Blizzard: Zynga subversion does not follow social games

Introduction: Foreign media today wrote that, although the social game has led the trend, but Zynga has been the decline of the year, through mergers and acquisitions to catch up with the trends of EA and Disney have also been hit. In such a decline, has been restrained by the dynamic depending on the new "Doll + Software" model opened up a new road, the dream game to create a product of all ages, and successful use of dolls to obtain a good return.

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Immune

If you don't mark the October 19 day on the calendar, you're probably not a fan of the Little Rons Rhoda Adventure (Skylanders Spyro's Adventure). The game and its accompanying dolls have sold 32 million copies since last October to the end of March this year. October 19, its sequel to the "Little Rons: Giants" (Skylanders Giants) will also be sold at a price of 75 dollars per set.

This is obviously good news for Blizzard and its CEO Bobby Cotic Bobby Kotick. 3 years ago, as EA and Disney competed to compete with the leader of the social-gaming world, he did not blindly follow suit. In hindsight, Cotic's restraint seemed prescient. According to the US market research firm NPD, the US currently has about 211.5 million video gamers, down 5% from 222.5 million a year earlier. The downside is the so-called "light PC players", those who play a few minutes a day on Facebook or other PC platforms.

Thanks to this decision, Blizzard is not only immune to the decline of social leisure games, it has also spent 300 million of dollars to develop new video games to grab the market for social games. Cotic says consumers have seen too many online games like Zynga's "FarmVille", which have made their interest more difficult to sustain. "You can't bet your big bets on the video game field, but also on a wide range of recreational forms." "he said.

Blizzard investment has been rewarded in the "Little Rons" series of games. According to Michael Olson, senior analyst Piper Jaffray, the US investment bank, the game will sell more than $1 billion trillion next September. As a game aimed at children over the age of 6, the small Rons not only contains software, but also offers a range of trading cards and 3 roles. Players can put the corresponding role of the doll on a light-emitting board, then, the role of the game will be through the RFID technology presented on the screen. Children can buy and collect more than 30 dolls of "Little Rons", each 8 dollars. Some dolls have even been favored by collectors and are priced at $2400 on ebay. "This is very much in line with our definition of casual games. "Cotic said.

Cross-generation games

The "Little Rons" model is similar to the "Diablo" and "Wow", which is specifically targeted at adult development, so it attracts older players and some parents are fascinated by it. Players can use dolls to explore the dream world, carry out various trades, and manage their own available resources.

This game of all ages is called a "generational game" in the industry, not a blizzard initiative Nintendo used to explore this model with various software on the Wii platform. But "Little Rons" is the first product to integrate dolls and games, and it can record the level of play through the chips built into the dolls, sending information between different game consoles, ipads and Android mobile devices. Fred Howard, vice president of marketing for PC game developer KingsIsle, said: "The model of Blizzard is really creative, integrating the digital world with the real world to share experiences in different devices." ”

With this unusual pattern, Cotic has explored a new way to attract gamers to spend money on dolls, analysts say. With the rise of mobile devices, new games face fierce competition space, only Apple App Store has more than 100,000 games, which also led to more and more reluctant to spend more than 60 dollars, from GameStop or Best Buy only compatible with the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox and other three major game consoles boxed games.

Financial prospects

"Blizzard's ability to execute is beyond everyone's imagination and their model is unprecedented," he said. "Michael Pachter, analyst Michael Pacht Wedbush Nomura, an American securities firm, said. Piper Jaffray's Orson estimates that the company will receive $280 million trillion in revenue from the "Little Rons: Giant" in the fourth quarter of this year, while the "small Rons Rhoda Adventure" will continue to generate 25 million to 50 million dollars.

Orson predicts that by the end of 2012, Blizzard will be selling 67.2 million small Rons dolls around the world. The company declined to disclose doll income, but according to NPD estimates, this product in the first half of this year in the United States sales of more than 99 million U.S. dollars. In contrast, "G. Joe" and "Transformers" in the same period of total doll income of only 54 million U.S. dollars.

Other gaming companies have noted this trend. For example, game consoles and mobile device developers are also deploying technologies that allow users to share game data among different devices. "This area has attracted wide attention. "I believe there will be other products coming," said Richard Barry, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Toy Richard Barry. ”

Cotic plans to authorize the copyright of the little Rons Piper to book and garment manufacturers, and may even develop corresponding films and TV dramas. Jeffrey Car Katzenberg, a dream factory CEO, said Jeffrey Katzenberg, for the gaming industry, is also a belated awakening: the original fantasy game can also attract people of different ages. "Even with the earliest appearances, this is an attractive new game model," he said. "They've created a business that lasts a long time, and I bet 20 competitors are now considering how to emulate them," he said. ”