MCV863 January 29th by Future PLC

23.02.16

A BEAUTIFUL WORLD RULED BY GIANT BEASTS

After the glaciers of the last Ice Age RETREATED THEY LEFT BEHIND A LAND BLOOMING with nature and resources where humans and animals alike could thrive – provided they had what it took to prove their dominance!

RISE ABOVE EXTINCTION

You have one goal: survival in a world where you are the prey. Grow your tribe and hone your skills to lead your people while facing enemy tribes who will do anything to eradicate you and your allies

BECOME THE BEAST MASTER

Tame any of the predators you come across and call upon them whenever you NEED n YOUR l RST COMPANION AN OWL IS YOUR EYES IN THE SKY

WELCOME TO THE STONE AGE

This isn’t the Stone Age as you know it. This is the Stone Age with irreverence and mayhem. This is Far Cry’s Stone Age

©2016 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Far Cry, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US and/or other countries. Based on Crytek’s original Far Cry directed by Cevat Yerli. Powered by Crytek’s technology “CryEngine”. “2“ and “PlayStation” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “Ø“ is a trademark of the same company. Xbox, Xbox One, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft.

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES

PC GAMING SPECIAL

ISSUE 863 FRIDAY JANUARY 29TH 2016

14 PAGES DEDICATED TO THE WORLD’S MOST POPULAR GAMES PLATFORM

EA: We want to regain the trust of PC gamers by Christopher Dring

Surprise! PC game boxed sales down, digital up

GAMES giant EA says it is on a targeted mission to fix its PC reputation. The firm has frustrated PC fans in recent years, following the poor launch performances of titles such as SimCity and Battlefield 4, plus perceived missing features from The Sims 4. The publisher has since introduced a number of initiatives to its Origin PC service designed to win over users. These include allowing fans to return games they don’t like and giving away free titles for a set period. Now it’s introduced Origin Access - where gamers can play a catalogue of games for £3.99 a month. “We are on a journey to regain the trust of the PC gamer,” said Peter O’Reilly, senior marketing director for Origin. “Over the last couple of years we have focused on ensuring a great play experience from

SALES of boxed PC games in the UK fell by more than 36 per cent, to just over 1m games sold, in 2015. The latest statistics from GfK Entertainment show that a total of just £21.3m was spent on physical PC games last year in Britain – a drop of more than 28 per cent. The news will come as little surprise to PC game makers, who have seen the market becoming increasingly dominated by Steam over the last ﬁve years. Indeed, although digital estimates vary greatly depending on which data supplier you speak to, both IHS and SuperData tell MCV that PC digital sales (which includes subscriptions and free-to-play, as well as full downloads) increased by around £30m in the UK last year.

New Origin Access subscription service to add more third-party games, says publisher

Origin Access lets gamers play 15 titles – including Battleﬁeld 4 – for £3.99 a month

Over the last couple of years we have focused on ensuring a great play experience from launch. Peter O’Reilly, EA Origin

launch and bringing players a better experience on Origin with programs like the Great Game Guarantee, On the House, and now Origin Access. We’re excited about the progress we’ve made, but are always pushing ourselves to innovate on behalf of players.” O’Reilly believes Origin Access will encourage gamers to play titles they wouldn’t have considered otherwise. And it plans to add more games – including titles from rival publishers – to the service.

Tesco video games boss Hayes departs for Activision THE games buying manager at UK supermarket behemoth Tesco, Jon Hayes, has left the ﬁrm. He will be replaced by Alison Mair, who is buying manager of newspapers and magazines. She has been in the entertainment team for ﬁve years having previously worked with DVDs. Hayes has left Tesco to take up a new role as channel controller for Call of Duty publisher Activision. “I’d like to thank Jon for his years of dedication in developing

Tesco and want to thank my team past and present for all the support and great times we have had. “I’d also like to thank the wider Tesco team for helping achieve some great successes, including brilliant launches and developing new ways to sell games. Tesco is now seen as a great games retailer and is respected in the industry. “The games department is now in a really great place and I believe there will be lots of success for the team in the future.”

the games proposition at Tesco,” said head of media and entertainment Mark Green. “He consistently grew our share. His passion for games and the games market is clear, and he has not just delivered for Tesco but has focused on growing and developing the gaming market for the beneﬁt of our industry. “Alison brings great experience and I’d like to congratulate and welcome her to the games team.” Hayes added: “I’ve had a fantastic four and a half years at

PLUS CREATIVE ASSEMBLY ON THE PC MARKET

PC SURVIVAL GUIDE

NEWS

Monthly video games show coming to BBC Radio One Julia Hardy to present new show that will debut in March O Programme aimed at young gamers across the UK by Alex Calvin THE BBC has commissioned a brand new monthly Radio One show dedicated to video games. The programme – simply called The Radio One Gaming Show – is currently set to start on Friday March 11th and will be presented by games media personality Julia Hardy. The show is aimed at ‘young gamers across the UK’. Each episode will focus on a speciﬁc title, but will also feature games previews, exclusive ﬁrst looks at new titles, and catch-ups with new releases in development. It follows a special gaming show, which aired on Monday, December 28th on Radio One, and was also presented by Hardy.

Julia Hardy is set to present The Radio One Gaming Show

“Radio One has wanted to do video games for a very long time,” the BBC’s head of visual radio Joe Harland told MCV. “But games are a very diﬃcult thing to get right, particularly when you are a radio station and the audience can’t see what’s happening. Now

Radio One has wanted to do video games for a very long time. Joe Garland, BBC

Indie developer Pixelbomb signs boxed distribution deal

XCOM 2 plots invasion of 2K’s Windsor Gaming Bar 2K GAMES is running a series of PR events in Windsor to support the upcoming XCOM 2. The PC strategy title arrives on February 5th and the ﬁrm has been inviting press, streamers, YouTube personalities, fans, retail communities and staﬀ to the 2K Gaming Bar in Windsor to try the title before it launches. “This space means we can give people access to code earlier and for longer play sessions than at

a traditional event,” said 2K UK product manager Sean Phillips. The meets are part of 2K’s online and video campaign for XCOM 2, which starts this week. It has also targeted ‘new media’ – such as video personalities – to help push the new title. “We want to give creators the means to make material by providing equipment, people, space and early access,” said UK community exec, Aaron Cooper.

GAMES publisher Sold Out will release the console versions of upcoming mech shooter Beyond Flesh and Blood at retail. The title is from Manchesterbased studio Pixelbomb Games. It’s due in Q2 and will launch in a box and at digital retail for £29.99. It is also coming to PC. “We have a standout hit with Beyond Flesh and Blood,” said Pixelbomb MD John Kavanagh. “Our marketing campaigns clearly demonstrates our ambitions for the game and the studio. This means that in order to maximise all revenues

2K is using video personalities to promote new title XCOM 2

January 29th 2016

Radio One has an iPlayer channel on your TV, on all your devices. So we have our platform, we’ve got a presenter in Julia Hardy, who is brilliant and great at all the different disciplines of broadcasting that we need her to do, and has significant expertise.” He continued: “The young gaming audience wants programmes about individual titles. You want to make specific programmes about specific titles, creating content for specific types of gamer. What we don’t want to do is go out and say ‘this is a show for literally every gamer’, because I don’t think it’s possible to do something so broad. What we’re doing is a monthly programme that can excite specific types of gamer.”

and plough funds into building the brand; no avenues can be left on the table. “Signiﬁcant numbers of consumers want a boxed version. Sold Out is the natural choice of publishing partner.” Sold Out CEO Garry Williams added: “We were blown away by Beyond Flesh and Blood at Insomnia56. The latest version has looked and played even better than we could ever hoped. We just had to strap Sold Out’s boxed sales machine to their digital engine as this unique mech shooter is going to be one of the major releases of 2016.”

www.mcvuk.com

NEWS

THE EDITOR

Bithell: What indiepocalypse? Without data we are clueless by Ben Parﬁtt THOMAS WAS ALONE dev Mike Bithell has said that we don’t have the data needed to accurately assess the health of the digital games market. One school of thinking is that the boom of digital indie games has now led to bust. This supposed phenomenon is called the ‘indiepocalypse’. Others argue that simply isn’t happening. The real frustration is that there’s just no way to know. “The indiepocalypse is incredibly diﬃcult to have an opinion on because it requires access to everyone’s data. You need to know how everyone’s doing,” Bithell told MCV. “People are very quick to read into small amounts of data and people don’t understand the

data they do have. They don’t understand the gaps. They don’t understand what the numbers they’re looking at mean and are making big assumptions.” Bithell did add, however, that by looking at data that is available and comparing it to his genuine sales numbers of Thomas Was Alone and Volume, a lot of the information doing the rounds is widely inaccurate. He added that his personal sales journey, and that of his admittedly successful friends, suggests things have never been better for digital indie games. “The answer to the problem is that everyone should share their data and then we’d all know,” he conceded. “But that favours people like me because in that scenario I would look like I’m doing better than I am.”

PC GAME MAKERS SHOULD RELISH HIGH STREET INTEREST

‘U

K games stores made a major mistake ditching PC games.’ I’ve heard that said a few times, typically by smart PC developers who have made their fortune selling fun, affordable indie games on Steam. The numbers back up their assertion. Depending on which data supplier you believe, between £550m and £730m was spent on PC games in the UK last year (SuperData, IHS and GfK figures). The boxed sector accounted for barely £20m of that. Yet PC games have never sat well with the High Street. It’s a confusing market, beset by piracy and with DRM measures that prevent trading-in. Steam’s success may have been at the expense of GAME, but if it were not for Valve’s platform, then the PC market frankly wouldn’t have flourished in the way that it has. Those multi-million indie hits may never have even been made if the business still relied on boxes on shelves. PC hardware, however, is a different matter. If anything the High Street has been slow to react to the growth of PC, especially as it continues to show remarkable resilience in the face of a resurgent console sector. This is a high margin business, with some consumers that are not averse to dropping £100 on a mouse or £300 on a headset (not to mention £500 on an Oculus Rift).

