One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games

Perhaps the most important difference resulting from the digitalization of interactive entertainment is the shift away from having to create all of the value for consumers to network effects. Simply stated, in a product-based model, companies compete over production values and the ability to offer a unique experience that stands apart from other av

Once consumer spending switched toward digital distribution and the adoption of new devices, the overall competitive value of these new technologies became clear, and all major game makers moved to adopt new innovations and strategies. Rather than selling individual units to consumers and emulating the product model, the service-based approach has

Music and film, but also print publishing, magazines, and cable television, similarly face high and increasing production and marketing costs, strongly seasonal patterns, long development cycles, and hit-driven economics (more on this later). To understand how interactive entertainment has managed to grow so prosperously, we need to take a closer l

For creative firms, success in the digital era depends on the ability to develop innovative business models. Brilliant content alone is not enough to accomplish critical or commercial success: it also requires identifying and tapping into a talent pool, marketing effectively, securing appropriate funding, partnering with other value chain participa

Live-streamers bypass this pressure of large corporations trying to influence an individual reviewer to a degree and, more important, allow consumers to see a game in detail before committing to it. This neutrality has resulted in viewers growing loyal to a particular personality or player and wanting to watch them play online. It is not unlike rad

Succinctly put, for every blowout success, dozens of titles fail to deliver on expectations. The winner-takes-most aspect of game publishing means that an organization is either doing really well or dying.

Moreover, because Pokémon GO encouraged people to roam their physical environment to look for Pokémon, it made sense to time the release during the summer because of better weather conditions. Consequently, crowds would gather around key locations in the game represented by real-world locations where rare Pokémon could be found, allowing others to

According to an analysis of the revenue distribution for several of the classic genres on consoles, the top-ten titles account for more than 90 percent of consumer spending.

Monitoring video content and live-streaming, in contrast, enables creative firms to gather consumer feedback and add or remove aspects of a game to maximize its chances of success at launch. Unlike magazines, gaming video content presents a real-time feed of what audiences are playing and watching.