The arrival of television digital to multichannel service operators has generated a important number of business possibilities giving it value added to the mere delivery of television content. Terms as triple play (TV + internet + telephony) became the key to obtaining a good profitability... or, in certain cases, to remain in the business. However, the triple play has forced operators to compete with companies generally much more large and powerful but also frequently, with a tradition of customer service quite conflictive.
The technologies of interactive television offers these operators a new pillar on which to base your relationship with the client: the STB-based games. However, as well as entering the market of internet or telephony implied entering a market Differently, the video game industry has been for several years now and has solid, established players. It's worth giving it a look.
A niche market
When talking about entertainment in this era of internet 2.0
several words come to mind: internet, interactivity,
social networks and video games. With an explosive growth of
users in the Latino market on private television networks
and increased broadband penetration in the region, the market
for interactive television and particularly the segment of
Video games promise to be a golden vein in the coming years.
Just a decade ago ironically an eternity for the technology market- the video game market was considered a closed niche of market composed of small groups of geeks, today these communities have been transformed into a group with a market value of more than 11 billion dollars annually, according to the latest reports from the NPD Group.
The importance of this segment of The market becomes clear with the recent launch of the Xleague.TV a channel dedicated exclusively to video games, where the latest news and tournaments of the video games (referred to by them as eSports) in one form similar as traditional sports are currently covered, it is say with specialized narrators, match analysis, interviews with sports stars and so on.
Xleague.TV is broadcast on the channel 279 of the Sky satellite, is an initiative of the United Kingdom and bases its operation on servers of the company EVS.
But despite the potential of the market, entering this segment does not seem to be so easy, the Video game market is traditionally divided into three large groups: the console niche, the PC niche and more recently the mobile gaming market.
The console market is divided between three large houses with structural differences in your hardware and therefore with the games written for each console they work exclusively on this one and not on their competitors. The leaders in these fields are Sony with Play Station, Microsoft with its Xbox and Nintendo with Gamecube (and its latest Wii).
The PC Gaming Market has different characteristics according to its date of Manufacturing, in fact, video games are one of the main engines in the development of hardware in the PC, and by there are state-of-the-art games with very high hardware requirements that require even the use of specialized components to function as is the case with the home-developed game accelerator cards such as NVidia and Ati.
The video game segment for PC is also responsible for the emergence of the multiplayer modes that face different opponents in the same match, at the beginning in local networks (LAN) and currently through the internet.
In fact, within the realm of the PC games there is a side with the greatest potential of all and they are the MMORPGs, to give us an idea of their potential let's talk of its main representative: World of Warcraft, a role-playing game on the internet with more than 9 million paying users monthly payments with values between 10 and 14 dollars each in some countries the value changes-.
Another market segment with a Even greater growth potential is mobile systems of digital entertainment that although in the beginning they were focused on Nintendo's Gameboy and recently on the PSP of Sony are slowly migrating to cell phones where the base Installed users promises to be a future gold beta.
Being grouped into different technological platforms with software incompatible with each other a only hedging strategy by the operators of Local private television became more complicated and expensive at least until the emergence of proposals such as Game Now launched by Seachange.
DVD games on TV
With the name of GameNow, Seachange International launches a new
proposal that allows users to play their titles
favorites, no matter what platform they are from, from the Top Set
Box (STB) of your TV.
Defined by Tod Bouris, Manager SeaChange Game Now product marketing, such as a Agnostic platform, GameNow is a management system of video games that allows operators to engage in real on-demand video game systems that adapt to the needs of your customers no matter what platform Belong.
In this way either the user wants to play Play Station, PC or Xbox titles, the Game Now system allows you to access these titles without even buy the hardware platforms.
The secret behind this technology is based on the use of powerful servers where games in reality images are executed and transmitted to users and the audio resulting from the player's interaction with the STB. To the way of raw terminals where computing power rests on a central server. Therefore, the level of service to the users must meet certain requirements such as that the STB have USB ports and ensure a minimum of bandwidth that ensure smooth transmission of content.
Contrary to what it could Think, the broadband requirements are not many, of made compared to the demand of voD (Video on Demand) of 3.75 Mbps, video games ask on average for a few modest 900kbps.
These games can be accessed also from mobile platforms such as cell phones or PDAs, of course the servers are in charge of converting the images native to the resolutions and colors supported by the systems Receptors.
The way to access all these Video games is similar to using on-demand content interacting through the STB library. That is to say to through the use of an interface known to users and operators, but who really needs these services?
Bouris adds that Game Now is aimed at those operators interested in looking for a differential advantage in its sophisticated network structures and in build and launch new services to attract more Users.
Plus when investing now operators can be the leaders of the video games that will form around STB systems Added.
With regard to the return of Investment, Bouris comments that this depends on the operation of each company however the Game Now platform allows establish various business models ranging from monthly payments until the use of pay to play models for the most popular games or even the use of guidelines Commercial.
The use of commercials in the middle of Entertainment titles is also a growing trend, it is even known of some games that will be free for the end user and will base their operation on commercial guidelines as in the case of Activision's 2Moons.
The Game Now system, formerly known as Game On, it bases its operation on technology of the Finnish company G-Cluster which in turn is part of the Japanese group Softbank Broadmedia.
Beyond technological achievement which involves creating a game management platform Unified for all platforms, Game Now tackles diverse cultural, commercial and technological challenges.
On the one hand while the Console users are used to seeing the images of your games on TV screens, users of PCs don't work this way. In fact the user profile between these two platforms rivals over capabilities techniques of each of them and the strengths that can offer one over the other. For example, in the market of real-time strategy or RTS games where they are handled countless troops, few things exceed the versatility of the keyboard and high resolution of PC monitors.
Commercially, although the Game Now companies work aggressively to bring more and best titles to your portfolio, the truth is that the sale of the software – games – are the real business of platforms of video games. In many cases the library of games is the decisive factor in the purchase of each of them and is not so easy to believe that Sony will license the games of its Play Station 3 simultaneously with the launch for your console.
Technically, the launch of new ways to interact with consoles, specifically in the case of Wii, it focuses the differential of this platform on the use of a remote control that allows you to play in a more natural. In other words the grace of playing with a Wii is handling your remote control what you don't see feasible, at least for now, on the Game Now system. Wii it is also an innovative product that will surely mark trends so you already hear patents from your competitors with control systems for games based on type equipment magic wands.
However if the systems of video games for interactive television manage to catch the group of casual players the largest group within this niche- they will manage to secure a gigantic market valued in thousands of millions of dollars.
According to the latest figures from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the average age of the players in the United States are 33 years old, of which 38% they are women and have been playing for 13 years.
With such a market potential Big video games are a growing trend that will reverse in new users and within it television systems interactive are an interesting proposal that offers the best of all worlds from a single box: STB systems.