People are too quick to draw conclusions from partial data, Bithell argues

SPONSORED BY

PRE-ORDER TOP 10

TOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION + BETA (PS4)

Tom Clancy’s The Division + Beta (XO)

Final Fantasy Explorer (3DS)

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 (PS4)

Bandai Namco

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Day One Edition (PS4)

Bandai Namco

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD + Amiibo + Soundtrack (Wii U)

LEGO Marvel Avengers + Thunderbolts Character Pack (PS4)

Gravity Rush HD Remastered (PS4)

LEGO Marvel Avengers + Thunderbolts Character Pack (XO)

Street Fighter V (PS4)

www.mcvuk.com

UBISOFT

Ubisoft Square Enix

Nintendo Warner Bros Sony Warner Bros Capcom

PC gaming is a high margin business – there’s a real opportunity for retail and PC developers. It is a tricky business to be involved with. Staﬀ will need to be able to tell the diﬀerence between an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti and an AMD Radeon R9 380. And PC gamers are, typically, price savvy customers, and they won’t tolerate ludicrously high prices. But there’s a real opportunity here, and not just for the shops, but for the PC game makers as well. Valve has made it a mission to try and increase the number of core PC gamers (particularly those on Steam). Its recent, belated attempts to take PC gaming into the living room – via the likes of Steam Machines and the Steam Controller – were designed to make PC gaming at least appear more accessible to people who prefer to game on a PlayStation or Xbox. If this remains the aim, then getting PC hardware into more High Street stores – where consumers have someone to talk to (and complain to) – should be viewed as another means of bringing a wider, perhaps more sceptical audience, into the world of PC gaming. cdring@nbmedia.com

January 29th 2016

PC GAMING SPECIAL CREATIVE ASSEMBLY

War and PC Creative Assembly is one of the UK’s top PC developers. It’s behind the smash Total War strategy franchise, and has been trusted with huge IPs such as Alien, Halo and Warhammer. Alex Calvin catches up with brand director Rob Bartholomew to get his thoughts on the state of the PC market

ega. The name still conjures images of Sonic speeding across a CRT screen with the plastic black Megadrive sitting besides it. But that Sega hasn’t existed for a long time. Today, far from a console giant, Sega is best known for its growing PC presence, with the likes of Sports Interactive (Football Manager), Relic (Company of Heroes) and Creative Assembly. That last studio is a fast growing UK gaming powerhouse. It is best known for the Total War PC strategy series, but it is also behind hit console game Alien Isolation and the upcoming Halo Wars 2 for Windows 10 and Xbox One. So who better, we thought, than to discuss what the future of PC gaming might look like? And our first port of call was this week’s MCV cover story. Physical PC games are declining at a rapid pace. Creative Assembly itself announced that after one week, 81 per cent of sales of its 2015 PC hit Total War: Atillia, was made digitally. But the firm’s brand director Rob Bartholomew does not believe the bell is tolling for boxed PC games. Not yet. “There’s absolutely still a market for physical PC games,” he says. “That might not be as true these days in the UK and the High Street has taken a hammering. And the stores that are left are less inclined to hold PC back catalogue and cover every brand new PC game. It helps that we are a big name in the PC space – we have a brand that carries weight at retail.” DIGITAL DOMINANCE Of course, digital is the home for PC games – primarily thanks to Steam. But with so many games hitting the

January 29th 2016

notice, but there are definitely some sectors where the idea of having a brand and having someone do your marketing or community strategy is somehow dirty. The original purpose of marketing is to communicate what is great about your game. There are certain avenues in marketing, PR and community management that indie developers in particular might take for granted or ignore.”

Creative Assembly’s Bartholomew warns that the PC space can change in a heartbeat

outlet every day, it’s not an easy place to get recognised. “Being in charge of a triple-A brand, we get a lot of support and we have the effort to put behind that,” Bartholomew says. “If I was an indie developer, then it would be a worry because there is an almost unfiltered approach to what’s available out there. “Social media plays a big part in helping spread news about games. Some devs are better at leveraging those channels than others. “Something that a lot of indie devs ignore at their peril is the dirty word of ‘marketing’. It’s one thing to have a great game, and that can organically grow with the right people taking

If I was an indie developer, the sheer number of games launching on Steam would be a worry. Robert Bartholomew, Creative Assembly

BLOWING OFF SOME STEAM Steam is not the only digital PC retailer, but it is by far the biggest force in that sector. An overlydominant player is a dangerous thing in any industry. It could stifle competition and hurt innovation But Bartholomew isn’t worried that will happen with Steam. “It’s amazing to see Steam continually go from strength-tostrength,” he says. “It’s really interesting to be working with them when they’re looking at new hardware solutions like Steam Machines or Steam OS or VR. It’s fantastic to see them not just sit back and let that environment stagnate. It’s great that they go out and inform the next stage of PC gaming as they undoubtedly have with Steam. “There are absolutely questions as to how ironclad Steam’s grip is on the industry, but if we have shown one thing with the ascent of Steam, it’s that things can change relatively quickly. No-one knows that better than Valve.” Valve’s ‘hardware solutions’ include the Steam Machines, which finally launched last year. These are part of the firm’s attempt to bring PC gaming to the living room. “PC gaming coming to the living room is important,” Bartholomew says.

www.mcvuk.com

CREATIVE ASSEMBLY PC GAMING SPECIAL

“It’s a great set-up if you’ve got the right game for that environment. It’s something we’re really interested in. Playing Total War on a big screen when sat on a sofa is a bit tricky, and we’ve been skeptical. It’s something we’ve been investigating quite closely. We are very much keyboard and mouse-based and we have a complex UI compared to a lot of other games. But our designers are really excited by the possibilities of the Steam Controller, and certainly seeing some of our battles on a big screen in your front room is quite something. “The promise is tantalising. We’ve released a configuration for the Steam Controller. It works, but your mileage may vary depending on the combination of your TV screen, how far you are away from it and your hardware set-up. But it’s not hard to imagine a lot of users finding a place for that.” VIRTUALLY REAL One of the hottest topics in the PC games industry at the moment is VR, which is coming to market after a long wait. “We’ve all been in the industry long enough to have seen crazes come around and go; some of those have been successes; others have been flashes in the pan,” Bartholomew explains. “I want to believe in VR, and I would love to see some long legs on it. But I’d also like to see it learn its place in gaming as an interesting platform. “The PC has got to be the big driver in that. PC is always a driver of good new hardware. There’s always a space for console, and it’s a very attractive magic bullet to get VR accepted in front of a TV in a family sitting room. “PC gaming is where the enthusiasts and the install base lives. Given the benefit that indie devs and home brewers have brought to the PC space, they are going to embrace VR in a big way and a lot of content can be generated in that manner. “That could drive a real underground movement that builds a more profitable and commercial space for larger operations to be successful in.”

www.mcvuk.com

TOTAL WARHAMMER CREATIVE ASSEMBLY’S Total War series turned 15 last year. And it was a pretty busy period for the studio as it revealed that it was working with Games Workshop on Total War: Warhammer. Not only is this the first time that there’s been a licensed entry in the Total War series, but it’s also the first fantasy effort in the franchise. The title was also the product of nearly a decade of conversations between Creative Assembly and Games Workshop.

“We’ve probably seen the most rapid period of growth for the brand in terms of the number of players that are on our games, the number of projects we have on the go as well as the number of directions we are going in. We’ve also moved into free-to-play gaming with our mobile title Kingdoms, and our free-to-play PC title Arena as well,” brand director Rob Bartholomew explains. “We’ve learned a huge amount in the last 12 months, masses

of information has been gained about the free-to-play and mobile markets He continues: “Games Workshop is a fantastic partner. It understands its IP amazingly well. We both come from a very similar background – games makers based in the UK having been around for 20-plus years. It also helps that a lot of the guys from the team have grown up and are still playing Warhammer table top as well.”

PC gaming is where the enthusiasts live. They are going to embrace VR in a big way and generate a lot of content. Robert Bartholomew, Creative Assembly

The next entry in the Total War series is based on the Warhammer licence

January 29th 2016

CHEAT SHEET

UP & DOWN

Market Data Budget-priced new releases and discounting boosted games sales last week

GTA V SALES fell 21 per cent last week as the title slips one place to No.3

£15m

£30m

£7.5m

£11.1m 407,712 units

Week Ending January 9th

£7.8m 268,714 units

Week Ending January 16th

£7.5m 273,848 units

Week Ending January 23rd

BETHESDA titles Dishonored: Deﬁnitive Edition and The Evil Within rise thanks to price promotions

CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK THIS WEEK: SEBASTIEN LOEB RALLY EVO

[INFO] FORMATS: PS4, XO, PC RELEASED: January 29th PUBLISHER: PQube DISTRIBUTOR: CentreSoft CONTACT: 01216 253 388

January 29th 2016

PQUBE’S marketing campaign for Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo has been running since October, when the title was initially set for launch. The publisher began with a social media and YouTube push alongside key PR announcements. PQube has been targeting the racing audience, and booked a TV ad campaign alongside the Dakar Rally competition in South America during the ﬁrst week of January. These ads were broadcasted on Eurosport. In addition, the ﬁrm has booked a month-long ad campaign on the Top Gear website, as well as other leading motorsport and automotive websites. These ads will continue beyond launch. The publisher has also been going after gamers, with print and online advertising appearing alongside Future and Imagine’s games brands. “Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo is the biggest, most authentic rally game made to date – it has a staggering

PQube has been pushing Sebastien Loeb since last October

amount of content,” PQube’s head of marketing Geraint Evans said. “As ever, [developer] Milestone has gone to great lengths to ensure that it’s as accurate a simulation as possible with the environments delivered 1:1 with reality. It’s been a long time since gamers have had a full rally

simulation to enjoy, with perhaps fan favourite Richard Burns Rally being the last serious representation of the sport. Sebastien Loeb looks to ﬁll that gap with a true new generation oﬀering that can deliver the kind of authenticity, intensity and longevity that fans demand.”

www.mcvuk.com

CHEAT SHEET

PRESENTS

5 SECOND FACTS

THE NEWS IN 140 CHARACTERS The Tweets you might have missed in the last seven days

Your shortcut to sounding clever in the pub, we take you around the industry in under 30 seconds

JONATHAN BLOW’S THE WITNESS COSTS £30

The Witness – the second solo title from indie developer Jonathan Blow (he who made Braid) – has a premium price point of £30. The title launched for both PlayStation 4 and PC earlier this week.

Developer interest in making games for VR has doubled in the last year, according to a survey conducted by GDC

$1m @brettclaxton Woah. The Witness is a £30 game. That is deﬁnitely higher than I imagined.

@djbteamsters Suggesting a price is high because it’s made by an independent studio is ridiculous.

Brett Claxton, PushStartPlay.com, Wednesday, January 20th

TinyBuild has revealed that its new PC and iOS title Punch Club has smashed $1m in sales following its success on Twitch

$4m

Debbie Bestwick, Team17, Tuesday, January 19th

XBOX REVEALS MINECRAFT: EDUCATION EDITION

MIGHT NO.9 IS DELAYED FOR A THIRD TIME

Microsoft has announced that it had acquired MinecraftEdu, the developer of a special educationfocused version of Minecraft. Xbox also revealed a dedicated Minecraft: Education Edition was in the works.

Kickstarter title Mighty No.9 has suﬀered a third delay. According to developer Comcept, the game will miss its February 9th release date due to network problems.

@ian_livingstone If Minecraft doesn’t inspire children to want to become architects, nothing will.

Blizzard is investing $4m in a Heroes of the Storm eSports tournament

$40m Korean games giant Smilegate has invested $40m in Starbreeze for it to develop a new CrossFire game

@scully1888 Starting to think Mighty No 9 was part funded by Wimbledon Rail Station because hardly anything ever arrived on time there.

Ian Livingstone, Wednesday, January 20th

Chris Scullion, freelance journalist, Monday, January 25th

@Futterish This Minecraft Education stuﬀ sounds like fun. But I can’t seem to ﬁnd anything that points to outcomes. Including test scores/ performance? Michael Futter, Game Informer Tuesday, January 19th

@V_Ben Mighty No. 9 delayed again? At this point, they shouldn’t specify a new release date until the game is 100 per cent done. Ben Jones, OM Monday, January 25th

$7.5m Mobile giant Glu has invested $7.5m in QuizUp developer Plain Vanilla Wii U Mario Fight Pad - PDP Design and manufacture the Oﬃcially Licenced Nintendo GameCube Styled Classic Pro Controller for Wii U europesales@pdp.com

www.pdp.com

GAMESAID THIS WEEK .................................................... PLAY YOUR PART BECOME A MEMBER AMBASSADOR TRUSTEE WWW.GAMESAID.ORG

www.mcvuk.com

JAM JAR AT GLOBAL GAME JAM

GAMESAID TENNER

STAND UP FOR GAMESAID

..................

