.
SONY’s PLAYSTATION3 is due to launch in the UK on
Friday, March 23rd, 2007. Merely two days until the
concluding entrant into the new Current-Generation finally arrives
in Europe, and while SONY have been incomparably smart in the
organisation of their PLAYSTATION3
 launch campaign – demanding
constant updates on Pre-Orders from retailers, revealing pricing
strategies as-and-when demands are needed to be met – there’s still
been plenty of ghosts-in-the-machine. Online allocations have
been erratic and often left retailers entirely unaware of their
allocation just a week prior to launch. It has been requested by
SONY that units not Pre-Ordered are not to be purchased; yet
retailers still continually promote the availability of their units
on launch day, with only two days to go. Delays to the accessories
line and many Third-Party titles – big names such as Virtua
Tennis 3, World Snooker Championship 2007 and
Virtua Fighter
5 included – haven’t helped cement confidence in what is most
likely to become the most lack-lustre launch of the
Current-Generation.
Coming through each progressive console launch has been
a trail of trial-and-error systems. Defining a retail approach to
the launch of a new videogames system would be impossible, were it
not for the simple argument that each offers seemingly more
progressively than the last; difficulty.
Electronic Articles
has coped with each and every new system, and dealt with the
coverage offered in a respectable and just manner; however, there is
no public involvement in the production of this coverage, and very
little involvement on the publisher’s behalf. Retailing in the
industry requires input from both. Those four-years have passed very
quickly, and whilst the excitement witnessed around the launch of
the first new piece of hardware has long-since been diminished by
the enduring paperwork, endless late nights and issues arisen with
the products themselves, it still remains quite apparent that
console launches remain the one true spectacle of our industry, even
if those in my position have developed an unyielding love-hate
relationship with them. |
