New Research Offers Insights Into Videogame Release Timing

[Andy Chalk]

New Research Offers Insights Into Videogame Release Timing

Research by Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business [http://www.cox.smu.edu/] offers new insights into the methodologies behind the timing of videogame hardware and software releases.

Conducted by Cox Professors of Information Techology Sreekumar Bhaskaran and Karthik Ramachandran, the research indicates that companies must take into account the actions of their competitors when considering the timing of a major product release. The ongoing "console wars" are cited as an example, with Xbox 360 [http://www.sony.com], significantly lagging in sales.

"The expert consensus in 2005 was that Microsoft would be the early bird, but PS3 would be the superior console," said Bhaskaran. "Examples like these in competitive industries beg the question: How do - and how should - firms decide to launch new products in very technologically driven, highly competitive markets? When and what do they decide to launch?"

"Microsoft must have learned from its experience with the original Xbox," added Ramachandran. "Then, Microsoft had been late to market with its Xbox console, launched in 2000. Because Sony launched first, many games were written and published for PlayStation. By the time Microsoft entered the market it was already too late, as Sony had a foothold."

According to the report, Sony had a better than two-to-one market share with its first console because it was able to launch its product early, but being the first to market isn't necessarily as important as how a company responds to its competitors. "By staggering product introduction, firms can take different positions not only on the quality dimension but also on the time dimension," Bhaskaran said. "When product differentiation is harder to achieve, staggering becomes even more important. If one chooses to be the pioneer, and the other one a laggard, then both are better off."

More information about the SMU Cox School of Business research is available here [http://www.cox.smu.edu/article/research/research.do/167].


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[CarlosYenrac]

I thought the PS3 was selling poorly because of Sony's marketing strategy of "lies, more lies and statistics"....

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

"Come on, releasing two years after your rivals? This is not a marketing plan. This is blasphemy! This is madness!"
"Madness?! THIS. IS. LIVING!!"

Once you view the European marketting for Sony in that way, thier marketting strategy looks even less amusing. Its obvious over here who's the company to take seriously by thier television adverts - Sony are going for thier surreal aspect while maintaining the "look at our hardware!" stance, Microsoft are going for parachuting people and games into parking lots to promote community, and Nintendo actually seems to show people playing thier games...

The fact that the XBox is outselling the PS3 solely because it was released two years previously falls under the "no-excrement-Sherlock" school of thought. Now we want to see why it's continuing to outsell it, and whether the marketting machines have anything to do with it.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Sometimes I wonder about the point of this kind of research. So much of it seems like simple common sense, but there has to be more to it than that.

Right?

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

Sometimes I wonder about the point of this kind of research. So much of it seems like simple common sense, but there has to be more to it than that.

Right?

There should be more to it, but it boils down to a lot of simple common sense theory. Specifically, two points
1 - If a product is the only thing on the market, more of a market share goes to that product (Xbox Sales > PS3 sales)
2 - If there's a cheaper, viable alternative, people will buy that instead (Wii Sales > PS3 sales)

Maybe I can get a PHD for that if I pad it out to fifty thousand words? I dunno, last time I wrote some research on the games industry (I believe the essay was eventually titled "Why You'll Never Find a 'Hooker With A Heart Of Gold' in Grand Theft Auto' ") I got badly graded for it.

I wonder if there's ever research into things the games industry doesn't like to talk about. Like how high a proportion of sales are from the big twenty games publishers (as compiled by Gamasutra every year), and how much shop space they control in average game stores worldwide (maybe I can try that... everyone, print out a list of the big 20 game companies [there's a copy of it on Wikipedia if you're not gamasutra registered] and go to your game store. Note the games that aren't being pushed by those in the non-preowned sections). Or how many games studios are founded and registered with publishers or TIGA or ESA or another body, and go bankrupt after thier first release.

You know. Real gritty stuff. None of this "Console A outsold Console B because it had an eighteen month head start". There's merit there to be sure, but not to the people who already know this stuff.

Hmm. Thinking as I type, no market research is actually good for us in the hardcore/dedicated/whatever we call ourselves camp. We already know to avoid any game packaged with a console that we don't see being sold for £40 or being televised on television or hyped up by a legion of fanbabies. We already know that the PS3 is being outsold by the XBox and the Wii. We already know games don't make a majority of us violent mass murderers despite that they can train us towards adapting to important tasks if developers put our minds to it.

Maybe market research should be shelved, and we should focus research into totally new game mechanics. I'd love to see more games studios have research divisions, whos jobs were just to make new wacky ideas without publisher approval, just to release test demos on thier website and get some innovation going. The current kind of research just reeks of the aforementioned common sense, and isn't worth the (virtual) paper it's printed on in my humble opinion.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The foremost thing I have learned about experts in the video game field is that most of them aren't.