Global Game Jam is taking place between January 29th and 31st. Participants can purchase sweets, and pay what they want. All proceeds go to GamesAid. If you are interested in donating, you can do so here: www.justgiving. com/JamJar2016

On March 3rd the MCV Awards will be taking place at the new venue of Bankside Hilton in London. As is tradition, GamesAid will be asking for donations of £10 from attendees. Last year’s show saw £3,088 raised for GamesAid.

Games industry comedy night Stand Up For GamesAid returns to London’s Comedy Store on May 9th. The event will be hosted by GamesAid patron and comedian Imran Yusuf. Tickets are available on thecomedystore.co.uk and cost £15

January 29th 2016

MARKET MOVES

APPOINTMENTS

Electronic Arts UK appoints new head of media Clarke and Bettinson join EA O Dinglt hires Vice Media’s digital director O New co-president for Activision Blizzard Studios EA | The Electronic Arts UK team has welcomed two new members to its fold. Former eBay senior media strategist RICHARD BETTINSON has joined the company as head of media and innovation. Bettinson said: “I’m looking forward to working with the team to develop our media strategy and to deliver creative campaigns that truly engage our players.” In the meantime, ROB CLARKE has joined EA as a product marketing manager, after more than three years as a marketing manager at Curve Digital.

January 29th 2016

excited to be starting a new challenge within Dingit.tv and look forward to working with the team to further develop their commercial and content strategy. It’s a passionate business with a truly game changing product that challenges all of the current assumptions about how gaming and eSports are streamed and monetised.” Dingit CEO Mark Hain added: “Simon’s wealth of experience and industry knowledge has already made him a key addition to the Dingit family. It is very fortunate that we were able to find someone of Simon’s calibre to fulfill this role.”

“After working with some of the most well-known titles in the indie sector for the past three years, I’m excited to now be making the transition to the marketing team at EA to work on some of the biggest and best game franchises in the world,” enthused Clarke. DINGIT.TV | Livestreaming and broadcast platform Dingit.tv has hired SIMON VOYSEY as its new chief revenue officer. Voysey used to work as a digital director at Vice Media, after spending over 10 years working for some big names in media, such as Channel 4. Voysey commented: “I am

ACTIVISION BLIZZARD | Producer STACEY SHER has been appointed as Activision Blizzard Studios’ new co-president, along with former Disney executive NICK VAN DYK. “As its large and loyal fanbase can attest, Activision Blizzard has created franchises that mean so much to audiences over the course of 35 years,” said Sher. “I’m excited about our mandate to create filmed entertainment based on Activision Blizzard games that is as great as the games themselves.” Sher is a two-time Academy Award-nominated producer, for Django Unchained and Erin Brockovich.

www.mcvuk.com

WEEKLY SALES CHARTS

WEEKLY CHARTS IN this week’s charts, Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III remains No.1, for the seventh consecutive week, in spite of a slight four per cent decrease in sales. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V has endured a 21 per cent drop-off in sales, allowing FIFA 16 to climb the ladder and become No.2, thanks to a four per cent increase. In the meantime, Bethesda’s Dishonored Definitive Edition has returned to the Top Ten: the title benefited from price cuts and had a 160 per cent increase in sales. The Evil Within also had a 102 per cent jump in sales and has risen to the 16th place. Two new releases have entered the Top 10. Capcom’s Resident Evil

Origins Collection debuts at No.6. The title contains both Resident Evil 0 HD and the updated version of Resident Evil HD, which hit the shelves last year. Life is Strange also enters the charts, as No.7, after a very successful digital release last year. Meanwhile, on Steam, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is unsurprisingly leading the weekly charts after already being No.1 as a pre-order title last week. And Metal Gear Solid V by Konami returns to the Steam Top Ten. The online mode for the game was released last week, which boosted sales. In the App Store charts, Supercell’s Clash of Clans still dominates the Grossing Top Ten charts on both iPad and iPhone.

GLOBAL STEAM CHARTS (UNITS)

01 TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

LW 03 RE RE 04 05 08 RE NEW 07

DRAGON’S DOGMA: DARK ARISEN DEVELOPER: CAPCOM PUBLISHER: CAPCOM

TITLE Counter-Strike: Global Oﬀensive Rocket League Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Tom Clancy’s The Division Grand Theft Auto V XCOM 2 Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Scrap Mechanic Ark: Survival Evolved

PUBLISHER Valve Psyonix Konami Ubisoft Rockstar 2K Games Gearbox Axolot Games Studio Wildcard

TOP 40 UK PHYSICAL RETAIL 02

TW 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

LW 01 03 02 05 04 NEW NEW 06 08 32 09 10 13 12 22 29 RE 19 11 18 37 20 14 27 21 15 07 17 31 23 RE 26 RE 16 28 24 39 36 35 RE

Title Call of Duty: Black Ops III FIFA 16 Grand Theft Auto V Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege Star Wars Battlefront Resident Evil Origins Collection Life is Strange Just Cause 3 Fallout 4 Dishonored Definitive Edition LEGO Jurassic World Minecraft: Xbox Edition Minecraft: Story Mode Disney Infinity 3.0 Destiny: The Taken King The Evil Within Terraria Need for Speed Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Forza Motorsport 6 The Sims 4 Guitar Hero Live Just Dance 2016 Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Halo 5: Guardians Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection WWE 2K16 The Elder Scrolls Online Rise of the Tomb Raider LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Football Manager 2016 The Last of Us Remastered Disney Infinity 2.0 Batman: Arkham Knight The Crew Assassin’s Creed Syndicate LEGO Dimensions Dying Light Until Dawn LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Source: Steam, Period: January 18th to 24th January 29th 2016

Format Publisher PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Activision Blizzard PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC EA PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Rockstar PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft PS4, XO, PC EA PS4, XO, PC Capcom PS4, XO, PC Square Enix PS4, XO, PC Square Enix PS4, XO, PC Bethesda PS4, XO Bethesda PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC Warner Bros XO, 360 Microsoft PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Telltale Games/Avanquest PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360 Disney PS4, XO, PS3, 360 Activision Blizzard PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Bethesda PS4, XO, PS3, 360, Vita, PC 505 Games PS4, XO EA PS4, PS3, Vita Sony XO Microsoft PC EA PS4, XO, PS3, 360 Activision Blizzard PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360 Ubisoft PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Konami XO Microsoft PS4 Sony PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC 2K Games PS4, XO, PC Bethesda XO Square Enix PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC Warner Bros PC Sega PS4 Sony PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC Disney PS4, XO Warner Bros PS4, XO, 360, PC Ubisoft PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360 Warner Bros PS4, XO, PC Warner Bros PS4 Sony PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, PC Warner Bros

Source: UKIE/GfK Chart-Track, Period: Week ending January 23rd 12

www.mcvuk.com

WEEKLY SALES CHARTS

UK IPAD PAID

01 TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

LW 02 RE 05 07 NEW NEW NEW 09 11

UK IPHONE PAID

(UNITS)

MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION DEVELOPER: MOJANG

Title Minecraft: Story Mode Draw a Stickman: Epic 2 Geometry Dash Escapists - Back to Prison Countdown - The Oﬃcial TV Show App Pegga Pig: Seasons- Autumn and Winter Fear For Sale: The 13 Keys HD The Sims 3 Terraria

TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Developer Telltale Hitcents.com RobTop Games Noah Mason Barnstorm Games Entertainment One Big Fish Games EA 505 Games

LW 01 04 05 03 06 07 NEW 10 20

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th

(UNITS)

MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION DEVELOPER: MOJANG

Title Heads Up! Football Manager Mobile 2016 Geometry Dash Monopoly Game Storage Hunters UK: The Game Plague Inc Countdown - The Oﬃcial TV Show App Bloons TD 5 Backﬂip Madness

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th

UK IPAD GROSSING (REVENUE)

UK IPHONE GROSSING (REVENUE)

TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

LW 00 04 03 07 06 RE 05 08 RE

CLASH OF CLANS DEVELOPER: SUPERCELL

Title Candy Crush Saga Candy Crush Soda Saga Game of War- Fire Age Boom Beach Hay Day Candy Crush Jelly Saga The Sims FreePlay Gummy Drop FIFA 15 Ultimate Team New Season

TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Developer King.com King.com Machine Zone Supercell Supercell King.com EA Big Fish Games EA

LW 02 03 04 05 06 07 RE 09 08

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th

CLASH OF CLANS DEVELOPER: SUPERCELL

Title Candy Crush Saga Game of War – Fire Age Candy Crush Soda Saga Boom Beach 8 Ball Pool Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes Candy Crush Jelly Saga Episode Mobile Strike

UK IPHONE FREE (UNITS)

LW NEW 08 01 RE 03 NEW NEW 07 04

CANDY CRUSH JELLY SAGA DEVELOPER: KING.COM

Title World Chef Color Switch Piano Tiles 2 Swing Geometry Dash Meltdown Oﬀroad 4x4 Truck Trials Parking Simulator LEGO Nexo Knights: Merlok 2.0 Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes Traﬃc Rider

TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Developer Social Point Samuel Ratumaitavuki Cheetah Technology Ketchapp RobTop Games Aidem Media LEGO Systems EA Soner Kara

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th www.mcvuk.com

Developer King.com Machine Zone King.com Supercell Miniclip.com EA King.com Episode Interactive Epic War

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th

UK IPAD FREE (UNITS)

TW 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Developer Warner Bros Sega RobTop Games EA UKTV Interactive Ndemic Creations Barnstorm Games Ninja Kiwi Gamesoul Studio

LW 02 07 01 04 RE NEW 08 06 03

COLOR SWITCH DEVELOPER: SAMUEL RATUMAITAVUKI

Title Swing Candy Crush Jelly Saga Piano Tiles 2 Pixduel Racing in Car World Chef Twist Geometry Dash Meltdown Traﬃc Rider

Developer Ketchapp Soner Kara Cheetah Technology FEO Media Caner Kara Social Point Ketchapp RobTop Games Soner Kara

Source: UKIE/Reﬂ ection, Period: January 11th to January 17th 13

January 29th 2016

PC GAMING SPECIAL SURVIVAL GUIDE

Surviving in the Wild West of PC gaming The PC gaming sector is vast, unpredictable and largely unknowable in its entirety. But MCV has spoken to some of the leading names in the sector to find out some of the key things you need to know about launching a game on PC

here are undeniable advantages to releasing games on PC. Unlike launching a brand new title on console, there is no cumbersome certification process to get your new PC game out there. Much like the App Store and Google Play, there is a very low barrier to entry. And digital PC retailer Steam alone has 125 million active users, representing a sizeable potential audience. “Not having to get ‘approval’ from a platform holder is by far the biggest appeal of PC,” says Cliff Harris, the boss of Big Pharma publisher Positech. “There is no certification needed. Plus I’m a PC gamer myself, so I know that market, and that crowd. Never publish games that you wouldn’t play yourself.” 505 Games’ global marketing boss Tim Woodley adds: “Aside from not having to go through first party submissions with a PC release, releasing a game on PC vs. connected console are quite similar. It is fundamentally a question of discoverability and

