Review of the CeBIT Home 98 Trade Show in Hanover
Hello together, I'm back from my holidays in France and I'm quite happy that during the past two weeks, I don't have to watch the bad performance of the international equity markets on a daily basis.
Saturday on my way home to Kiel, I stopped at Hanover to visit the CeBIT Home Trade Show to take a look at the upcoming computer games and the trends in the entertainment industry. Of course, I was especially interested in EIDSY. Their stand was of course one of the eye catchers, mostly due to a 2 meter tall statue of Lara Croft. During my visit I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Rolf Duhnke, the Managing Director of EIDOS Interactive Germany, who is a kind and sympathetic person. I had the luck to meet him between two press meetings and was able to ask him some questions about EIDSY and it's upcoming products. Here's a transcript:
Q: Mr. Duhnke, regarding the sequel to Tomb Raider 2, is the release date of Tomb Raider 3 still on track?
A: Tomb Raider 3 will be released in Germany at 21st November 98. The developers at Core Design were able to match the deadline for the past two Tomb Raider programs, they will do it again.
Q: I played the demo of TR 3 and must say that I'm impressed and can't wait until the official release. What do you respond to the critics saying that TR 3 has no innovation and isn't much different to TR 2?
A: These people have compared a screenshot of TR 3 with the previous version. TR 3 offers real innovations, the 3D engine is improved and our programmers have made it superior to the
engine used in TR2. It offers a far better active lighting, more special effects and even Lara has new features including new movements like crawling.
Q: But the game design is much more the same.
A: Why should we change such a successful character like Lara. For example Mickey Mouse sells for over 50 years and no one has the idea of changing this figure.
Q: What other products are in your pipeline?
A: We are going to release five games in October. These are Ninja, Gangsters, Thief, Daikatana and Bundesliga Manager (Note: This is a sequel to a highly successful soccer management game for the German market, and is developed by the German company Software 2000).
Q: Is Daikatana on track and what's about the problematic that the German government put such products often on the index? (Note: This means that many 3D shooters are banned from sales to non adults and the publishers are forbidden to advertise such products, which of course hurts sales by over 90 %. For example Quake 2 from ATVI is on the index in contrast to Unreal from GTIS)
A: The development of Daikatana is on schedule and it will also be launched in October. Regarding the German market, our programmers have managed to avoid our games from sanctions from state regulators (like Deathtrap Dungeon) and I'm looking forward that Daikatana will also pass this hurdle.
Q: I'm also a shareholder of your company and I'd like to ask you about the bad performance of EIDSY's share price.
A: If you are a shareholder, then you are my boss (smiling).
Q: Of course, I'm not holding even nearly the number the shares of Mr. Livingstone and Mr. Cornwall (also smiling)
A: Our company policy is to always put shareholders interests at first priority. Concerning the share price, the reason why our company is trading at a discount to the market can be the fact, that we're still a young and innovative company and the market is cautious with the valuation of such companies. That's because around 80 % of small start-ups in the entertainment sector don't have the financial background to survive and are going under after a short time.
Q: What is the future strategy of EIDSY concerning it's German subsidiary?
A: In Hamburg we have currently 27 employees and our plan is to grow further and also make in house development. In addition to the localisation and marketing of EIDSY's international productions for the German market we are also teaming up with small German developers to publish their programs (Note: One example is Software 2000).
Q: Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Duhnke.
Concerning EIDSY's products at the products, I was totally impressed by TR 3. I played the 3Dfx PC demo for almost half an hour and must say, that I'm 100 % sure that this product will be the mega seller for Xmas 98 with sales which will even top the number of copies sold of TR2. The lightning system is just genius and allowed the designers to implement breathtaking special effects such a an improved grenade launcher and far better flames. Watching Lara catching fire and then jumping in the perfectly animated water in order to put out the flames is just the best graphic I've ever seen in an computer game. The other improvements are a non linear plot, where the player can choose which level is next and a bunch of new animations of Lara. The optical impression of Lara is almost the same as in TR2 (including the animated pony tail). The weapons are also much of the same, with the difference that this time they eject empty cartridges (looks pretty cool).
Another possible hit game of EIDSY is Gangsters which is developed by Bristol based Hot House (EIDSY stake 25 %). This is a innovative strategy game with high quality graphics.
It can be described as a mixture of Commandos (different windows where the player can control his gang members real time) and Syndicate Wars from Bullfrog / ERTS. In my opinion this game is a potential No. 1 product for the coming months.
I also watched the non interactive demo of Daikatana from Ion Storm which will also be extremely successful. I compared the graphics with other upcoming 3D shooters which are featured at the CeBIT Home and must say that they're better than the graphics of Sin from ATVI (interactive demo), Half Live from CD (non interactive, the frame rate also looked a bit slow, so this product might not meet the launch date in October due to a improvement in the program code) and the interactive demo of Klingon Honour Guard form MPRS. My impression is, that the graphics of Daikatana are just a bit below Unreal from GTIS and a innovative game play can make this program the best seller of the coming 3D shooters.
Other products shown by EIDSY included Tartan Army, Ninja, Thief, Omikron and Warzone 2010.
So much for EIDSY in particular. My general impression of the stands of the major computer games companies is, that some companies tried to compensate the lack of real innovations and good products with visual effects and noise. EIDSY's stand wasn't the most expensive, but I liked their concept of focusing on their games and let the visitors try these programs on almost 20 PCs and Playstations. EIDSY's representatives all wore casual wear and were talking to gamers and customers. When they had the time, they even played on their own PCs.
This is the contrast to companies like ERTS. This company has two stands, one loud and big for the normal player and one conference room with closed doors away from their major stand for "good customers" and press members. The marketing people from ERTS all wore black suites, had cell phones in their hands and "tried to look very important". They don't talk to "normal" visitors in contrast to the people at EIDSY who even answered questions regarding the cheat codes in TR2. These ERTS sales persons looked like retail bankers or insurance salesmen. Are they thinking they are board members of IBM or what? I don't like such a corporate culture. The players are their customers , so they should treat them in a better way. The big ERTS stand for the normal people showed that this company has only few innovations (like Need for Speed 3 or Moto Racer 2). There was nothing to see from games like Dungeon Keeper 2. Instead they hired some animators and placed them in front of a big video wall in order to push the interest for the X-files game (which was developed by Fox Interactive). They had free give-aways to get the attention of the people and the animators shouted such things like: "Everybody who's in love with Scully raise the hand!" In my opinion this is just a try to hide a weak product portfolio. EIDSY still is the company with the best outlook in the whole sector, so the low stock price doesn't make me any headache.
Greetings, Kai
P.S.: If someone is interested in the presentation of other entertainment companies or want to know more, just e-mail me at u2034@bwl.uni-kiel.de
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