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Technology Stocks : Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. (SBYT) releases Q2'97 results -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Burlitis who wrote (822)	12/10/1997 7:59:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 833

>>>I agree Bob, MPRS's management does suck. Not so much these days. The fact is the game business is very very tough. There is only room for a handful of 'blockbuster' products a season, by definition. There are more game companies than possible major hits per year. You do the math. MPRS has had a few problems. #1: EA and Broderbund practically own the distribution of games in the US. You can have a great game but pay a penalty to get distribution. At least this was still true in '96, though I am out of date in the pure game business right now. #2: The illusion that licensed properties make great titles. Actually, people are bored with licensed characters and show material. And it costs a hell of a lot in many different ways to deal with it. It raises the break even bar, and the costs of production go way up, putting a strain on financing. Meanwhile innovative producers with no reputation are frozen out. MPRS a couple years ago went heavily with the model of developing licensed products. This is merchandising, not creativity. In their defense, everybody else in the industry (almost) was busy making the same mistake. #3: Twitch game mentality. One could never convince anybody at MPRS that there was anything worth doing in games/experiences/entertainment for computer that a 14 year old boy would not want to do. Consequently, while innovative companies like Cyan were profiting from new demographics, MPRS and most of the other game companies were hooked on their pimply boys. #4: While numerous people at MPRS and other traditional game companies said they knew that network gaming was going to be big, they did precious little about it. So because of #2 and #3 above, what are the new models for blockbuster play titles now? Little computer pets from Japan. Dressing up Barbie. Titles no traditional game company like MPRS would touch. It's so easy to forget that Colossal Cave was once a crazy (free) pursuit of a few nerds with homebuilt pc's and unix boxes. That DOOM was shareware. That the huge hits in new areas (Pong, Myst, Barbie, ...) had nothing much to do with what went before. The Network TV Executive mentality took over games in less time than it took in TV. I expect all really new games to come from companies only marginally in the digital game business, or from independents, or other countries. The 'experts' at the established game companies are far too expert to approve anything really new. Before the Internet/private net game community really does fabulous business it needs to be more fully developed, less proprietary (to enable independent development of creative titles), and cheaper. Actually, this whole industry is damn long in the tooth. I think it will be a couple of years before it will be interesting again, and a number of companies will have to be shaken out/digested first. Chaz

To: Burlitis who wrote (822)	12/10/1997 8:49:00 PM
From: RJC2006	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 833

Well I can't argue with the gist of your post. However, I'll throw this into the mix. My feeling is that it is going to be tougher and tougher to get gamers to throw their bucks down. True, MPRS has some good titles. Magic, Orion, and Civilization are good titles and even their sequels will do good but as in movies you can only put out so many sequels. But gamers are getting to that point where they can say that they have seen it all. Single player shooters are becoming old. Most lack character. Strategy games are interesting but you have to keep coming up with interesting scenarios. Good and true RPG's are near impossible to find. Puzzle games actually are a rip-off as most are so crytic that you have to go the 'net to solve them. So what's my point? It is going to take more than just a scatter gun approach which is what I think most companies are doing. If you put out enough games ONE of them has to catch on. I have my doubts as to the success of this approach. I admit, MPRS has been very good about avoiding this. They have a good lineup but when will their formats become long in the tooth? Now, GT seems to take a different approach in some regards. Sure they do put out some dogs like Mageslayer but they also seem to be working on pushing the envelope by releasing ground breaking games like Total Annihilation. Regardless of what anyone thinks the fact is they came up with a 3-D terrain game. Will Unreal push the envelope of SPS games? I don't know but I imagine with all the delays there HAS to be some unique features. We'll have to see how it all pans out. I predict that there will always be at least 5 major players in the game world. I think this way because most entertainment analysts said that movie houses would go the same way---a fight between 2 or 3 studios but this isn't what happened. I don't see how MPRS can continue to lose the money they are losing in the middle of their strongest games product cycles and avoid being bought out. However, I don't think they are going to get a better offer than 200,000,000.00+ !