January 29th 2016

share of voice regardless of platform.” FACE IN THE CROWD PC as a platform is hugely popular with developers. Data site Steam Spy claims that 3,000 titles were released on Steam during 2015 – roughly 57 a week. This has made discoverability the biggest challenge in the PC market. “Discoverability has always been an issue for developers and publishers who do not have millions of dollars in marketing budgets,” says Susana Meza, COO of Cities: Skylines firm Paradox Interactive. “You should identify early on who you are developing for and focus your main effort/resources on being visible to them. ‘Everyone’ is a hard target to meet for most companies. It’s better to have high visibility on a smaller channel that consists of your primary target, than next to no visibility on a large channel consisting of ‘all gamers’. “In addition, a great release does not sell itself – though there

Think about digital stores the same way you do about physical ones, and about how consumers make purchasing choices. Tim Woodley, 505 Games

are always exceptions. You will need to budget something for PR and marketing. Have a limited budget? See it as an opportunity - you have no choice but to cut out everything that is not essential and you will be forced to be creative. What will give you the biggest bang for your buck while reaching the maximum number of potential players? “And you need to think globally, not locally. These days, in particular with digital distribution, it’s completely irrelevant where you are based, even if you only release your game in English.” Woodley adds: “On each platform there are different levers and pullies you can use to increase your chances of being discovered, and you really have to get under the skin of how people browse on these platforms. We tend to think about the digital stores in the same way we view physical stores and imagine how the customers make their purchase choices. Have them come to the store knowing what they want to buy, in which case search optimisation of our metadata is critical. Are they just

www.mcvuk.com

SURVIVAL GUIDE PC GAMING SPECIAL

RACE TO THE BOTTOM ONE of the knock-on effects of the sheer congestion on Steam is developers competing heavily on price. An attractive price point might set you apart from the crowd and may also persuade many gamers – who may otherwise wait until Steam’s infamous sales – to pick up your title. But PC price wars can be a dangerous game to play. “When you’re struggling to get visibility for your new release, sometimes it can be tempting to aggressively drop the price to drive your volumes, which drives your chart position, which earns you more organic eyeballs,” 505 Games’ head of marketing and global brand Tim Woodley explains. “But a price promotion, especially one early in the

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN ONE of the big advantages of releasing games on PC is creative freedom. But that also means you will have no support from a first-party format holder. As 505 Games’ head of global marketing Tim Woodley says: “When releasing a game on PC, publishers/developers are 100 per cent responsible for the game being ready to launch.” And PC – unlike console – is a complex platform, with a multitude of different specs.

www.mcvuk.com

“If a game crashes, you assume the dev is rubbish, but its likely just some arcane combination of factors that we were unable to test,” Positech boss Cliff Harris explains. “PC gamers can be a tough crowd. They want a bug-free game on randomly assembled hardware that runs at 60 frames per second, yet which they will only pay $9.99 max. That’s a tough set of criteria.”

lifecycle of a game, is really just an admission that we have been unable to persuade enough people of the value of our game at the stated RRP through the course of the campaign.” But Woodley says this issue is not entirely unique to Steam. “Right now, physical retailers are spending January pricepromoting titles whose publishers failed to convince enough people to buy their products at the given price point prior to Christmas,” he says. “The only difference being that, in the physical space, sooner or later, your RRP starts butting up against cost of goods, below which you start losing money on every unit sold. This stops the ‘race to the bottom’. On Steam, there is no such upward pressure.”

January 29th 2016

PC GAMING SPECIAL SURVIVAL GUIDE

Some of 2016’s biggest PC games. (from left to right): Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Witness, XCOM 2, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles, American Truck Simulator, Overwatch, Total War: Warhammer and Adr1ft

browsing, in which case how do they browse? Do they go straight for best-sellers, do they browse by genre, by top-rated? Are our digital store assets good enough to catch their attention – in the same way that our packshots and in-store merchandising do in the physical space?” And Bandai Namco PR and marketing director Lee Kirton adds that continued support for a title beyond launch is a surefire route to success. “Working closely with our digital distribution partners, evaluating our data, consumer purchasing habits, working on our pricing and discount deals and generally being solid when it comes to our customer service and community is incredibly important,” he explains. “For some titles we release boxed

January 29th 2016

versions such as Collector Editions for added value.” NCSoft’s head of Europe John Davis adds: “Don’t rush, listen to your community, don’t be afraid of criticism and make sure you think beyond launch, not just have a plan up until launch. Think about the story you want to tell and the time you have to tell it. Talk to press and players and partners and do whatever you can to get them excited about your project.” NICHE AND EASY One trick is to find your specific niche and stick to it. Excalibur has made a name for itself in the simulation space on PC. “All publishers are part of the ‘entertainment’ market and therefore we all have to compete against other entertainment media,” says Contact Sales’ Robert Stallibrass.

Coming up with an original idea is very practical. The vast majority of games do not deserve to be noticed. Cliff Harris, Positech

“In the PC market Excalibur needs to continue to publish quality products, in specific niches that will appeal to as wide a market as possible. “It would be foolhardy for us to compete against the likes of EA, Activision, Bethesda and Warner, with ‘me too’ style products.” Or, you could just make and release an entirely unique game. “Developers could make something new and interesting that you are passionate about,” Positech’s Harris says. “Or have a spare quarter of a million dollars to bombard everyone with advertising, but in most cases coming up with an original idea is a lot more practical. The vast majority of games do not deserve to be noticed, because they are so unremarkable. “Unless there is something that makes people sit up and say ‘oh really’?”

www.mcvuk.com

SURVIVAL GUIDE PC GAMING SPECIAL

WHAT ABOUT THE HIGH STREET? PC gaming is primarily a digital business, with many brick and mortar stores not interested in selling boxed PC titles. “Retail has all but given up on physical sales of PC games for all but the top titles and IP,” 505 Games marketing boss Tim Woodley says. “The change in dynamic though has been interesting to watch. It now takes success on digital PC for bricks-andmortar retail to show interest in an unproven title like Ark: Survival Evolved or Rocket League. They use Steam as the filter where the cream rises to the top. In this way, Steam and the other digital PC portals – and to a lesser extent, connected console stores – are the petri dishes of new and exciting products and IP for our industry, where innovation and creativity can grow, and where the strongest will thrive.”

Contact Sales’ Robert Stallibrass adds: “I refute that the PC space is largely digital. We continue to get excellent boxed orders and pre-orders from our trade customers. Digital is important but currently is not the only road to fame and riches.” However, for other smaller developers, physical retail holds no appeal. “I have done retail before, but retail publishers were notorious for screwing people over,” Positech’s Cliff Harris says. “I want to spend my time developing, not arguing with lawyers and auditing companies to check they haven’t lied to me. We are about to do a very small retail deal for one country with a trusted publisher, but to be honest most retail contracts are so poor, its not worth the admin time to even read them.”

MAKING PRE-ORDERS WORK DIGITALLY ONE of the core aspects of any triple-A marketing campaign these days is driving pre-orders. A lot of the time, publishers push pre-release sales with special editions, which include art books, statues, soundtracks and other merchandise (plus the game itself). And this is a tactic digital publishers are now using, too. “The average PC gamer is still after value-added content for a title that they’re particularly excited about although, today, we’ve found that they tend to prefer that content to be digital and for it to add to their actual gaming experience,” 505 Games marketing boss Tim Woodley says.

“Even in the bricks-andmortar space there is greater onus being placed on digital content to drive pre-orders.” NCSoft’s European boss John Davis adds: “The digital counterpart to physical items have been growing for years and has been an important driver of pre-orders for us. “Different sets of digital items like collectible costumes and convenience items have since long replaced special editions with statues, maps, art books and so on. Players want something that can be seen by other players and give them status in game, rather than something that sits on a shelf at home.”

(Left to right): NCSoft’s Davis, Bandai Namco’s Kirton, Positech’s Harris, Contact Sales’ Stallibrass, Paradox’s Meza and 505 Games’ Woodley

www.mcvuk.com

January 29th 2016

UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LARGEST GAMING CHAIR SUPPLIER

Gaming Chairs â&#x20AC;¢ components â&#x20AC;¢ Peripherals e

VDOHV#FDVHNLQJ FR XN

SALES DATA PC GAMING SPECIAL

Steam ahead MCV teamed up with data specialists Steam Spy to take a closer look at the UK games market in 2015

n April last year, Russian games veteran Sergey Galvonkin set up Steam Spy. Though not completely accurate, it analyses profile data to better understand how games are selling – and when – on PC download service Steam. Steam Spy has provided MCV with UK figures for between April and the end of 2015 so we can have a closer look at how the big games are selling. As you can see (bottom), GTA V was unsurprisingly the biggest game of 2015. followed closely by Fallout 4. Though new titles such as Rocket League, ARK, Cities: Skylines (which launched before this data period) and Football Manager 2016 are all present in the charts, it’s interesting to see the long-tail performance of titles, such as Garry’s Mod (now ten years old), Skyrim and Counter-Strike. The regular Steam sales clearly benefit older titles, and the impact of game sales can be seen in the playtime graph (top right). The peaks are centred around big launches (you can clearly see GTA V – April 14th – and Fallout 4 – November 10th), seasonal events (the biggest spike runs over New Year). And, of course, the sales. Including the recent Steam Winter Sale. Another interesting chart are the games that overperform in the UK versus other territories. Not only are we a country of Football Manager lovers, but it turns out simulation titles over index in the UK versus other markets, too.

Top games in United Kingdom by playtime day by day

Playtime transition between Football Manager 15 and 16

HANG ON, IS STEAM SPY RELIABLE? NO, not exactly. Steam Spy extrapolates data from a number of user profiles and thus isn’t 100 per cent correct. In order to make this as accurate as possible, Steam Spy has to gather millions of points of data every day, and that’s why it’s often wrong. Although it gives us a good idea of how things are performing, and until an agreement can be reached on sharing digital data, it’s the best we have. For now.

STEAM SPY TOP 10 (APRIL - DECEMBER 2015)

STEAMSPY UK OVERPERFORMERS

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

(These are games that have the most share of players from the UK compared to the average. It’s not a Top Ten of popular games).

Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar) Fallout 4 (Bethesda) Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Valve) Rocket League (Psyonix) ARK: Survival Evolved (Studio Wildcard) Football Manager 2016 (Sega) Cities: Skylines (Paradox) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda) Elite Dangerous (Frontier Developments) Garry’s Mod (Facepunch)

www.mcvuk.com

242,778 239,970 193,326 158,550 151,445 128,140 83,527 81,964 80,087 75,370

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 19

Football Manager 2016 (Sega) Football Manager 2015 (Sega) Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club) Elite Dangerous Horizons (Frontier Developments) Train Simulator 2015 (Dovetail Games) Elite Dangerous (Frontier Developments)

32.57% 30.72% 18.64% 15.02% 14.08% 13.41%

January 29th 2016

XXXGAMING PC XXX SPECIAL VR BUILDING GUIDE

Building your dream VR PC The Oculus Rift is just weeks away, but have you checked that your PC isn’t harking back to the dark ages? Ben Parfitt takes a look at how to get your system VR ready

o you’ve decided to buy yourself an Oculus Rift. And sold off some of your internal organs to fund the £500 asking price. Now all you need is a beefy enough PC to run the thing! And around £900 to put it all together. PC vendors are already scrambling to compile ‘VR Ready’ bundles, but as anyone who’s into their PC gaming will tell you, a self-build is most definitely the way to go. Not only do you get loads more for your money, but you also learn a brand new skill, and your system will be free from the ridiculous bloatware that nearly all pre-packed systems are burdened down with.

RAM: Just the 8GB needed here. You can’t go wrong with £40’s worth of Corsair DDR3 Vengeance. Newer, faster memory types are expected to be big in 2016, but don’t let that hold you back.

Anyone who’s into PC gaming will tell you a self-build is best.

STORAGE: This is where we are going to push the boat out. Yes, a 1TB old-school HDD would do the job just fine, but why not be a little forwardthinking by dropping £65 on a Samsung 850 EVO SDD for your Windows installation and another £55 on a 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD for your documents and programs? It will feel like the future if you’re coming from an HDD-only setup. So, so quick.

CPU: We’re going recommended spec here – the £160 Intel Core i5-4590. Saying that, if you have the cash it’s well worth stepping up to the overclockable i5-4690K for £190, which will allow you to run your system at a faster than advertised speed with no penalty, bar an hour or so of your time to set it up. If you do go the 4690K route, plump down £30 on a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU air cooler to help keep your chip cool.

GPU: There’s a clear choice here – the wonderful Nvidia GeForce GTX 970. Even if Oculus hadn’t named it as the entry-level card, it would still be the card we’d tell you to get. The 980 and 980Ti might be quicker, but in bang-for-buck terms nothing beats it. The MSI 4GB Twin Frozr V is a great choice at £270.

January 29th 2016

MOTHERBOARD: It’s possibly a bit of overkill, but scrimping on your mobo always feels like a mistake. Splash out a little on something decent like a MSI Z97-Gaming 5 at £120, especially if you’re going to overclock. After all, the motherboard is the beating heart of your machine. A good mobo means a good foundation. Plus, a decent board means an accessible, userfriendly BIOS too.

CASE: We like a plain case ourselves, but you’re probably the sort who wants a bit of bling, right? The £80 Fractal Design Define Windowed R4 will let you show off your flash new rig just nicely.

PSU: Power! Unlimited power! Don’t make the mistake of going too low. EVGA’s 750W 80+ Gold Modular ATX power supply should give you plenty of headroom at £90 and make sure that you not only have the required juice to power your machine’s new, glorious innards, but also that the setup is as pain free as possible.

AND THE REST: All of which comes out at around £850-£950 depending on the prices of the day. Factor in the £500 Oculus Rift and, yes, the revolution will not be cheap. You’re not done yet, either. You’ll need an OS installed on your machine – either Windows 7 or 10 are your best bet. You might want a nice G-Sync monitor to make the most of that wonderful GTX 970, too. The £470 2560x1440 144Hz Dell S2716DG or £530 Asus ROG Swift PG278Q are both fine beasts, although not strictly needed if all your gaming is going to be done through the Oculus headset. Don’t forget a wireless card if you’re not plugging your PC into a router, as well as a keyboard and mouse.

00 20

www.mcvuk.com

OVERCLOCKERS PC GAMING SPECIAL

Over and above One of the UK’s leading retailers of PC gaming hardware is trying to push into the UK High Street via GAME. But with an internet-savvy audience, why bother? Christopher Dring asks marketing and partnership manager Mark Purdy

Why work with GAME? GAME made a serious move into the PC market with the acquisition of Multiplay. Gaming PCs were a key product missing from its portfolio, which existing customers can now buy directly from them. It also means bringing reputable PC gaming to the High Street through GAME’s stores. Historically, specialists retailers – including GAME – largely ignored PC gaming. Why do you think that mistake was made? And what has changed now? A few years ago, PC gaming’s perception blinded companies to believe growth was stunted and consoles would dominate the market. PC gamers, including myself, knew the market wouldn’t disappear. eSports and online

www.mcvuk.com

broadcasting platforms such as Twitch provided a new mainstream way for PC gaming to be explored, adding to its popularity. The price and performance of gaming PCs today also means it doesn’t break the bank to get a gaming PC suitable for all of today’s releases.

WHO IS OVERCLOCKERS?

What are you hoping retailers, like GAME, will start doing in the PC space? The aim is for GAME to bring PC gaming back to the mass market, as currently it’s very limited where you can find gaming PCs. Providing a hands-on experience is important, especially for new customers, and we want a destination for PC gamers and place where they can talk to someone – currently no-one is doing this.

THE UK retailer and system builder is dedicated to PC gamers. Overclockers UK was established in 1999 when it brought to market some of the first Overclocked processors, and has since expanded to become one of the UK’s largest hardware and system providers. In January 2012 it was acquired by PC supplier Caseking.

PC gamers are online-savvy, more so than any other. So why does High Street retail even matter? It’s still important to have a physical presence, despite the huge internet market, because footfall in GAME stores is very high. With a large amount of outlets, GAME brings a new level of accessibility to gaming PCs, with its access to cash customers and the options available around trade-ins. These are things that can’t be found elsewhere. PC gaming can be a complex area, and store staff can be a big help or a hindrance in this area. Is there a need to develop training programmes? Yes, we agree and we’re rolling out a training programme with

January 29th 2016

PC GAMING SPECIAL OVERCLOCKERS

GAME. This is one reason GAME is working with us closely and recognise there is a big training requirement. Store staff will be educated through GAME’s eLearning program. What would you say to those gamers who have always been tempted by PC gaming, but find the prospect of it both daunting and expensive? Gaming PCs are no more daunting than using a console, operating systems are very user friendly and actually offer a wider range of uses. Even though PC gaming has been thought to be very expensive, price and performance is much lower and much more affordable than most people think. It’s a case of education to explain why some gaming PCs are higher priced than others. Today, you can buy a gaming PC that will run side-by-side with a console, and likely to be more powerful than a console, for the same cost. And although systems have a higher investment, the longterm savings from PC game prices, software and other applications is very much worth it. GAME also gives a two per cent reward back to the customers along with the ability to order via finance, making it even more cost effective.

Bringing PC gaming to the High Street: Overclockers’ Steve Ling (left) and GAME’s Iain Johnson (above)

Reports keep painting the picture of a PC market in decline. Have you seen that at all, either in your complete systems or components business? Being in the growth gaming PC niche, we have not noticed the decline. There’s been an attempt to move PC gaming into the living room through things like Steam Machines. Is it working? Is it important? Although the idea is nice, we feel that living room gaming PCs won’t become mainstream. This isn’t to say we won’t keep an eye on the market, but since launching we’ve not effectively noticed any changes in buying or usage.

January 29th 2016

GETTING VIRTUALLY READY ONE big area for Overclockers this year has been in developing VR-ready PC machines. “We’ve demoed VR and love it,” said Mark Purdy, marketing and partnership manager at Overclockers. “Our recommendations with VR will be to ensure you buy enough power to make the experience as smooth as possible. “Nvidia recommend a GTX 970 as minimum for VR, but we heavily recommend Nvidia GTX 980 and above as we feel this will give the best experience. If it needs to be a full VR rig

The aim is for GAME to bring PC gaming back to the mass market.

upgrade, or just components, we cater for both.” He added: “We have reacted quickly, setting up a VR-ready system range featuring Nvidia’s recommended VR specification. We know VR will be huge and we’ll be evolving alongside the products. Not to mention working closely with GAME on their plans in this category also. “I believe that VR will push performance from publishers, ultimately utilising computer hardware as it’s meant to be and pushing it to near full potential.”

Mark Purdy, Overclockers UK

www.mcvuk.com

PC GAMING SPECIAL EDGE CASE GAMES

Closer to the Edge In 2014, James Brooksby’s staff at Edge Case Games were begging him not to launch its debut title Fractured Space into Early Access. Now his team is the happiest he has ever worked with. Alex Calvin finds out more

t’s difficult to find a title that encapsulates the current zeitgeist of the games industry as much as Edge Case’s Fractured Space. The indie studio’s debut release is a 5v5 MOBA-esque space combat title that has been developed in Steam’s Early Access. The game ticks all the modern buzzwords. Yet not everyone at the Guildford studio was confident with the ‘Early Access’ bit. “Before we went on Early Access, some of the team were begging me not to do it. They thought it was going to be terrible – the game was not finished,” CEO James Brooksby says. “But I had a strong inclination that this was the right way to go. We are working with people playing your game to make it better. And now, every member of staff is coming to the work with one thing on their mind – that they have a good game and now they are making it better. That is so different from the way we used to do things. We used to come into work thinking that we had something good but not knowing whether it really was good or not.”

trail: Fractured Space joins new titles like Frontier’s Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen from Cloud Imperium. “Digital distribution has meant that some old genres have come back,” Brooksby explains. “Tank simulators, like space simulators, like train simulators, like hardcore racing sims just vanished around the mid to late ‘90s. When we started Strike Suit Zero, we saw that the world was changing and we went: ‘okay, so space games are a niche, but we think we can do something reminiscent of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Wing Commander or Elite, and we can create that, within a reasonable budget’. We could do this with digital distribution; before we could not.” As well as being a space combat title, Fractured Space is a MOBA. But with its sci-fi aesthetic and space dogfighting combat, it isn’t like the giant MOBAs such as League of Legends and DOTA 2.

The team thought releasing Fractured Space on Early Access was a terrible idea. James Brooksby, Edge Case Games

THE FINAL FRONTIER Edge Case was formed out of Born Ready – the team behind space combat game Strike Suit Zero – which in turn was founded by staff from Kuju’s Double Six who performed an MBO. Its debut game, Fractured Space, is part of the space combat genre, which was made famous in the 1990s via X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Wing Commander. The sector now appears to be on the comeback

January 29th 2016

“The MOBA market is really interesting. Part of it comes back to what a MOBA is,” he explains. “The people doing League and DOTA clones with a different skin have found it really tough because people playing League may only play League. You’ll be lucky to drag them away to a new MOBA. “But the MOBA genre has a long, long way to go and lots of legs. The key with Fractured Space is we always looked at a whole bunch of different games. Is it a copy of League set in space? No, it is not. “We’ve described Fractured Space as a MOBA, because what that does is tell people what the game isn’t. We’re saying it isn’t trying to be Elite or Wing Commander, it’s something different. MOBA is going to be far more broad. If you had said MOBA a few years ago there’s only a few games you’d have thought of. “We – and other studios – are expanding what games can have the MOBA moniker.”

Edge Case’s Fractured Space is a sci-ﬁ combat MOBA title

www.mcvuk.com

FIVE WEEKS TO GO THURSDAY, 3RD MARCH BANKSIDE HILTON, LONDON NOW in their 16th successful year, the MCV Awards are the UK’s only computer and video games awards that recognise games publishing, retail, distribution, marketing, PR, events and media – all parts of this industry we love. Each year these prestigious awards are open to games publishers, retail and distribution, with entries peer-voted and judged by an independent panel of specialists. They are stylishly presented at the ceremony to over 600 of the industry’s leading ﬁgures to celebrate the achievements of the top games industry professionals and teams.

Firmly established as the unrivalled badge of excellence for the games sector, these prestigious awards were launched to raise standards across the industry by showcasing top class performance and innovation. Today, with 23 categories recognising the best in the games business, The MCV Awards remains one of the “must attend” events in the games calendar with the great and good of the market descending on London’s new swanky Hilton Bankside Hotel for a memorable evening.

FOR SPONSORSHIP CALL CONOR TALLON OR LESLEY MCDIARMID ON 020 7354 6000 OR EMAIL CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM / LMCDIARMID@NBMEDIA.COM TABLE AND SEAT BOOKINGS VISIT WWW.MCVAWARDS.COM

EVENT PARTNER

CATEGORY SPONSOR

EVENT PARTNER

TABLE GIFT PARTNER

MARKETPLACE Sponsored by

SHELF LIFE Steven Ireland from Eclipse Home Entertainment explains to MCV why he does not sell PC games at all and discusses his optimism about the year ahead Sky. There are other releases but these are the main ones for me.

How has your business been lately? Not bad at all. Consoles are selling well, and there were some good new releases over Christmas which have done very well, like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, Star Wars Battlefront and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. They sold predominantly on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Both perform quite equally to be fair, we actually do very well with both.

What challenges are you facing at the moment? None particularly. I’m basically just looking forward to some good new releases over this New Year. I am looking forward to Uncharted 4, that will do very well I think, along with LEGO Marvel’s Avengers, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and that pretty much covers it for the moment. And personally, the biggest one I’m looking forward to at the moment is probably No Man’s

PRE-ORDER CHARTS

PRICE CHECK: BRIGHTON

What are your prospects for 2016? It should be a good year, with obviously a much larger base of games consoles. Over Christmas much more was sold so there are a lot more new customers out there. Basically that should mean we will have a better year in 2016 than we’ve had for a while.

TOP 10 PRE-ORDERS 1. TOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION INC BETA Ubisoft, PS4

2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD + Amiibo Nintendo................................................................. Wii U

GRAND THEFT AUTO V FOOTBALL MANAGER 2016

3. Tom Clancy’s The Division Inc Beta Ubisoft ...........................................................................XO 4. Gravity Rush HD Remastered Sony.............................................................................PS4

Rockstar, PC

Sega, PC

Bethesda, PC

CD Projekt RED, PC

£29.99

£34.99

£39.99

£19.99

£32.99

N/A

£39.99

£29.99

£34.99

£N/A

£24.99

9. Street Fighter V Capcom .....................................................................PS4

£29.99

£33.40

£29.99

£31.99

10. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Sony.......................................................................... PS4

£36.12

£40.82

£34.92

£34.55

6. Resident Evil Origins Capcom .....................................................................PS4

IN STORE

5. Heavy Rain & Beyond Two Souls Collection Sony.............................................................................PS4

FALLOUT 4 THE WITCHER III: WILD HUNT

7. Final Fantasy Explorers Square Enix............................................................. 3DS

UPLOADING The latest digital releases coming to market

XCOM 2

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER

DRAGON’S DOGMA: DARK ARISEN

The turn-based tactical game will be released on PC next week

Sega’s fantasy strategy game is due out in late April on PC

The second episode of the Dragon’s Dogma franchise has landed on PC

OUT: FEBRUARY 5TH

January 29th 2016

ONLINE

8. LEGO Marvel ‘s Avengers + Thunderbolts Pack Warner Bros ............................................................PS4

OUT: APRIL 28TH

OUT: NOW

www.mcvuk.com

MARKETPLACE

Eclipse Home Entertainment Address: 130 Victoria Rd W, Cleveleys FY5 3LG

What platform do you think will perform the best this year? PlayStation 4 and Xbox One: I think they will both do equally as well. We do not sell PC games at all. Customers don’t buy PC games as basically everything is online on Steam. Honestly it changed that market completely. But that’s the way it is, we can’t do anything to change it. Is there any event you are looking forward to this year?

Phone: 01253 820 800 Website: http:/eclipse-games.co.uk/

I read about this new games show in London in April, so that could be quite good. Other than that, I am obviously looking forward to the arrival of Sony’s PlayStation VR. How do you think virtual reality will do? I think it will do very well actually, it just depends on price and software support. It also depends on what Sony does to back it up, but I am pretty sure they won’t release it unless it is ready.

INCOMING TITLE

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR OUTLET IN MCV? Contact mdealessandri@nbmedia.com or call 01992 515 303

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers ﬁnally hits the shelves today, along with the long-awaited Sebastien Loeb Rally EVO FORMAT

GENRE

PUBLISHER

TELEPHONE

DISTRIBUTOR

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers

PS4/XO/Wii U/PS3/360

Action

Warner Bros

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo

PS4/XO/PC

Racing

PQube

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

PS3/Vita

RPG

NIS America

020 8664 3485

Open

January 29th

This War of Mine: The Little Ones

PS4/XO

Survival

Deep Silver

01256 385 200

Koch Media

Final Fantasy Explorers

3DS

RPG

Square Enix

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

Tetris Ultimate

Vita

Puzzle

Ubisoft

01279 822 822

Exertis

PS4/XO/PC

Action

Bandai Namco

01215 069 590

Advantage

February 5th Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 XCOM 2

Strategy

2K Games

01279 822 822

Exertis

Digimon Story Cybersleuth

PS4/Vita

RPG

Bandai Namco

01215 069 590

Advantage

The Legend of Legacy

3DS

RPG

NIS America

020 8664 3485

Open

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders

PS4/XO/PC

Adventure

Kalypso Media

01215 069 590

Advantage

Gravity Rush Remastered

PS4

Action

SCEE

01216 253 388

CentreSoft

PS4/XO

Survival horror

Warner Bros

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

PS4

Action

Rising Star Games

0845 234 4242

Mastertronic

Arslan: The Warriors of Legend

PS4/XO/PS3

Strategy

Koei Tecmo

01462 476130

Open

Earth Defense Force 2

Vita

Arcade

PQube

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

Earth Defense Force 4.1

PS4

Arcade

PQube

0121 625 3388

CentreSoft

February 9th Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition

February 11th Zombie Vikings: Ragnarök Edition

February 12th

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight

3DS

RPG

NIS America

020 8664 3485

Open

Alekhine’s Gun

PS4/XO

Action

Avanquest

01480 359 403

Open

www.mcvuk.com

January 29th 2016

PC GAMING SPECIAL MARGIN MAKERS

PC A wide range of PC accessories and goodies hit the shelves every week. Marie Dealessandri checks out what has been trending lately

IN the UK, the digital PC software market was worth £741m in 2014, according to SuperData. It represented a nine per cent increase compared to 2013’s total of £706m. More generally, the PC games market worldwide is worth around $27bn (£19bn) according to research firm Newzoo. PC stands for 37 per cent of the 2015 global games market. Last year was a pretty good 12 months for Steam, as its paid game market generated $3.5bn

Grand Theft Auto V and Fallout 4 were Steam’s best sellers in 2015.

(£2.4bn), according to analytics site Steam Spy. More than 3,000 new games were added on the platform last year, whereas only 1,900 were released in 2014. The number of concurrent users on Steam also increased from eight million to 12 million, with more than 350 million games being sold. These figures don’t include free-to-play titles or DLC. The Winter Sale allowed Steam to perform particularly

RAZER BLACKWIDOW CHROMA MECHANICAL USB GAMING KEYBOARD The BlackWidow mechanical keyboard is one of Razer’s best sellers. Designed speciﬁcally for gaming, it was built to resist up to 60 million keystrokes. It features Chroma customisable backlighting to enhance the gaming experience. SRP: £139.99 Manufacturer: Razer Distributor: VIP Computers Contact: 01925 286 900

TURTLE BEACH EAR FORCE STEALTH 450

DOTA 2 BOTTLE OPENER KEY RING

MAD CATZ MMO TE TOURNAMENT EDITION GAMING MOUSE

A premium wireless headset that aims at delivering the best PC gaming experience.

Dota 2 was the ﬁrst game in Steam history to hit the 1m mark for concurrent users, plenty of people who would love this key ring.

This mouse allows gamers to program up to 60 commands for any game. It was speciﬁcally designed to play MMO games.

SRP: £99.99 Manufacturer: Turtle Beach Distributor: Exertis Contact: 01279 822 822

SRP: £8.05 Manufacturer: Gaya Entertainment Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com

SRP: £49.99 Manufacturer: Mad Catz Distributor: Entatech Contact: 0333 101 1000

January 29th 2016

www.mcvuk.com

MARGIN MAKERS PC GAMING SPECIAL Sponsored by

gaming merchandise uk

well: December was the biggest month in terms of revenue for the platform, with $436m (£308m). April 2015 was also an important month with $411m (£290) in revenue, thanks to the release of Grand Theft Auto V, which sold more than 3.8 million copies and generated over $161m (£113m) in revenue on PC. The Rockstar hit remains one of the

best sellers of the year, along with Fallout 4, which sold over 2.7 copies and earned more than $122m (£86m) between its release in November and the end of the year. In the UK, gaming accessories represented £495m in revenues in 2015. A lot of this was from popular console accessories, but the growth in high priced PC peripherals - driven by a burgeoning eSports scene - is having a positive effect.

PRIF SPEEDSTER 1 WIRELESS GAMING CHAIR This gaming chair combines comfortable features, such as lumbar support and headrests, with quality stereo speakers. Of course, the seat can be raised or lowered so that PC gamers can be perfectly positioned in front of their desks. SRP: £179.99 Manufacturer: Prif Distributor: Centresoft Contact: 0121 625 3399

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS T-SHIRT – DAT ASHE

VENOM CONQUEROR: PREMIUM GAMING SURFACE

QPAD QH-90 GAMING HEADSET WITH CLOSED EAR CUPS

Riot’s League of Legends remains one of the most played PC games of the last few years. The game is digital only, but this t-shirt is not.

This gaming surface improves sensortracking performance and allows easy ﬂow movements.

Qpad’s QH-90 features a detachable microphone and closed ear cups to reduce background noise. It comes in black or white.

SRP: £21.99 Manufacturer: Jinx Distributor: Gaming Merchandise UK Contact: hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com

SRP: £12.99 Manufacturer: Venom Distributor: Venom Contact: 01763 284 181

SRP: £70.06 Manufacturer: Qpad Distributor: Entatech Contact: 0333 101 1000

www.mcvuk.com

January 29th 2016

MARKETING, PR & CREATIVE AGENCIES

LEGAL

AUDIO IN

GERARD FOX LAW

Tel: 0044 7985678437 www.audioin.co.uk ........................................................................................................

charne@sprintmail.com www.gerardfoxlaw.com ........................................................................................................

BIG TOP PR Tel: 07784 778197 www.bigtop-pr.co.uk ........................................................................................................

TRADE BODY UKIE

DEAD GOOD MEDIA Tel: +44 (0)7780 600 728 www.deadgoodmedia.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: +44 (0) 207 534 0580 www.ukie.org.uk ........................................................................................................

STUDIO DIVA

PUBLISHING

Tel: 0117 214 0404 www.studiodiva.co.uk ........................................................................................................

FUNBOX MEDIA LTD

FLUID Tel: +44 (0)121 212 0121 www.ﬂ uidesign.co.uk ........................................................................................................

KENNEDY MONK Tel: 0207 636 9142 www.kennedymonk.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: +44 (0) 114 278 7100 www.uberagency.com/ ........................................................................................................

info@funboxmedia.co.uk www.funboxmedia.co.uk ........................................................................................................

DEVELOPMENT SERVICES & RECRUITMENT

Tel: +44 (0) 208 664 3456 www.creativedistribution.co.uk/ ........................................................................................................

DC GAMES GROUP Tel: +971-50-9287220 www.Doostan-Co.com ........................................................................................................

INCOMM Tel: 01489 588 200 www.incomm.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: 0207 688 6789 www.oklogistics.de ........................................................................................................

PLAY DISTRIBUTION Tel: +64-9-815-3852 www.playdistribution.com ........................................................................................................

WHOLESGAME info@wholesgame.com www.wholesgame.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: + 44 (0) 8701 600 504 www.audiomotion.com ........................................................................................................

OPM RECRUITMENT

QA & LOCALISATION, PAYMENT & SOLUTION

CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION

OK MEDIA LTD

AUDIOMOTION

UBER

RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION & MANUFACTURING

Tel: +44 [0] 1206 214421 http://opmjobs.com/ ........................................................................................................

PERIPHERALS, ACCESSORIES & MERCHANDISE

RAGTAG DEVELOPMENTS LTD

GAMING MERCHANDISE UK LTD

Tel: +44 (0)1295 817617 www.ragtagdev.com ........................................................................................................

hello@gamingmerchandiseuk.com www.gamingmerchandiseuk.com ........................................................................................................

REMOTE CONTROL PRODUCTS

LIME DISTRIBUTION

LA MARQUE ROSE Tel: +33 1 43 14 88 00 info@lamarquerose.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: +49 (0) 89 / 210 205 70 http://www.r-control.de/ ........................................................................................................

UNIVERSALLY SPEAKING

SOUNDING SWEET LTD.

PERFORMANCE DESIGNED PRODUCTS LTD

Tel: +44 (0) 1480210621 www.usspeaking.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: +44 (0) 1789 297453 www.soundingsweet.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: 01628 509 047 www.pdp.com ........................................................................................................

EXEQUO Tel: +1 425 279 7855 sbonﬁ ls@exequo.com ........................................................................................................

Tel: 01622 845 161 www.limedistribution.co.uk ........................................................................................................

TO LIST YOUR COMPANY HERE AND ONLINE EVERY WEEK PLEASE CONTACT CNANGLE@NBMEDIA.COM OR CALL 020 7354 6000

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT AGENCIES AND SERVICE COMPANIES

COMPANY PROFILE / CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION KEY CONTACTS: Email

Phone

info@creativedistribution.co.uk

+44 (0) 208 664 3456

ADDRESS: Unit 2, 119 Beddington Lane, Croydon, Surrey, CR0 4TD

ESTABLISHED in 1999, Creative Distribution Ltd is one of the UK’s largest independent distributors of video games, toys and entertainment products. Established over 15 years ago, Creative has the buying power and knowledge to offer some of the best deals around. Only ever offering the stock in the warehouse, gives the ability to process orders quickly and efficiently. Creative holds a huge range of product in its South London Warehouse, and has over 3000 different products in stock at any one time. Open an account today, and our team of over twenty sales professionals will ensure you receive a high level of service, with regular updates on stock availability, new arrivals, special promotions and new releases. Speak to one of our account managers today. The languages spoken by our sales team include: Armenian, Cantonese, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO ISSUE 859 FRIDAY DECEMBER

GAMES

4TH 2015

ISSUE 860 FRIDAY DECEMBER 11TH

2015

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS COMPANY AND MANY MORE ONLINE NOW AT:

THE A TEAM

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES

INDIE THICK OF IT

N SHAHID AHMAD ON 10 YEARS PLAYSTATION’S DEV CHAMPIO

BESTWICK TAKES US THROUGH 25 YEARS SONY P16 ATDEBBIE OF TEAM17

P18

UK RETAIL SPEAKS OUT 55%

70%

believe PS4 will rule next year (above top),

Twist think virtual reality is doomedUKIE’s SuperData’s van Dreunen

(above middle) and Reﬂection’s Leksell (above)

ack are bdig Charts ital e y’r the time, And this

19%

bile and digital console data

Q MCV re-launches charts

section

41%

picked Uncharted 4 as their most anticipated game of 2016

DIRECTORY

MCV DIRECTORY KEY CONTACTS Sony DADC ............................................ +44 (0) 207 462 6200

CREATIVE Fink ................................................................. info@ﬁnkcreative.com

GAMING ACCESSORIES DISC REPAIR

L3I.................................................................................. 01923 881000

Total Disc Repair ..................................+44 (0) 1202 489500

LIME DISTRIBUTION ............................................01622 845 161

DISTRIBUTION Click Entertainment ............................ +44 (0) 203 137 3781 Creative Distribution ......................+44 (0) 20 8664 3456 RATES

Curveball Leisure ................................... +44 (0) 1792 652521

£70 per two column box (100mm x 75mm). To run weekly for a minimum of 1 year. Please phone for other size and/or position requirements.

Enarxis Dynamic Media ............................. +302 1090 11900

DISC REPAIR

TOTAL DISC REPAIR

Tel: +44 (0) 1202 489500

January 29th 2016

Web: www.totaldiscrepair.co.uk

www.mcvuk.com

DIRECTORY

ENQUIRIES CONOR TALLON Tel: 02073 546000 ctallon@nbmedia.com

FINK

CREATIVE

DISTRIBUTION

CLICK ENTERTAINMENT

Artworking Mastertronic Brand Identity Ukie Localisation Rising Star Games Advertising BBFC Website Design Deep Silver Exhibition Bethesda Illustration Just Flight Appynation Digital Media IntentMedia Charity GamesAid Banners & Takeovers Konami Packaging Design Just Flight Email: info@ﬁnkcreative.com CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 (0) 208 6643456 ENARXIS DYNAMIC MEDIA

Web: www.ﬁnkcreative.com

Tel: +44 (0)203 137 3781

DISTRIBUTION

email: sales@click-entertainment.com

CURVEBALL LEISURE

Web: www.creativedistribution.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1792 652521

DISTRIBUTION

SONY DADC

DISTRIBUTION

Web: www.curveball-leisure.com DISTRIBUTION

Empowering your creative business

Tel: +44 207 361 8000 games@sonydadc.com

www.sonydadc.com

Tel: +302 1090 11900

www.mcvuk.com

Web: www.enarxis.eu

Tel: +44 (0) 207 462 6200

Web: www.sonydadc.com

January 29th 2016

DIRECTORY

L3I

GAMING ACCESSORIES

Tel: 01923 881000

Web: www.logic3.com

LIME DISTRIBUTION

GAMING ACCESSORIES

Tel: 01622 845 161

Web: www.limedistribution.co.uk

ADVERTISE WITH US

WANT TO ADVERTISE IN OUR DIRECTORY?

CALL CONOR TALLON ON 020 7354 6000 OR EMAIL HIM AT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

January 29th 2016

www.mcvuk.com

INSIDER’S GUIDE

INSIDER’S GUIDE FLUID

DIRECTORY

WHO? Specialism: Design, digital & creative solutions Location: Fluid Studios 12 Tenby Street, Birmingham B1 3AJ

Develop is the only dedicated publication for the UK and European games development community. It reaches over 300,000 subscribers every month.

Communications manager Nick Brandum explains to MCV how eSports and VR are inﬂuencing Fluid

FOR GREAT ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES, CONTACT CHARLOTTE NANGLE CNANGLE@NBMEDIA.COM

Tell us about your company. Fluid is a full-service creative agency that has specialised in games for 20 years. We are pretty damn good at creative, digital and design. Clients right now include SCEE, Sega, Warner Bros, Square Enix, Entertainment One, Pinewood, Sony Music and MTV. We are all about creating richly crafted visual experiences.

THIS MONTH’S DIRECTORY SPOTLIGHT: CRYTEK ..........................................................................cryengine@crytek.com

What successes have you seen recently? Over the past year we’ve had the chance to work with indie devs on some really cool titles. We love working with guys like that as we are always given the room we need to do our best creative work. We are also very proud of our recent press kit work for SCEE with Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection, PlayStation FC, and Tearaway. For eOne, we have spent six months helping to create the complete brand for a brand new kids IP, PJ Masks. What are the biggest trends in the games industry aﬀecting you right now? eSports is still coming up in a big way, and we want to support that. It was wicked to see EGX hit Birmingham for the ﬁrst time last year [where Fluid is based]. We are also exploring how digital technologies like VR, facial recognition and RFID tags can be used at events and for retail theatre, which is throwing up some game changing ideas and concepts. Licensing is also

W I T H C R Y E N G I N E ® , W E H AV E A S I M P L E G O A L : T O C R E AT E T H E M O S T P O W E R F U L G A M E E N G I N E I N T H E I N D U S T R Y.

L E A R N M O R E AT W W W . C R Y E N G I N E . C O M

To be included in the Develop Directory (which appears every month in Develop and now every week in MCV) contact cnangle@nbmedia.com

We are exploring how digital technologies can be used at events Nick Brandum, Fluid

huge for us right now. Working across all entertainment sectors gives us a bird’s eye view of the transmission between TV, ﬁlm, music, fashion and games, which is getting us recognition from companies looking to open up new revenue streams through licensing. What are you looking forward to in games over the next 12 months? There is seldom a new game released that we don’t personally buy, but speciﬁcally - we want No Man’s Sky. We also can’t wait to get our hands on the new Hitman and Dark Souls III.

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR COMPANY IN INSIDER’S GUIDE? CONTACT MDEALESSANDRI@NBMEDIA.COM OR CALL 01992 515 303

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET www.mcvuk.com

Contact: W: www.fluidesign.co.uk E: nick@fluidesign.co.uk P: 0121 212 0121 T: @fluidesign_uk

January 29th 2016

FACTFILE MEXICO

INTERNATIONAL FACTFILE: MEXICO Population: 123,799,000 Capital City: Mexico City Currency: Mexican Peso GDP (Per Capita): $10,293.3 KEY RETAILERS Camelot Games, Gamer’s Paradise, Gamerush, Mixup, Sanborns, Blockbuster Mexico, Coppel, JJGames, JVL Gaming TOP DISTRIBUTORS Gamexpress

THE Mexican games market generated $1.2bn (£0.8bn) in revenues in 2015, with an 18 per cent growth compared to the previous year, according to data firm Newzoo. The market’s revenues should continue to grow with a 15.6 per cent CAGR until 2018. Mexico has gained one place to become the 13th largest market in 2015. This makes the country the second biggest video games market in Latin America, behind Brazil. Latin America is one of the fastest growing territories as far as video games are concerned. Mexico comprises about 46.8 million gamers, with 62 per cent of them spending money on games, according to Newzoo. The company points out that the average annual spend per player is $41.33 (£28.80), which is slightly higher than the Latin American average of $38.42 (£26.78). Microsoft is leading the Mexican market, followed by Sony and Nintendo, says Euromonitor. The research firm even adds that “Mexico is known for its loyal Xbox customers.”

January 29th 2016

TOP DEVELOPERS Anemona Studio, Artefacto, Neggi Studio, Kaxan Games, Larva Game Studios PUBLISHERS IN THE REGION Activision, EA, Microsoft, Sony, Square Enix, Ubisoft

Mexico is the second biggest video games market in Latin America The increasing number of smartphones and tablets, along with the strengthening internet penetration in the country, should have a huge impact on the market over the next few years. Mexico’s smartphones users reached 62.5 million in 2015, which represents a 41.1 per cent increase compared to 2014. The Mexican video games market is particularly blooming concerning developers. The country organised its first video games competition last year, Video Juegos MX, which aimed at finding the best developers in the country. This governmentsponsored event also wished to provide international visibility to games developed in Mexico.

www.mcvuk.com

MEXICO FACTFILE

MEANWHILE IN... KOREA Korean game company Smilegate invested in Swedish developer Starbreeze to work on a CrossFire game for western markets SMILEGATE has entered into a long term partnership with Starbreeze by investing $40m (£28m) in the Swedish developer. Starbreeze will thus develop, publish and distribute a new game based on the CrossFire franchise for Western markets. CrossFire is a particularly successful series in China. The online FPS game, published by Smilegate, has over 500m users worldwide and more than 6m concurrent players. It is the world’s largest grossing online FPS game. Smilegate’s investment will also allow Starbreeze

www.mcvuk.com

to receive distribution rights on the Korean company’s download platform. Starbreeze will use the platform to release its upcoming games into Asian markets, such as Payday 2 and

Overkill’s The Walking Dead. The latter will be expanded for its Asian version, and will be released during the second half of 2017.

January 29th 2016

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

GLOBAL DISTRIBUTORS IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR NEW PARTNERS OVERSEAS, THEN LOOK NO FURTHER

BELGIUM

CLD DISTRIBUTION Rue du Grand Champs 14 , B 5380 Fernelmont Belgium Tel: +32 81 83 02 02 Fax: +32 81 83 02 09 Email: infos@cld.be Web: www.cld.be home of www.dragonwar.eu & www.mawashi.eu

BRAZIL Sony Music Entertainment Brasil # 1 Physical Distributor in Brazil Rua Lauro Muller n°. 116 – 40°. Andar Salas 4001 a 4003 Botafogo Rio de Janeiro RJ CEP. 22.290-160 Tel. +55 21 2128-0771 Fax: +55 21 2128-0747 Email : rodrigo.altieri@sonymusic.com Website: www.sonymusic.com.br | www.day1e.com.br

IRAN

SWEDEN

DC GAMES GROUP No.9, Hemmatian St., Takestan St., Sattarkhan Tehran, Iran Tel: +98-912-1014090 +98-21-44228670 Email: Bahizad@Doostan-Co.com Web: www.Doostan-Co.com

GAME OUTLET EUROPE AB PO Box 5083, S-650 05 Karlstad, Sweden Sales dept: ali.manzuri@gameoutlet.se Sales dept: andreas.lindberg@gameoutlet.se Purchase dept: hamed.manzuri@gameoutlet.se Purchase dept: david.nilsson@gameoutlet.se Web: www.gameoutlet.se

NORDIC

UAE

WENDROS AB SWEDEN, NORWAY, DENMARK & FINLAND Jakobsdalsvägen 17 12653 Hägersten Sweden Phone: +46 8 51942500 Fax: +46 8 7466790 Email: HM@wendros.se LM@wendros.se Web: www.wendros.se

ALESAYI UNITED COMPANY Video Games Distributor in the Middle East, P.O BOX 16999 Jebel Ali Free Zone Dubai U.A.E. Tel: 00971 4 883 5960 Fax: 00971 4 883 5175 Email: marketing@alesayi.ae U.A.E. Website: www.alesayi.ae Group Website: www.alesayi.com

WORLDWIDE CLICK ENTERTAINMENT LIMITED Email: info@click-entertainment.com Web: www.click-entertainment.com Phone: +44 (0)203 137 3781

MCV WORLDWIDE Editorial: + 61 (0)424 967 263 Leigh.Harris@mcvpaciﬁc.com

Advertising: + 61 (0)417 084821 Joel.Vandaal@mcvpaciﬁc.com

WWW.MCVPACIFIC.COM

MORE DISTRIBUTORS AUSTRALIA AFA Interactive, Bluemouth Interactive, Five Star Games, Mindscape, Namco Bandai Partners, Turn Left Distribution BENELUX CLD Distribution, Koch Media, Gameworld Distribution B.V. CANADA E One, Importel, Just4Games, Solutions 2 Go, Vidéoglobe CYPRUS Access, Gibareio, Zilos, Nortec Multimedia CZECH REPUBLIC Cenega, Conquest, Comgad, Playman, ABC Data DENMARK Bergsala, Elpa, Impulse, Koch Media, Nordisk Film Interactive, Nordic Game Supply, PAN Vision FRANCE Big Ben, Innelec, Koch Media, SDO, Sodifa GREECE Zegatron, CD Media, Namco Bandai Partners, IGE, Nortec, Enarxis, Beacon HUNGARY CNG.hu/Cenega Hungary, CTC Trading, Magnew, PlayON, Stadlbauer ICELAND Sena, Myndform, Samfilm, Ormsson INDONESIA Maxsoft, Uptron, Technosolution IRELAND MSE Group, Baumex JAPAN Ajioka, Happinet, Jesnet NORWAY Bergsala, Game Outlet, Koch Media, Nordic Game Supply, Nordisk Film, Pan Vision POLAND CD Projekt, Cenega, Galapagos, LEM PORTUGAL Ecoplay, Infocapital, Koch Media, Namco Bandai ROMANIA Best Distribution SERBIA ComTrade, Computerland/Iris Mega, Extreme CC SPAIN Digital Bros, Koch Media, Namco Bandai Partners, Nobilis SWEDEN Bergsala, Koch Media, Namco Bandai, Nordic Game Supply, PAN Vision, Wendros, Ztorm (digital) UAE Red Entertainment Distribution, Pluto Games (LS2 Pluto), Viva Entertainment, Gameplay Entertainment, Geekay Distribution

TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION PLEASE CONTACT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM January 29th 2016

www.mcvuk.com

OFF THE RECORD

OFF THE RECORD This week, Ubisoft hides some gamers in a cave and PlayStation teams up with some Premier League stars for its Schools Cup CAVED IN “I MEAN yeah, it’s a good idea,” Ubisoft PR bosses told the agency when the idea of offering gamers the chance to shoot down a real life dinosaur was first pitched. “But there are two problems. Firstly, look at all the grief that American dentist Palmer got when he shot that lion. Secondly, weren’t the dinosaurs all wiped out in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago?” Plan B, it turns out, is to offer gamers the chance to win a stay at ‘Cavebnb’. Which is a hotel in a mountain. Or a cave. There’s some survival training chucked in, too. It’s all to promote Far Cry Primal, incidentally. The best part is probably the bit in the trailer where it alludes to folks having to crap in the woods.

TOP OF THE LEAGUE YOU hear plenty online about Sony when PSN drops out for, like, two minutes. But less is made of the platform holder’s charitable efforts. Which is why it’s all the more important to make a bit of noise about the fantastic PlayStation Schools Cup. Every year the competition, run in conjunction with the English Schools’ Football Association, is open to school kids from Under 12 to Under 15 level. It all culminates with a three-day event in May 2016. Here you see Spurs midfielder Deli Alli – scorer of a Matt Le Tissier-style flick and volley screamer against Crystal Palace last weekend – and Saints full back Ryan Bertrand. Other names currently involved with the scheme include Saints’ Nathaniel Clyne and Stoke’s Jack Butland.

www.mcvuk.com

January 29th 2016

OFF THE RECORD

Nope. The last time I used VR I was ill for a good 24 hours after. Had no history of motion sickness either.

I doubt it, it may create a totally new diverse market in gaming but it won’t take pole position in gaming in my opinion.

Rich Smith @Smidgey87 I super hyped and ready. I’m a DK1, 2 and Gear VR owner. Have ordered Rift CV1.

Nathan @NathanAvie It has great possibilities but let’s give it a year or two to see how they will do after release.

VR is going to die quickly like 3D TVs did.

WILL YOU BE BUYING INTO VIRTUAL REALITY THIS YEAR? CAN IT REVOLUTIONISE GAMING?

Zerrod @JonskuwithZerro

Thomas Davis @DiemetriX Rift is on preorder, I already own a Gear VR. It’s a literal, and metaphorical game changer.

#GMGASKS Dean Rosolen #3DO=HU ˰

$600-plus is a lot of dosh for something that has yet to be more then a replacement for regular camera controls. Not hyped.

Fuzzysteve @Fuzzysteve

Maybe in another year or two. All the bugs get worked out, optimised for middle ground PCs and more games as well as priced less.

No. Way too expensive. Too requirement intensive. And, as with any new tech, it’ll be buggy for a while.

Jazzy @Jazzy_Gaming

Janine @ScarfedRedhead It’s probably not gonna work for a lot of games, but it’s going to be big for entertainment experiences like movies.

harley9699 @harley9699

Big Pachinko @Tecnniqe

CONTACTS Christopher Dring

Kelly Sambridge

Andrew Wooden

Editor cdring@nbmedia.com

Head of Design and Production ksambridge@nbmedia.com

Content Director awooden@nbmedia.com

Ben Parﬁtt

Elizabeth Newton

Conor Tallon

Associate Editor bparﬁtt@nbmedia.com

Production Executive enewton@nbmedia.com

Senior Account Manager ctallon@nbmedia.com

Alex Calvin

Sam Richwood

Lesley McDiarmid

Staﬀ Writer acalvin@nbmedia.com

Designer srichwood@nbmedia.com

Senior Account Manager lmcDiarmid@nbmedia.com

Marie Dealessandri

Michael Canham

Sarah Goldhawk

Staﬀ Writer mdealessandri@nbmedia.com

Finance Manager mcanham@nbmedia.com

Account Manager sgoldhawk@nbmedia.com

Stuart Moody

Charlotte Nangle

Head of Operations smoody@nbmedia.com

Sales Executive cnangle@nbmedia.com

Please address all enquiries to: Newbay Media, MCV, Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street, Hertford, SG14 1JA. Printed By: Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood, NP12 2YA

Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street, Hertford, Hertfordshire, England SG14 1JA

© Newbay Media 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher. The contents of MCV are subject to reproduction in information storage and retrieval systems.

MCV is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association. For the 12 months ending December 2009, MCV had an average weekly net circulation of 8,045. MCV’s circulation is 100 per cent named and zero per cent duplicated.

Newbay Media specialises in tradededicated print and digital publishing for entertainment and leisure markets. As well as MCV, Newbay publishes Develop, PCR, ToyNews, Music Week, MI Pro, Audio Pro International and BikeBiz. It also has two onlineonly brands: Mobile Entertainment, dedicated to the growing mass market smartphone sector, and Licensing.biz, for everyone in the global licensing industry. It also runs a number of events including the MCV Industry Excellence Awards, the London Games Conference and the Games Media Awards.

MCV has an exclusive media partnership with Famitsu – Japan’s leading video games analyst and news source

THE RETAIL ADVISORY BOARD Charlotte Knight GAME

Steve Moore Simply Games

Jennifer Johnson Don McCabe CHIPS Shop Direct

Jon Hayes Tesco

Sarah Jasper The Hut

Gurdeep Hunjan Simon Urquhart Sainsbury’s Microsoft

Dermot Stapleton Niall Lawlor GameStop Get Games

Phil Moore Grainger Games

Igor Cipolletta ShopTo

Phil Browes HMV

Robert Lindsay Games Centre

Stephen Staley Robert Hennessy Paul Sulyok James Cooke Gameseek John Lewis Green Man Gaming Argos

Craig Watson Dixons Retail

Editorial: 01992 515303 | Advertising: 01992 535647 | Fax: 01992 535648 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS United Kingdom £150 l Europe £175 l Rest of the World £250 To order your subscription via Visa, Mastercard, Switch or AMEX or to make changes to your subscription details, contact mcv.subscriptions@c-cms.com or call 01580 883848.

January 29th 2016

www.mcvuk.com

PC version coming 01.03.16

23.02.16 Order your stock today on 01279 822 822

23.02.16 ©2016 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Far Cry, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US and/or other countries. Based on Crytek’s original Far Cry directed by Cevat Yerli. Powered by Crytek’s technology “CryEngine”. “2“ and “PlayStation” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “Ø“ is a trademark of the same company. Xbox, Xbox One, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft.