PLUS THE BIG GAME: PROJECT CARS TOTAL WAR’S BLOCKBUSTER YEAR

THE BUSINESS OF VIDEO GAMES

ISSUE 832 FRIDAY MAY 1ST / MAY 8TH 2015

WIN!

WANT TO WIN AN XBOX ONE? ENTER THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE P48

CANCEL YOUR PRE-ORDER?

Yes No

Read more on page 08

CHEAT SHEET

04May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

by Alex Calvin GAMESTOP’S American pilot scheme to start selling retro hardware, games and accessories could come to the UK.

The fi rm announced last month that it would be reintroducing retro stock into its stores. Consumers will be able to trade-in old consoles, including the SNES and Mega Drive. They will then be available to buy on its site.

“We’re working closely with our partners in the US and if it proves successful it could be something we will look to roll out in the UK,” said VP of business development for Europe Niall Lawlor.

Senior director of pre-owned merchandise Jon Haes added: “We feel that GameStop can provide customers easy access to buy and sell these products. As the leader in new and pre-owned games retail, retro gaming is a natural extension of what we do and it provides another value opportunity for GameStop customers.

“Customer interest in retro categories has continued to be strong for quite some time. In fact, 20 per cent of the unique searches on GameStop.com are related to retro product categories, including the Nintendo 64 and Super Nintendo.”

MEDIA brand Vice is signifi cantly scaling up its games editorial team, the fi rm says.

The UK arm of the popular website has one dedicated games editor, Mike Diver, and a host of freelance support. But the business is in the process of bolstering its team on a global level.

“We are massively scaling up our gaming editorial internationally and bringing in lots of new staff ,” said Diver.

“Plus there will always be a very active roster of amazing freelancers. Some of the names I’ve already brought to the section are pure dream team acquisitions like Cara Ellison, Leigh Alexander, Andy Kelly, Chris

Schilling, Matt Lees, Keza MacDonald and Aoife Wilson to name just a few - I’m really made up that they’ve been so excited to write about games for Vice.”

The outlet has been producing video content dedicated to video games, including its recent eSports documentary, which was released earlier this year.

“The eSports documentary was fantastically received and is indicative of how we’re approaching video here,” he says. “We have a successful formula with Vice video journalism: telling incredible, original stories in our own tone of voice, and getting those stories to millions of people across the world.”

GameStop UK plots retro stock move

Vice ‘massively’ growing games team

GameStop’s Haes (far left) and Lawlor (left) say there is a demand for retro stock

£10m

£5m

Market DataA lack of new releases results in the market being signifi cantly down week-on-week

Week EndingApr 11th

£8.2m297,186

units

Week EndingApr 25th

£6.4m217,496

units

Week EndingApr 18th

£10.5m338,760

units

UK RETAIL TOP 10

PRE-ORDER TOP 10

MORTAL KOMBAT X WARNER BROS12 Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar

3 Battlefi eld Hardline EA

4 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Sony

5 FIFA 15 EA

6 Minecraft: Xbox Edition Microsoft

7 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Activision Blizzard

8 Dying Light Warner Bros

9 Borderlands: The Handsome Collection 2K Games

10 WWE 2K15 2K Games

PROJECT CARS (PS4) BANDAI NAMCO12 Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4) Activision Blizzard

3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4) Bandai Namco

4 Star Wars Battlefront + Battle of Jakku DLC (PS4) EA

5 Call of Duty: Black Ops III (XO) Activision Blizzard

6 Star Wars Battlefront + Battle of Jakku DLC (XO) EA

7 Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (XO) Bethesda

8 Project CARS (XO) Bandai Namco

9 Xbox One + The Witcher 3 + Batman Microsoft

10 Batman Arkham Knight Day One Edn Bandai Namco

SPONSORED BY

CHEAT SHEET

Crossley (above) and Hussain (left) are GameSpot UK’s editor and news editor respectively

05www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

GAMES media giant GameSpot has promoted Rob Crossley to UK editor. Crossley joined the fi rm as news editor in last September after a two-year stint as associate editor at CVG. He is GameSpot’s fi rst UK editor since the departure of Guy Cocker in May 2013.

Meanwhile, another CVG alumni - Tamoor Hussain – has joined the GameSpot team as UK news editor. Hussain worked at CVG for four years, rising up from editorial assistant to features editor.

“I’m delighted to see Tamoor join GameSpot as key member of its editorial team in the UK,” Crossley

said. “Knowing fi rst-hand how skilled and dedicated Tamoor is, I’m confi dent he’ll be in his element.

“I’m also incredibly proud to be promoted to the role of UK editor. It’s a huge opportunity, and I’m looking forward to repaying the faith that CBS Interactive has shown in me.”

Hussain added: “I’m thrilled to join the GameSpot team, where I’ll get to work with people I looked up to as an aspiring games journalist. Whether it’s news, editorial, or video, few site can produce content to the quality that GameSpot does and even fewer can do it as consistently.”

GameSpot UK names Rob Crossley as editor

‘Indie developers do not need publishers’.

That was the fi rst line in an article MCV published in January 2014, regarding the role of publishers in a digital world.

The conclusion was that developers can launch a game without any outside help - they can fi nd all the expertise to get their games out there simply by reading MCV. But if they don’t want to spend their time agonising about QA, localisation, age ratings, distribution, marketing and so forth, perhaps they might want to fi nd a partner to do that for them.

It’s such a role reversal to the old way of doing business, when publishers held the key to a game’s success. Today, with new funding options and the waning power of retail, publishers are simply glorifi ed service companies.

Since we published that article, the role of publishing in today’s industry has been a central conversation within these pages. We’ve had regular columns on the subject and we even introduced an ‘indie games label’ award to the MCV Awards.

The problem is that anyone who can draw up a press release and has a direct line to Shahid at Sony can call themselves a ‘publisher’. Indie developers don’t need big names or a glorifi ed PR agency, they need a business that can signifi cantly increase their game’s sales and popularity.

Can the publisher get a game distributed internationally? Do they know which QA fi rm off ers the best service at the most aff ordable price? Can they

get it into GAME? On Xbox Live and PSN? On stage at E3? At events like Gamescom?

This is where the ‘old-guard’ of the games industry can help. These experienced executives may not be ‘digital natives’, but they know a thing or two about how to make a game a hit.

Of course, the challenge for indies is knowing who best to partner with. Who genuinely wants to make their game a hit, and who is just in it for the money? Who is going to E3 to do everything it can to promote their game, and who is going because everyone’s heading to Vegas afterwards?

Hopefully we can help there. We will be discussing indie games publishing every day during May via MCVuk.com, profi ling the biggest players and discussing the latest trends.

It all ties in with our Interface event on May 14th, where we have almost 40 indies coming to pitch their games to potential partners.

And hopefully the publishers set to attend will have their pitches all prepared and ready to go, too. After all, it’s not as if the developers actually need them.cdring@nbmedia.com

THE EDITOR

Today, with new funding options and the waning power of retail, publishers are simply glorifi ed service companies.

PUBLISHING’S BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL

by Christopher Dring

EA veteran Keith Ramsdale has left the publisher.

Ramsdale has been a part of EA for 19 years, beginning his career as National Account Controller and rising up to the role of VP for Europe’s major markets. He has held several roles at the business, including marketing director, sales director and country manager.

He is also a UKIE Board member, and has been actively involved in industry matters – including pushing for more digital data, and was involved in the 2008 Byron review.

Keith Ramsdale departs EA

MCV GameTime is provided by Generation Media0207 255 4650 | www.generationmedia.co.uk

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com06

by Matthew Jarvis

SKYLANDERS, Disney Infi nity and Amiibo are the biggest accessory winners of 2015 so far, with all three franchises seeing major year-on-year growth.

Data tracker GfK Chart-Track reports that Skylanders toys are up 44 per cent in units and 25 per cent in revenue for the year-to-date. Meanwhile, Disney Infi nity is up by 56 per cent and 37 per cent in units and revenue respectively.

However, it’s Nintendo that has seen the biggest success of 2015 so far, with offi cial accessory unit sales accelerating 145 per cent and revenue jumping

121 per cent – a success Chart-Track attributes to toys-to-life brand Amiibo.

Nintendo previously told MCV that it was working on providing more Amiibo stock for retailers after the brand ‘smashed’ expectations.

Toys-to-life products have been boosted by retail off ers, including multi-buy promotions.

“Skylanders and Infi nity are up year-to-date because of

the launch of Skylanders Trap Team and Disney Infi nity 2.0, both of which increased demand beyond their Q4 2014 launches,” said Chris Poole, senior account manager at Chart-Track.

Toys-to-life boom: Disney Infi nity and Skylanders see sales spike in early 2015

CONSOLIDATED TV audience data for Q1 2015 has revealed growth in games TV market ad pressure.

This is the second year of growth across Q1. It’s impressive considering Q1 2014 was up by over 60 per cent versus Q1 2013, with January and February being bolstered by the tail end of launch campaigns for Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One.

After a healthy January 2015 dominated by King and Supercell, ad pressure was curtailed across February and March, with March fi nishing seven per cent down versus the same period in 2014.

Despite this decrease in ad pressure, there was no evidence this was stimulated by a decline in activity from any one advertiser.

March 2014 was infl uenced by the ‘battle of the system sellers’ which took place between Infamous: Second Son and Titanfall in Q1 2014.

With the number of brands on air almost identical (average of 53 per month in 2015 vs 54 in 2014), the average campaign is actually 12 per cent heavier in 2015 than it was in 2014.

The likes of mobile players King and Supercell are continuing to dominate the marketplace even further as King increased its TV presence by over 30 per cent year-on-year in Q1.

Meanwhile, Supercell recently reported that it doubled its annual profi ts in 2014 versus 2013 – the only way is up.

Q1 REVEALS GAMES AND CONSOLES TV AD MARKET GROWTHThis week, GameTime compares the games ad market this year versus that of 2014

Year-on-year percentage diff erence 2014 2015

Year

-on-

year

per

cent

age

diff

eren

ceIndividual TVR

s

-40

40

20

0

-20

80

60

0

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

2,500

Jan 71%

Feb -6% -21%

Jan - March Total 7%

Amiibo sales boost Nintendo’s accessory business by over 100 per cent as brand sees sell-out success

NEWS

Call our specialist sales team01279 822 822

exertis.co.uk/homeexertis.co.uk/home/store

In August last year, Activision’s CEO Eric Hirshberg told investors that its upcoming shooter Call

of Duty: Advanced Warfare was suffering from ‘an industry-wide downturn’ in pre-orders.

Many commentators dismissed Hirshberg’s comments, insisting that Call of Duty’s problems were its own, not an ‘industry-wide’ issue.

But in Hirshberg’s defence, leading publishers had been telling us all summer of their struggle to stimulate pre-orders for even some of their biggest games. There were exceptions – Watch Dogs and Destiny received plenty of advanced orders – but anecdotally we were hearing of apathy towards pre-ordering. As a result, we asked consumer data specialist Ipsos Mori, the team behind the lauded GameTrack surveys, to ask its base of consumers if they were holding off pre-ordering, and if so why?

We printed the headline results last week. In the UK, 23 per cent of gamers aged 11 to 64 pre-ordered

at least one game in 2014, a far higher proportion than France (13 per cent), Germany (16 per cent) and Spain (12 per cent). Five per cent of UK gamers pre-ordered more games in 2014 than in 2013.

However, the declines in the UK were far steeper. Nine per cent said that they had pre-ordered fewer games, while 11 per cent said they stopped pre-ordering altogether (for the rest of the data, ten per cent said they pre-ordered about the same, 49 per cent said they have never pre-ordered, while the remainder ‘didn’t know’).

The survey was confirmation that customers were turning away from pre-ordering. But does it really matter?

“Whether physical or digital, pre-orders are good indicators of the levels of purchase intent you have been able to generate,” says Tim Woodley, SVP of global brand and marketing at 505 Games. “Other key performance indicators (KPIs) are somewhat arbitrary, but the start of the pre-order is that

moment where you’re asking your consumer to vote with their wallet. It is the ultimate conversion point.”

It’s a point backed up by one very senior UK industry executive, who spoke to us under the condition of anonymity: “The dynamics are changing, but pre-orders are still important and will continue to be. It’s the best way of judging how successful your game will be.”

However, the exec adds, consumers are still coming out. They’re just not all buying on day one. “Week one is still the most important time,” he says. “But we’re seeing sales decline at a slower rate than before.”

CONSUMER APATHYSo what is causing the drop in pre-orders?

“The problem may be due to the fact that publishers and retailers have done a pretty good job of supplying the demand,” continues the publisher boss. “When was the last time a game sold out? There’s no fear of that anymore, and that was one of the big drivers behind pre-orders.”

He also theorised consumers are demanding more. “They want good pre-order incentives. Digital add-ons are popular, but what you don’t want to do is give pre-order customers an advantage over non-pre-order customers. You’ll just piss someone off.”

Woodley agrees: “As with any marketing in the modern era, any incentive offer has to be engaging or imaginative. Consumers frankly get bored with uninspiring, recycled or copycat offers, whether that’s the omnipresent pre-order t-shirt from years gone

ADVANCE WARNING

Consumers are pre-ordering fewer games. How much of an issue is it for the industry, and what can be done? Christopher Dring investigates

Consumers frankly get bored with uninspiring, recycled or copycat pre-order offers.

Tim Woodley, 505 Games

Publishers must be creative with pre-order bonuses, says 505’s Woodley

08May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

NEWS ANALYSIS PRE-ORDER CHALLENGES

by or the ho-hum run-of-the-mill digital content offers of today.

“A few notable examples aside, things have become very formulaic in the pre-order space. It is incumbent on marketers to bring creativity and innovation to their pre-order incentive schemes.”

Both these theories are backed up by GameTrack’s report. 12 per cent of those that are pre-ordering fewer games, or had stopped pre-ordering, said that it was because ‘there is always stock’. Seven per cent said that the pre-order bonuses were ‘not good enough’.

But actually the main reason, according to GameTrack, is that consumers are spending money on other non-gaming products (29 per cent). This is hard to qualify, especially as overall game sales increased last year, so it might suggest consumers are being distracted from pre-ordering by alternative entertainment.

The second-biggest reason is in relation to price. 25 per cent said they were pre-ordering fewer games because they ‘prefer to wait for the price to come down’. You can appreciate this thinking, especially when games last year – such as Alien: Isolation and The Evil Within – were sold for over £50 in October, but cost a little over £20 during Black Friday at the end of November.

On page 16, Scottish retail chain Games Centre claims it saw an increase in pre-orders last year, and puts that down to special pre-order discounts and trade-in offers it ran. Which just goes to show how price sensitive consumers remain.

BROKEN GAMESOne of the other assumptions that came through our social media feeds is that consumers are not pre-ordering due to a spate of games launching below the quality expected – including with bugs.

Ten per cent of those that have stopped or slowed their pre-ordering said they were waiting to see what critics and friends said about the game. It’s important to note that this survey was conducted during Q4 last year, so high profile issues that impacted games like Assassin’s Creed: Unity,

Halo: The Master Chief Collection and DriveClub had only just occurred, and these results may not entirely reflect those concerns. “We haven’t helped ourselves with all those games launching with problems,” said the exec. “I expect some gamers will be wary about pre-ordering this year because of that.”

IMMEDIATE ACCESSBut one interesting suggestion as to why gamers have stopped pre-ordering, is that they no-longer want to wait for products.

“We live in a world of immediacy and instant access. Anticipation and expectation can be frustrations rather than buzz-builders,” suggests Woodley. “In a post-Steve Jobs era where a product can be announced one day and available in stores the next, consumers have become trained to expect instant availability. Overly-protracted marketing campaigns are fighting against consumer behaviour and the concept of pre-ordering starts to look antiquated.”

In a world where people can stream an entire new TV series immediately via Netflix, could customers be ignoring a game that’s not out for nine months?

“Now that’s an interesting suggestion,” says our anonymous exec. “Impossible to quantify, but that makes a lot of sense.”

So perhaps the industry’s obsession with pre-orders is damaging. Perhaps a game might

enjoy more success if publishers announced them closer to launch. No need for multiple PR beats and excitement can carry from announce to launch. But it would be a brave publisher to try it.

For now, pre-orders remain central in most marketing campaigns. And so publishers must raise their game if they want to keep it that way.

“A decline in pre-ordering isn’t exactly terminal for our industry,” concludes Woodley. “After all,

in this world of marketing tech and analytics, there’s an ever-increasing number of ways to evaluate purchase intent and consumer engagement. That said, it remains one of the more robust KPIs in any given campaign, especially in the physical space where sell-in numbers are predicated on it. Even in the digital world, pre-orders typically represent the final check-point prior to launch to indicate whether it’s time to double-down.”

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

PRE-ORDER CHALLENGES NEWS ANALYSIS

09

START YOUR ENGINESNot satisfi ed with the state of racing games, genre veteran Slightly Mad decided to make a brand new franchise with aims of taking on and beating Gran Turismo and Forza. Alex Calvin speaks to creative

director Andy Tudor to fi nd out if Project CARS can live up to its ambition

PROJECT CARS

Release Date: May 8th, TBC (Wii U) Formats: PS4, XO, Wii U, PC Publisher: Bandai Namco Developer: Slightly Mad Studios

THE BIG GAME PROJECT CARS

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com10

Project CARS is us having this bold ambition to go up against Forza and Gran Turismo.

Andy Tudor, Slightly Mad Studios

Four years ago, nobody wanted Project CARS.

The team at Slightly Mad Studios was so dissatisfied with the current crop of simulation driving games, that it decided to make its own with the aim of being the best in the genre. It hoped its ambitious aim would attract publishers far and wide, but it did the opposite. “It was at a time when the current generation of consoles were on the radar but no-one knew what they were called, how powerful they were going to be or when they were coming out,” says creative director Andy Tudor. “There was this airy-fairy concept that they will be coming out soon, but we don’t really know anything about them.

“We went around to a number of publishers with a concept of Project CARS, this game that would compete with Forza and Gran Turismo, and understandably there were some publishers who found it too risky. They had no idea when the new consoles were coming out and racing games cost a lot of money to make in terms of getting licences for all the cars and tracks. They trusted that we could do it, because we had the development heritage, but it was just too much of a risk. They were saying: Who’s to say when you do release in three years time, you are going to compete against the big boys?”

But Slightly Mad was determined. It believed it could not just take-on Forza and Gran Turismo, but beat them.

“This is us coming out with this pretty bold ambition to go up against Forza and Gran Turismo. There are features that players of both of those series have been wanting for a very long time but they have started to feel very jaded with those two particular franchises,” says Tudor.

“You can’t do pitstops in either of those two games. In Project CARS there’s dynamic weather, so while you are driving it can start raining mid-way through the race which means you have adjust your strategy – so that’s where pit stops come in.

“We also break from the tradition of having to grind through the game for cash and XP

WHEN Project CARS comes out later this month, fans will be able to use VR headsets such as Oculus Rift with the racing title.

And it’s all down to the studio’s love for new technology, explains creative director Andy Tudor.

“We’re all gadget freaks at the studio, so any new cool thing that can be played with, any test kit or whatever arrives, the team are super anxious to get

that stuff working,” he explains. “This started initially with 4K resolution. That is getting more popular now, and we had that running over two years ago. And now we’ve gone beyond that and got it running at 12K resolution.

“It’s the same with VR. We saw the Oculus Rift and we saw the potential for how good it might be for racing games where all the data is coming

directly at your eyes as you are driving forward. We’ve been working with Oculus and with Sony on its Morpheus headset. Every Steam version released on day one will work with Oculus Rift, and therefore we’ve seen it makes you a better driver, it makes it more immersive, and if you have a racing wheel as well, you are pretty close to having a Holodeck because it’s so good.”

TECHNICAL SKILLS

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

PROJECT CARS THE BIG GAME

11

just to unlock things. Our career mode is informed by real racing drivers and matches. There’s no point in making gamers grind to unlock content. Modern gamers are subject to millions of distractions, such as Twitter, Netflix, YouTube and second screen apps.” UNCERTAIN FUTURE But with no publishers on-board, Slightly Mad had to turn to another source in-order to fund its game.

“The traditional way of making games is broken,” Tudor explains.

“It’s very risky. You sit and make a video game for three years and hope that your project is going to be what people actually want to play. You can go to E3 and Gamescom and you focus group test along the way, but it’s not the same as having users playing the game from day one and giving you feedback every single day, and ultimately guiding and approving the game so it is what they want to play.

“Kickstarter had begun to do well in the States, but it wasn’t available in the UK then. And it certainly hadn’t had the big success stories that we have seen since like Double Fine. So we said we’d go make our own crowd

funding concept. That’s where the World of Mass Development (WMD) portal was born. From then on we opened the doors; we had 80,000 people joining, we raised over €3.6m (£2.6m), we got all the money we needed to make the game, and we delivered on a promise of letting players try the game from day one right through to the final build. We have just delivered to them.”

But after raising the money to develop the game it wanted to make, Slightly Mad still turned to Bandai Namco to help publish the game. Why was this decision taken?

“We’re great at making games, but we have very little knowledge on physically making a disc, how you get printed materials out to press, organising PR events – we’re just not set up for that,” Tudor admits. “As much as we could do on the digital side of marketing and putting the game out to purchase on Steam and the PlayStation Network, Bandai Namco was a perfect partner to do the things and be our strength in areas we’re not so prolific in, like organising PR events for journalists to come to, putting discs in the boxes, localisation so the game can go across the globe

into emerging territories like Latin America – this is where Bandai Namco’s strengths are.”

FALSE STARTSProject CARS was initially intended to come out in November 2014. But this date slipped to March 2015, then April, and now May. “Project CARS is the start of our own franchise, it’s our own IP,” Tudor explains. “We need a strong base in order to carry on. The team has been working on the game alongside the community for over three years. They can’t do all that work and then stumble at the last block just because there were a few little issues that didn’t get fixed. We’re not in the business of doing that.

“So that extra time has been spent tidying up and

tweaking and polishing those last few things that we wanted

to be fixed. “And certainly we

absolutely made the right decision, because we’re all happy with the game right now. It’s reached that stage where we’re all really pleased and proud of it and just having those extra few months has made a whole world of

The traditional way of making games is broken. You make something and hope that it’s what people want to play.

Andy Tudor, Slightly Mad Studios

Project CARS is at the simulation end of the racing game spectrum

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.comJ12

THE BIG GAME PROJECT CARS

difference. There have been many recent games that have come out and had online issues or crippling bugs, and we can’t afford to have that occur on our own project. For people who take the day off work to play a game on the day of release, only for the title to be delayed, it’s heartbreaking. But delaying Project CARS was absolutely the right decision and we’ve got it to a great stage now. And the game matches our original vision.” A DIFFERENT RACE And by moving out of the Q4 period, Project CARS avoided going up against the likes of Forza Horizon 2, The Crew and DriveClub

“We don’t really class them as competition really. They’re in the arcade-action kind of space,” Tudor says. “We are on the other end of the spectrum – we’re at the simulation, realistic end of the scale. The market was absolutely crowded at Christmas, but we still thought we could compete in that space and we didn’t get scared off by the competition certainly.

“But equally, releasing in May is perfect because there is no

competition. There’s only the F1 title from Codemasters upcoming, but we have modern open-wheel cars in our game as well. We have a real clear schedule now as well. That’s been one great benefit of moving our release date.”

Tudor beleives publishers and developers are missing a trick in focusing so much on Christmas.

“I bought a load of games that came out last November,” he says.

“Over Christmas I managed to work my way through a few of them, but then it comes to later in the year and there’s a real drought of games and that’s when you start searching through the Steam store and looking at the Humble Bundles, maybe going into some gaming areas that you wouldn’t normally go into like the indie games, or a cool iPhone game.

“Consumers play games throughout the year, so there are new opportunities like Easter time when the kids are off on holiday and adults have some more free time.”

Tudor concludes: “It’s set up for success hopefully, and it has a little more visibility than it might have done at Christmas because there aren’t so many games in this particular period.”

THE ‘CARS’ in Project CARS is actually an acronym. It stands for Community Assisted Racing Simulator. The name refers to the fact that fans have been heavily involved in the game, and has even tested it, throughout development.

They’ve also helped promote the game, too.

“There were already a vast amount of people involved in the WMD (World of Mass Development) forum when we arrived,” Lee Kirton, PR and marketing boss of publisher Bandai Namco says.

“What we did was identify people who had been promoting the game over the last three years and work closely with them in pushing out the content they were putting together.

“They had early access to the game. There’s been some great video guys in the community who have been cutting together these astonishing trailers. We’ve been working with them to put them out as official trailers.”

And promoting the game isn’t all the fans have done.

“You’d normally expect a company to come out with some sort of second screen app that supports the game, but again, because it’s so community-based we just let the fans make those apps,” Slightly Mad creative director Andy Tudor says. “We gave them an API and they’ve made between ten and 12 different apps for tablets, phones, the Logitech gaming keyboard. It’s fantastic. We’ve put the power of that stuff in the community’s hands.”

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Having pitstops and dynamic weather are key features to Project CARS

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201513

PROJECT CARS THE BIG GAME

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com14

MARKET MOVES

BANDAI NAMCO | The publisher has made a new hire to its UK PR team.

GARETH BAGG joins as PR executive, and will be leading the firm’s PR efforts and will be working alongside its agency, Stature PR.

This follows Bagg’s two-year stint as PR and marketing assistant at Kalypso Media, where he assisted in the firm’s PR, marketing and retail activity.

“It’s a pleasure to welcome Gareth to the new Bandai Namco Entertainment team,” PR and marketing director LEE KIRTON said.

“He brings with him a huge amount of passion, enthusiasm and ideas and as we move

forward working with our agency Stature PR, he and the team will follow up on exciting launches, whilst working on creative campaigns for many future titles.”

FUTURE | Kotaku UK has hired a news editor.

JULIAN BENSON, formerly

of PCGamesN, has come on board to the UK branch of the online games brand.

This follows the departure of former news editor LEON HURLEY, who has moved over to Future’s GamesRadar+ as its executive news editor.

Benson has worked at PCGamesN since August 2012

as a staff writer. Before he worked as a freelance PR for Ladbury PR, and night-shift editor for Gorkana.

“I’m incredibly happy to be joining Kotaku UK as its news editor,” Benson said.

“Over the past year I’ve found myself checking it daily to see what oddities of gaming culture the team had unearthed and to read their informed coverage of the industry’s biggest stories.”

Editor KEZA MACDONALD added: “I’m delighted to have Julian on board. He has a killer approach to games journalism and I’m confident he can help us develop our reporting in the coming year. I’m looking forward to being back at full force.”

DOVETAIL GAMES | The Rail Simulator company has hired two new employees.

ESTELLE TIMOTHY (top) has come on board as licensing manager having previously worked in local government. She was a project manager for Medway Council for nine years. Meanwhile CHRIS APPLEGARTH (not pictured) joins as programmer, and will be working on an upcoming flight simulator. Applegarth was previously at Distinctive Developments, working on the likes of Championship Manager. Prior to that he graduated from University of Hull with a MA in computer games programming.

BANDAI NAMCO BOLSTERS PR TEAM Kalypso’s Bagg joins the Dark Souls publisher Kotaku UK announces news editor Two hires at Dovetail

APPOINTMENTS

ALLOY PLATFORM | Industry veteran and former Microsoft exec Phil Harrison has set up a new venture entitled Alloy Platform Industries.

The firm plans to be working on yet-to-be-specified consumer technology. Alloy Platform has also licensed some technology from Microsoft to this end.

TENCENT | The Chinese games publisher generated more revenue in 2014 than any other publisher.

Newzoo data shows that in the 2014 fiscal year, Tencent’s games attracted revenue of $7.2bn – a huge increase on 2013’s $5.3bn.

NEWS UK AND IRELAND | The owner of The Sun has backed eSports firm Gfinity for the coming two years.

The Sun is now the official partner of the Gfinity Championship Series for 2015 to 2016, and the title sponsor for the UK Championship Series for the same period.

This is the first major media deal that Gfinity has made, and has allowed the company to expand its annual Gfinity Championships tournament.

“This is not a simple sponsorship agreement but a strategic partnership that will enable both parties to improve, develop and grow the UK’s evolving eSports sector,” explained Neville Upton, Gfinity co-founder and CEO.

“News UK’s faith in Gfinity is testament to the exceptional quality of product we already have on offer. The backing of such a large organisation is not only great news for us but also a huge boost to the UK’s burgeoning eSports sector.”

AROUND THE INDUSTRY

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201515

EDITORIAL CONTACTS

EDITORIAL CONTACTS

Production Executive: Elizabeth Parkereparker@nbmedia.com

Head of Operations: Stuart Moody smoody@nbmedia.com

Circulation: Lianne Daveyldavey@nbmedia.com

Finance Manager: Michael Canham mcanham@nbmedia.com

Head of Design and Production:Kelly Sambridgeksambridge@nbmedia.com

US CorrespondentErik Johnsonejohnson@nbmedia.com

THE RETAIL ADVISORY BOARD

MCV has an exclusive media partnership with Famitsu – Japan’s leading video

games analyst and news source

ISSN: 1469-4832

Copyright 2015

Please address all enquiries to:Newbay Media, MCV, Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street, Hertford, SG14 1JA.

Printed By: Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith,Blackwood, NP12 2YA

Newbay Media specialises in trade-dedicated print and digital publishing for entertainment and leisure markets. As well as MCV, Newbay publishes Develop, PCR, ToyNews, Music Week, MI Pro, Audio Pro International and BikeBiz. It also has two online-only brands: Mobile Entertainment, dedicated to the growing mass market smartphone sector, and Licensing.biz, for everyone in the global licensing industry. It also runs a number of events including the MCV Industry Excellence Awards, the London Games Conference and the Games Media Awards.

Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street, Hertford, Hertfordshire, England

SG14 1JA

© Newbay Media 2015All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher. The contents of MCV are subject to reproduction in information storage and retrieval systems.

MCV is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association. For the 12 months ending December 2009, MCV had an average weekly net circulation of 8,045. MCV’s circulation is 100 per cent named and zero per cent duplicated.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS United Kingdom £150 l Europe £175 l Rest of the World £250To order your subscription via Visa, Mastercard, Switch or AMEX or to make changes to your subscription details, contact mcv.subscriptions@c-cms.com or call 01580 883848.

Editorial: 01992 515303 | Advertising: 01992 535647 | Fax: 01992 535648

Ben Parfi tt Associate Editorbparfi tt@nbmedia.com

Matt Jarvis Staff Writermjarvis@nbmedia.com

Michael FrenchPublishermfrench@nbmedia.com

Sam Richwood Designersrichwood@nbmedia.com

Alex BoucherGroup Sales Manageraboucher@nbmedia.com

Conor Tallon Account Managerctallon@nbmedia.com

MCV takes soundings from its Retail Advisory Board on the biggest issues in the industry. The current members are...

Charlotte Knight GAME

Steve Moore Simply Games

Jon Hayes Tesco

Sarah Jasper The Hut

Phil Moore Grainger Games

Igor Cipolletta ShopTo

Dermot Stapleton Get Games

Niall Lawlor GameStop

Phil Browes HMV

Craig Watson Dixons Retail

David Firth Shop Direct

Don McCabe CHIPS

Gurdeep Hunjan Sainsbury’s

Simon Urquhart Microsoft

Robert Lindsay Games Centre

Stephen Staley Gameseek

Robert Hennessy John Lewis

Paul Sulyok Green Man Gaming

James Cooke Argos

Christopher Dring Editorcdring@nbmedia.com

Alex Calvin Staff Writeracalvin@nbmedia.com

brandhere

PROMOTE YOUR JOB EVERY WEEK THROUGH MCV PRINT AND ONLINE

CONTACT CONOR TALON FOR MORE INFORMATION

01992 535 647 OR EMAIL CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

your brandhere

Congratulations on winning your fourth MCV Award. Thanks. It’s not something we’d take for granted. This year, as the award included online retailers, we thought we wouldn’t win. It was a nice surprise.

You are an online retailer yourself – how has that been going for you? The new site started in October. It’s still not quite how we want it to be, but we’re certainly getting a lot more traffic than we did before. Online has been the biggest area of growth for us – both with our site and selling through other online channels as well. We still sell over Amazon and Ebay, and we also have partnered up with GAME Marketplace.

Why do that?It is important that we sell through as many channels as possible. There’s no point in limiting ourselves to just our own website. Our stores and our site are the clear priority, but if we can make sure that customers have access to our products in as many places as possible, that can only improve the business. How people buy is changing, and what they purchase is changing. It would be wrong to limit the business to what we have been doing for the past ten or 15 years. Everyone is looking around and saying ‘we’re doing this, but what else can we do?’.

I know you have been looking at digital. How’s that going? We anticipate digital sales accounting for at least five per cent of our overall business within the next 12 to 18 months. It’s increased

hugely over the last year, from nothing really. And the range we have now is much broader. We have also recently run publisher-supported promotions that really worked for us. Digital is developing as the months go on. That’s where the market is headed. And the range of content will expand and how we promote that will develop as well.

What digital content do you still want? Microsoft is the key area for improvement for us. We are looking to offer our customers a similar product range to that of GAME. That’s something that’s progressing and we’re in discussions about the next step. But that’s not something that can happen overnight. Our customers are getting more comfortable purchasing digital at a store level. We’ve ran various promotions through CentreSoft on Sony products, unique to Games Centre, and they’ve really worked for us. It’s early days, but the more we do them the more we can go to other publishers confident in the results.

Last year you opened your eighth store in Clydebank. Do you have any plans for further expansion? We’re not ruling out any more stores should the opportunity arise, but there are none due in the immediate future. We have other projects in the pipeline that will provide better opportunities than store openings at present.

On last week’s cover, we had a story about pre-orders being in decline. Is this something you have experienced? No. For us, pre-orders are actually increasing. We’ve had a number of pre-order incentives running over the last few months in particular. That’s something we’ve actively been working on.

How have you been keeping pre-orders up? We’ve been giving customers incentives to pre-order – trade a game back in early against a pre-order, selling pre-order games at an early bird rate, and using POS and social media to make consumers aware of any pre-order bonuses or giveaways available for pre launch. What are the other issues facing Games Centre?Our immediate challenge is the quiet slate over the summer. Other than that, we aren’t facing many challenges that we weren’t already faced with. There’s a good opportunity at the moment for specialist retailers. Customers buying habits have shifted over the past six months away from non-specialists, which provides a great opportunity for specialists to take advantage in the coming year.

THE KING IN THE NORTH

Scottish retailer Games Centre is a force to be reckoned with in the indie space, and now has four MCV Awards under its belt to prove it. Alex Calvin catches up with MD Robert Lindsay

It’s important to sell through as many channels as possible. There’s no point in limiting ourselves to just our website.

Robert Lindsay, Games Centre

Games Centre took away its fourth MCV Award this year

XXX XXX

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com0016

MCV AWARDS WINNER GAMES CENTRE

“Why did you not just call it Total Warhammer?”

Of all the serious business questions we could have asked about Total War: Warhammer, the new collaboration between Creative Assembly and Games Workshop, this perhaps wasn’t the one to lead with. But we had to know.

Brand director Rob Bartholomew laughs: “For all branding purposes, and my own marketing self-validation, we had to call it Total War: Warhammer. But we won’t get too bent out of shape if everyone calls it Total Warhammer.”

WHAT WAR IS GOOD FORCreative Assembly first discussed making a Warhammer game ten years ago. The studio is best known for creating historically accurate PC strategy games, and the Warhammer IP gave it the chance to try its hand at fantasy.

But it never had the resources to make it a reality. That was until recently, when Sega restructured its business around its studios and IP – including Creative Assembly and Total War.

The studio’s headcount greatly increased. There are currently five Total War projects in development; as well as Warhammer, there is a team dedicated to downloadable content for the recent Total War: Attila, a group working on Total War Battles: Kingdom for tablets, a number of people developing the MOBA-esque Total War: Arena and another set currently in pre-production on the next big Total War title.

Before this year, there had only been ten Total War games and

many of them are still played today; the six-year-old Empire: Total War remains a popular title, and hit 3m sales two weeks ago. It begs the question: do gamers even want this many new titles?

“It’s something we have to bear in mind, but we’ve not seen any evidence that we are saturating the market,” retorts Bartholomew.

“Previously there had been at least two years between major tentpole Total War games, and that will still be the case. It’s just on top of that we have a number of other side projects that will fill in the gaps between releases.”

FOUR’S COMPANYSo let’s take a look at those projects.

Total War: Warhammer is the first in a trilogy. Bartholomew explains that this will consist of three ‘massive’ standalone titles that can be connected together to create a ‘giant experience’.

“We will have to go a long way to mess this up,” he says. “Warhammer and Total War are both fantastic IPs that

have been going for many years. There is a lot of stuff to like in that recipe, which I don’t think a lot of other Warhammer games have going for them. It’s a real marriage of IP.”

The next game is Total War: Arena, a sort-of-but-not-quite MOBA. There is a massive number of competitors in that market but Creative Assembly hopes Total War’s combination of authenticity and scale will set Arena apart.

Then there’s Total War Battles: Kingdom for mobile devices. The firm attempted to make games for smart devices before, but with a paid-for app. This time it’s trying the free-to-play business model (also present in Arena). This model has faced criticism from core gamers, and it’s something Bartholomew is well aware of.

“We are mindful of not doing an injustice to the brand,” he says.

“Players should be able to play the game, enjoy it, and, if they pay some money, alter their experience, but they won’t get an advantage over people who haven’t paid.”

With these three titles, plus Attila DLC and an unannounced Total War game to come, there’s certainly plenty for the developer to be getting on with. Yet there is one area we’ve not covered: The console. Creative Assembly made a grand return to console in 2014 with Alien: Isolation, so could Total War also make the leap?

“We are waiting for the right opportunity and spending a bit

of time prototyping here and there,” admits Bartholomew. “Strategy games on consoles is something that our designers think is a problem that can be solved.”

A WAR ON MANY FRONTS

PC strategy series Total War is braced for its most ambitious year yet, with four games in development. Christopher Dring discusses the franchise, and the newly-

announced Total War: Warhammer, with brand director Rob Bartholomew

Total War: Warhammer is a real marriage of IP.

Rob Bartholomew, Creative Assembly

There are five Total War projects in development, including Total War: Arena (pictured)

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER INTERVIEW

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201517

DATA ANALYSIS

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com18

Source

Games and Charts compiled by GfK Chart-Track

Mortal Kombat X holds steady at the top, as Minecraft: PlayStation Edition rises to No.4

WARNER Bros’ latest entry in the Mortal Kombat series of fi ghting games is once again No.1 in the All Formats Top 40.

It maintains this position in spite of a 64 per cent week-on-week drop in units sales. ROCKSTAR’s Grand Theft Auto V fell 50 per cent in sales, yet it maintains its postion in second place. Meanwhile, EA’s Battlefi eld Hardline is at No.3. Sales of the shooter fell 26 per cent

However, not everything fell. SONY’s Minecraft: PlayStation Edition jumps up fi ve ranks to fourth place after sales of the PS4 SKU shot up 172 per cent.

This is thanks to a hardware bundle sold by Argos and GAME, The

retailers were selling a PlayStation 4 console and MOJANG’s construction game for £289.99.

The only new entry this week is the PS4 SKU of Tropico 5, which brings KALYPSO’s title back into the Top 40.

Meanwhile in the Xbox Live charts, COFFEE STAIN STUDIO’s Goat Simulator takes the top spot from Minecraft. The comedy game was No.2 last week. The Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft falls to third place.

And in the Steam Top 10, Grand Theft Auto V holds pole position. Meanwhile new entry Killing Floor 2 takes both second and third places thanks to a deluxe edition.

TW LW Title Format Publisher 02 02 Grand Theft Auto V PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Rockstar03 03 Battlefi eld Hardline PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC EA04 09 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition PS4, PS3, Vita Sony05 04 FIFA 15 PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS, Vita, PC EA06 08 Minecraft: Xbox Edition XO, 360 Microsoft07 07 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Activision Blizzard08 10 Dying Light PS4, XO, PC Warner Bros09 11 Borderlands: The Handsome Collection PS4, XO 2K Games10 12 WWE 2K15 PS4, XO, PS3, 360 2K Games11 06 Far Cry 4 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Ubisoft12 05 Bloodborne PS4 Sony13 15 Disney Infi nity 2.0 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, Wii Disney14 14 Halo: The Master Chief Collection XO Microsoft15 16 Terraria PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC 505 Games/Merge16 18 LEGO Marvel Super Heroes PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, DS, PC Warner Bros17 13 Forza Horizon 2 XO, 360 Microsoft18 RE Tropico 5 PS4, 360, PC Kalypso Media19 17 Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Bandai Namco20 22 LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, DS, PC Warner Bros21 33 Final Fantasy Type-0 HD PS4, XO Square Enix22 20 The Crew PS4, XO, 360, PC Ubisoft23 24 Skylanders Trap Team PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS Activision Blizzard24 25 Assassin’s Creed Unity PS4, XO, PC Ubisoft25 30 Destiny PS4, XO, PS3, 360 Activision Blizzard26 35 Watch Dogs PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, PC Ubisoft27 19 Ride PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC PQube28 36 Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Warner Bros29 21 Evolve PS4, XO, PC 2K Games30 32 The Sims 4: Get to Work PC EA31 34 Super Smash Bros Wii U, 3DS Nintendo32 37 Resident Evil: Revelations 2 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Capcom33 29 Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC EA34 31 Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Konami35 RE Just Dance 2015 PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, Wii Ubisoft36 39 The LEGO Movie Videogame PS4, XO, Wii U, PS3, 360, 3DS, Vita, DS, PC Warner Bros37 RE Tomodachi Life 3DS Nintendo38 RE Alien Isolation PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Sega39 40 The Evil Within PS4, XO, PS3, 360, PC Bethesda40 RE Mario Kart 8 Wii U Nintendo

TOP 40 UK RETAIL01 MORTAL KOMBAT X WARNER BROS

FORMATS: PS4/XO/PC DEVELOPER: NETHERREALM STUDIOS

Week ending April 25th Week ending April 25th

DATA & RESEARCH

TW LW TITLE PUBLISHER 02 NEW Killing Floor 2 Tripwire Interactive 03 NEW Killing Floor 2 Deluxe Edition Tripwire Interactive 04 02 Counter-Strike: Global Off ensive Valve05 RE Skyrim: Legendary Edition Bethesda 06 RE Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor Premium Ed Warner Bros 07 08 The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Bethesda 08 05 Cities: Skylines Paradox Interactive 09 04 Elite: Dangerous Frontier Developments 10 03 Mortal Kombat X Warner Bros

01 GRAND THEFT AUTO VPUBLISHER: ROCKSTAR DEVELOPER: ROCKSTAR NORTH

TOP 10 STEAM (GLOBAL)

PRESENTS5 SECOND FACTS

PDP design & manufacture the Offi cial Microsoft licensed Xbox ONE

TV Kinect Sensor Clip

europesales@pdp.comwww.pdp.com

Read and remember these stats so you can sound clever at the next Monday morning meeting...

1.6mMicrosoft sold 1.6m

Xbox consoles for the quarter ending March 31st. This is a decline

of 400,000 units year-on-year

1mCapcom’s re-release of

Resident Evil HD has sold 1m units wordwide since its arrival in January on

PS4, Xbox One, PS3, 360 and PC

£14mThe BFI has announced that £14m was spent on the 19 titles approved for UK tax breaks in their fi rst

full year

£6.4bnTesco has reported a

pre-tax loss of £6.4bn for the year ending February. The fi rm

anticipated a loss of £5bn

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201519

DATA ANALYSISSource

TW LW Title Format Publisher 02 02 Mortal Kombat X XO Warner Bros 03 05 Grand Theft Auto V PC Rockstar04 30 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition PS4 Sony05 09 Minecraft: Xbox Edition 360 Microsoft06 07 Grand Theft Auto V XO Rockstar07 06 Battlefi eld Hardline PS4 EA08 04 Bloodborne PS4 Sony09 08 Battlefi eld Hardline XO EA10 10 Halo: The Master Chief Collection XO Microsoft11 03 Grand Theft Auto V PC Rockstar12 11 FIFA 15 PS4 EA 13 NEW Tropico 5 PS4 Kalypso14 19 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition PS3 Sony15 17 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare XO Activision Blizzard16 18 Dying Light PS4 Warner Bross17 23 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare PS4 Activision Blizzard18 12 Forza Horizon 2 XO Microsoft19 16 Borderlands: The Handsome Collection PS4 2K Games20 21 Dying Light XO Warner Bros

TOP 20 INDIVIDUAL FORMAT

01 MORTAL KOMBAT X WARNER BROS

FORMAT: PS4 DEVELOPER: NETHERREALM STUDIOS

TW TITLE PUBLISHER 02 Theory Test UK 2014 Focus Multimedia 03 Monopoly EA 04 The Sims 3 EA 05 Flightradar24 Flightradar 06 The Game of Life EA 07 Prison Life RPG NobStudio 08 AllCast Premium ClockworkMod 09 Football Manager Handheld Sega 10 Monopoly Millionaire EA

TOP 10 GLOBAL GOOGLE PLAY

TW TITLE DEVELOPER 02 Sorcery! 3 Inkle 03 Leo’s Fortune 1337 & Senri 04 Tipping Point Barnstorm 05 Plague Inc Ndemic Creations 06 Terraria 505 Games 07 The Chase Barnstorm 08 Gumball Rainbow Ruckus Turner 09 Football Manager Classic 2015 Sega 10 Monopoly EA

TOP 10 IPAD GAMES PAID

01

01

01

MINECRAFT – POCKET EDITIONDEVELOPER: MOJANG

MINECRAFT — POCKET EDITION DEVELOPER: MOJANG

MINECRAFT – POCKET EDITIONDEVELOPER: MOJANG

TW TITLE DEVELOPER 02 Spy Watch Bossa Studios 03 Heads Up! Warner Bros 04 Monopoly EA 05 Lifeline Three Minute Games 06 Plague INc Ndemic Creations 07 Leo’s Fortune 1337 & Senri 08 Rules! TheCodingMonkeys 09 Football Manager Handheld 2015 Sega 10 Trivia Crack Etermax

TOP 10 IPHONE GAMES PAID

Week ending: April 26th

Week ending: April 26th

Correct as of April 28th Week ending April 25th

TW LW TITLE PUBLISHER 02 03 SFG Soccer Stir Fry Games03 01 Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition Microsoft04 09 Terraria: Xbox 360 Edition 505 Games05 04 Avatar Warfare DigitalDNA06 06 ApocZ Sick Kreations07 05 CastleMiner Z DigitalDNA08 10 Monopoly Plus EA09 RE Survival Games Season One 2.0 Studios10 RE Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Sega

TOP 10 XBOX LIVE (UK)01 GOAT SIMULATOR MICROSOFT

DEVELOPER: COFFEE STAIN STUDIO

Week ending April 25th

Over five years ago, three industry professionals turned up to MCV’s offices with a

laptop and a pre-prepared speech. These men - including current

CEO Paul Sulyok and founding director David Clark - pitched to us their new online business: a PC digital retailer called Green Man Gaming. We were sceptical. We had sat through a number of pitches by companies threatening to take down Steam by that stage, but GMG were different. They already had publishers (26 by launch) and games (500 initially) on-board and, what’s more, it was offering gamers the chance to trade-in their digital games. It was certainly a unique concept and we left that meeting thinking to ourselves: ‘You know what? Maybe these guys could make it.”

Five years on, it is selling some 5,000 titles from over 350 companies. It has its own social network that it uses to gain insight into consumer behaviour. It is even now publishing its own games.

“The original idea behind Green Man Gaming was hatched at a Golden Joystick Awards event when a number of us were considering where the industry was going,” Green Man Gaming founder and CEO Paul Sulyok tells MCV.

“The thought of creating an online iTunes-style store mixed with an eBay exchange model for digital games was lodged in my mind. If anyone could build a digital store that would also offer a trade-in service [former EVP of engineering] Lee Packham could. And he did.”

When Green Man Gaming was first announced, there were sceptics (including us). But it turns

out the industry at large were excited about Green Man Gaming’s offering.

“The first Green Man Gaming HQ was the smallest office you could ever imagine,” Sulyok says. “From there, armed with only a handful of industry contacts, we launched. We set off networking and the response from those publishers that were eager to leverage more out of the digital landscape was incredibly supportive.

“Suddenly, we were a real commercial entity. And it wasn’t long before a whole line of triple-A publishers and industry publications were keen to work with us.

“Even though I sincerely believed in our aims, seeing sales flooding in on the live sales dashboard was confirmation that we had got it right, and the sentiment from gamers about what we were trying to do was a massive boost.

“In business, you spend a long time making sure that the thing you are building works, but it’s easy to get sidetracked, lose sight of, or even forget to keep making sure there is a true demand and desire for your product.”

POWER OF DATAAnd since those early days, Green Man Gaming’s focus has shifted somewhat. Now the business is largely centred around

the Playfire social network it acquired in 2012. This gives the retailer data and insight into consumer behaviour, and informs the firm’s decisions.

“When we acquired Playfire in 2012, it wasn’t a shift in focus but another string to our bow,” Sulyok explains. “Building communities, and giving consumers reasons to stay engaged is crucial to any retailer where relationships with customers are built solely online.

“Our aim has always been to go beyond a sale, and Playfire allows us to connect to our audience at the very point where they live their lives and chat about games online. We’re not just about the retail offer. Playfire offers us data that helps to drive our digital strategies and directly impacts operations, which is vital to the business.

“Giving our customers the option of tracking in-game activity, and

creating a space where they can compare and discuss

titles, compile want lists, read special features around product launches or go behind-the-scenes with developer

interviews, goes towards making

sure we are delivering what they

want - Playfire helps connect everything together. Add on top of

that Playfire Rewards for playing games in your

library and you have a very unique proposition within this industry.”

GREEN GIANT

Once upon a time, Green Man Gaming was just a group of pioneers with some outlandish ideas about the future of online retail. Now it’s one of the biggest digital games stores in the world.

Alex Calvin talks to founder and CEO Paul Sulyok about five years of Green Man Gaming

The very nature of Green Man Gaming is to always be pioneering and disruptive within games.

Paul Sulyok, Green Man Gaming

20May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

FIVE YEARS OF GREEN MAN GAMING

LIVE AND LOADEDThe retailer is now taking its business into an entirely new area: games publishing.

“Opening Green Man Loaded was a case of doing something positive to meet demand, at the right time,” Sulyok says. “We had

so many developers coming to us saying they had a great game, but needed some support marketing it or help financially getting it over the line. The one thing we know how to do, and do very well after five years I might add, is sell games.

“We’re not interested in making games, or taking ownership of developer’s IP. We know how to overcome so many of the challenges that selling a title in the modern market brings, and we can get games out on a global scale.”

And looking to the future, where does Sulyok see Green Man Gaming in five years time?

“The very nature of Green Man Gaming is to always be pioneering and disruptive within the games industry, and I will always celebrate that,” he says. “Whether it’s things like us launching Bitcoin when the vast majority of other games retailers are yet to adopt the currency, or creating a unified social worldwide gaming community, I hope we can always continue to lead and set an example for all digital product online retailers.

“If we continue to help change the perception and value of digital gaming, then I will be happy. Green Man Gaming will become more of an integral part of the digital games conversation as we focus on expanding into some of the fastest growing markets in the world - having reached into Russia and China last year with Brazil and India later this year.

“The transformation of digital economies, the increase in awareness of games as culturally important, and the range of downloadable options to access gaming will become more and more crucial to the industry, and Green Man Gaming will be leading the way in bringing those options to a worldwide audience.”

Even though I believed in our aims, seeing sales flooding in was confirmation we had got it right.

Paul Sulyok, Green Man Gaming

IN an interview with MCV in 2011, Green Man Gaming boss Paul Sulyok told us that he had expected Green Man Gaming to primarily be a UK brand. Now 90 per cent of the retailer’s business comes from overseas.

“When we spoke back in 2011, we’d been operating for around a year, and I remember when we originally launched, we were going to focus on selling digital games across the UK and Northern Europe for the first 18 months,” Sulyok explains.

“What we hadn’t anticipated was that within the first six hours of launching, over 400 games were sold to Japan.

From the very start, we had to think globally, and the internationalisation of Green Man Gaming was set about in earnest to meet that demand.

“We’ve implemented local payment methods with local currency options, fraud prevention, taxation, and language translations that’s been crucial to our growth. It’s our dedication to creating a world class platform that individually caters to customer’s preferences and offers a familiar and satisfying experience no matter which area of the world you’re shopping in. This has led to us becoming a global brand.”

GOING GLOBAL

Green Man Gaming now employs 65 people

Green Man Gaming announced its arrival in February 2010

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

FIVE YEARS OF GREEN MAN GAMING

21

A new event for developers and publishers in a unique Central London arts space

www.interface.events

PRIVATE MEETING SERVICE CONNECTS

YOU TO THE NEXT BIG GAME

EXPO FOR INDIE GAMES AND KEY

SERVICE FIRMS

SIGN NEW GAMES OR PITCH TO A PUBLISHER

Event Partner Event Partner

Live Stage Partner

Indie Zone Partner

THURSDAY, MAY 14TH 2015CANDID ARTS GALLERY, ANGEL, LONDON

Media Partner Premium Stand Partner

OVER 100 G

AM

ES FIR

MS S

ET TO

ATTEND A

LREADY, IN

CLUDIN

G…

505 Gam

es 8 Bit

Studio A

byssal Arts

Alte

red Gene

Anio

de Ant

Works

hop A

ntstr

eam A

tom

Univ

erse Bott

lerocket

Butch

erlab C

hilled

Mouse Cont

act Sales C

rystallin

e Green C

urve

Digi

tal D

euce Fat Fish

Gam

es

Firebutton Fire

proof G

ames F

reekstorm

Fun F

ungu

s Gold

smith

s Univ

ersity

Google G

randline S

tudio

s Gre

en Man

Loaded G

rey Wizard G

roun

d Sha

tter

Hybrid

Tech I F

ight B

ears In

digo P

earl KISS L

itmus G

ames Li

z Hollid

ay Writ

ing

Service

s LocalizeDirect

Mbryonic

MH

T Gam

e Mudva

rk N

aturalM

otion

Navatro

n Neon Souls

NW

Media PixelB

its Playe

r Rese

arch Pla

yrise

Digita

l Plenit

ude P

roduc

tions

Plu

g-In-Dig

ital P

ollen V

C QuizTix

RedSix

Risin

g Sta

r Rocket

Lolly

Saracen Tale

s Sem

aeopus S

kara The B

lade

Remain

s Spira

l Hous

e Stu

dio P

epwuper

Take

Off

Tame T

oad

tbm

ics T

emple

Gam

es The

Gre

at Unw

ashed T

he Third M

oon

Tilting

Point

Tota

l Eclip

se Tria

ngula

r Pixe

ls Tw

istp

lay U

nity

Unreasonably

Good Soft

ware Ve

rtalex

Virtu

al V

iew

Wav

e 1 W

edu Gam

es Xyrtic

a Yip

pee

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT CONOR TALLON ON 01992 535647 OR EMAIL CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

Batman, The Witcher, Metal Gear Solid, Splatoon: the next four months are full

of major-label titles set to bring consumers flooding into stores. And that’s even without the shock announcements made at events like E3 and Gamescom.

But it’s not just about the games; this summer will see players equipping themselves with accessories and peripherals in anticipation of the year’s big releases.

SEASONAL SUCCESSSummer has never been a hotbed of activity for the games industry, with many games holding fire until the lucrative Christmas period. But with the launch of smash hit titles such as The Last of Us and Watch Dogs during recent summers, the period still holds potential.

According to GfK Chart-Track, in terms of gaming accessory popularity, the Q3 quarter from July to September has traditionally competed with the ‘spring’ Q2 (April through to June) as to which is the lowest-selling quarter of the year.

However, in recent years, summer has begun to prove itself as a key period for games retail. During 2010, 2011 and 2012 Q2 out-performed Q3, but during 2013 and 2014 Q3 outsold Q2 in terms of both units and revenue.

“It’s hard to attribute one thing to Q3’s improved share,” says Chris Poole, senior account manager at GfK Chart-Track. “The growing impact of toys-to-life, boosted by new waves of figures, could certainly have played a part.”

SUMMER SELECTIONSo what should retail be looking at as the biggest summer products of 2015?

Looking at 2015 so far, GfK says the biggest winners compared to the same period in 2014 are toys-to-life: Skylanders, up 44 per cent in terms of units and 25 per cent in terms of revenue, and Disney Infinity, up by 56 and 37 per cent in terms of units and revenue, respectively.

“Skylanders and Infinity are up year-to-date because of the launch of Skylanders Trap Team and Disney Infinity 2.0, both of which increased demand beyond their Q4 2014 launches,” observes Poole.

Meanwhile, Sony console gaming accessories have shrunk by 16 per cent in terms of units and seven per cent in terms of revenue.

SUN, SAND AND ACCESSORIES: THE HOTTEST PRODUCTS OF SUMMER

From E3 to Gamescom, summer traditionally brings a slew of new announcements and releases in the accessories space. MCV discusses the lastest accessory trends, and how 2015 is shaping up so far

Toys-to-life have helped boost accessory sales over the last two years, says GfK’s Chris Poole

The growing impact of toys-to-life could have played a part in Q3’s improved market share.

Chris Poole, GfK Chart-Track

Comparatively, Microsoft has seen official accessory unit sales climb 23 per cent, with revenue rising 22 per cent.

Without a doubt, however, Nintendo has had the most successful 2015 so far, with unit sales rocketing 145 per cent and revenue leaping 121 per cent. Poole ascribes this growth to the sell-out success of Amiibo.

Over in the third-party accessories sector, PDP and A4T have defined themselves as the ones to beat. PDP has seen unit sales rise 34 per cent and revenue climb 49 per cent so far in 2015. A4T, meanwhile, has achieved 54 per cent unit growth, supplemented by a 45 per cent revenue boost.

But who will be the king of the summmer?

24May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

SUMMER ACCESSORIES

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

SUMMER ACCESSORIES

25

THE RECREATED SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM

The UK’s most popular computer of all time with 5m units sold, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is reincarnated in 1:1 scale. It boasts authentic rubber keys, as well as a selection of recreated ZX apps and games.

SRP: £99.99Release Date: July 31stManufacturer: Elite SystemsDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

PRO4-50 PREMIUM STEREO GAMING HEADSET

This headset features 50mm speaker drivers, as well as an inline volume control for simultaneous chat and game audio adjustment. The padded ear cups can be tilted and twisted for comfort. A microphone is included, with mic muting available.

SRP: £39.99Release Date: Late SummerManufacturer: 4Gamers/A4TDistributor: CentreSoftContact: 0121 625 3399

BATMAN STEREO GAMING HEADSET

Compatible with both PS4 and Xbox One, this peripheral is inspired by the Dark Knight himself. It boasts 40mm speaker drivers, inline volume controls and a fl exible mic boom for chatting.

SRP: £24.99Release Date: June 15thManufacturer: 4Gamers/A4TDistributor: CentreSoftContact: 0121 625 3399

ROCK CANDY XBOX ONE CONTROLLERS

Dressed in coloured polycarbonate shells with white accents, these offi cially licensed controllers stand out. Features include Smart Track technology, a removable eight-foot cable and concave thumb sticks.

SRP: £29.99Release Date: Out NowManufacturer: PDPDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

ELITE 800X

Turtle Beach’s Elite 800X headset boasts completely wireless audio and chat, as well as DTS headphone 7.1 surround sound. Active cancellation and a hidden microphone are further features.

SRP: £249.99Release Date: May 22ndManufacturer: Turtle BeachDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

WIRED FIGHT PADS FOR WII U

Offi cially licensed by Nintendo, these pads are styled after the GameCube controller and feature a full size right stick, dual shoulder buttons, and a soft touch back plate. They are compatible with Wii U games that support the Classic Controller and Classic Controller Pro.

SRP: £19.99Release Date: Out NowManufacturer: PDPDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

SENTRY EYE TRACKER

By tracking eye movement in real time and overlaying it onto gameplay, the Sentry Eye Tracker allows live streaming audiences to see exactly what a streamer is looking at. This is particularly interesting to those viewing eSports and other competitive gaming.

SRP: £159.99Release Date: Out NowManufacturer: SteelSeriesDistributor: SteelSeriesContact: nicholas.forder@steelseries.com

26

SUMMER ACCESSORIES

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

SIBERIA ELITE PRISM

With Dolby technology, customisable illumination and audio settings, and a swappable cable system, these headphones are suitable for use across a range of devices, including PC, PS4 and mobile devices.

SRP: £169.99Release Date: Out NowManufacturer: SteelSeriesDistributor: SteelSeriesContact: nicholas.forder@steelseries.com

BATMAN SILICONE CONTROLLER JACKETS

These add-ons for the PS4 and Xbox One pads boost comfort and grip for players. They also prevent scuff s and scratches, while still providing full access to all buttons and connections.

SRP: £12.99Release Date: June 15thManufacturer: 4Gamers/A4TDistributor: CentreSoftContact: 0121 625 3399

GRIP 500 PREMIUM LASER GAMING MOUSE

Part of Turtle Beach’s fi rst-ever mice and keyboards range, this ergonomic seven-button mouse has Avago 9800 laser sensors, Omron switches, independently adjustable DPI settings up to 8200 DPI, and also includes PC customisation software.

SRP: £54.99Release Date: MayManufacturer: Turtle BeachDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

H WIRELESS HEADSET

The H Wireless headset off ers smooth, lag-free wireless listening. It achieves this through a fi xed-latency, frequency-hopping system that automatically searches between available wireless frequencies to target responsive and uninterrupted audio performance.

SRP: £135.82Release Date: Out NowManufacturer: SteelSeriesDistributor: SteelSeriesContact: nicholas.forder@steelseries.com

PRO4 40 STEREO GAMING HEADSET

Two 40mm dynamic speaker drivers sit inside the breathable ear cushions of this headset. Players can control the audio levels of both chat and the game that they’re playing at the same time thanks to an inline volume control. A fl exible microphone boom is also included.

SRP: £29.99Release Date: August 15thManufacturer: 4Gamers/A4TDistributor: CentreSoftContact: 0121 625 3399

SUMMER ACCESSORIES

25www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201527

OPINION

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201529

Longevity in the games business has seen us witness numerous ‘life

changing’ gaming ideas and emerging business models. With the latest disruption coming in the form of independent developers and publishers, creating smaller games for digital platforms.

The more things change, the more we feel the business stays the same. So Sold Out predicts that 2015 will be the year of the publisher.

It seems that anyone now can be a publisher – any two-man development team can release a game themselves.

But be careful what you wish for. Developers have always been good at making games, but rarely as good at publishing them. Publishers exist because they take the costs, deliver the sales, take responsibility for all commercial decisions, along with business risk and discovery logistics.

Historically, publishers knew how to deal with retail buyers and ordinary customers. They took care of non-glamorous activities such as age rating, stock management, and the chains of title ownership. They also had to deal with really ugly stuff like write downs, returns, recalls, stickering, overstocks, understocks and the dreaded ‘price protection’.

Some of these things might not matter in the digital world (at least not yet), but some of the basic principles still remain. One of the most important aspects is that ‘traditional’ publishers were always set up to be businesses. Developers

were essentially the recipients of the patronage of publishers - not really a business in the same vein. It’s funny when you look at the mobile world - the companies that are run purely for capital gain are brilliant at self-publishing with their analytics, metrics and massive marketing spend. WINNING SALES With the growth in Steam and digital console models, finding someone that can help you become a publisher may seem more complex. These days we hear talk of ‘user acquisition’ but what happened to old-fashioned ideas like customer satisfaction? We hear talk of ‘daily actives’ and ‘whales’ but what happened to ‘customers’ and ‘fans’?

We are looking to help good games sell in a climate where generally only noisy games get sold. Winning awards is great but winning sales is even better. Sold

We hear talk of ‘user acquisition’, but what happened to ideas like customer satisfaction? Garry Williams, Sold Out

2015: THE YEAR OF THE PUBLISHERIn an age where any developer can be a games publisher, Sold Out boss Garry Williams discusses why studios are increasingly teaming up with sales and marketing specialists

Out’s mantra is simple: be the best you can be with your game. Unlike yesteryear, developers retain the IP rights, including the right to digitally publish if they want to, while Sold Out takes care of the physical sales. Let us take away some of the grief so you can focus on more of the fun.

When digital publishing on console platforms emerged, Sold Out was one of the first companies to have ‘new gen’ publishing agreements for independent titles with platform holders. A number of leading developers have discovered that with some help from us they can become publishers without losing any IP and without the hassle of logistics, while adding new revenue streams from which they take the lion’s share of the rewards.

In the end, the game is the star, the developer is our friend and the market response will be our judge.

INSIGHT

Sold Out has been physically publishing games for the likes of Team 17 and Rebellion

On paper, the concept for Australian developer Samurai Punk’s new

multiplayer title is a simple one.“Screencheat is a split-screen

shooter where everyone is invisible and you have to screencheat,” explains director and artist Nicholas McDonnell.

Yet, for those who didn’t grow up on a diet of Goldeneye, Timesplitters and Halo, this statement may offer little insight into Screencheat’s core idea.

“In short, it plays like our favourite local multiplayer shooters from when we were kids and embraces a design based around the central mechanic of looking at other players’ screens – screencheating,” McDonnell continues. “The game’s identity grew out of the fact that it makes fun of old conventions and, as such, it’s fun and chaotic, with goofy weapons and colourful maps.”

GETTING BACK TOGETHERWhile Screencheat includes online multiplayer, it’s a title that clearly harkens back to the days where a group of gamers would play together in the same room on a single TV screen. This makes it somewhat of a rarity; while split-screen play does live on in some modern-day games – Call of Duty perhaps being the most prominent franchise to retain support – local multiplayer is no longer the common sight it once was.

“I think there’s clear data that would show the use cases are quite low, with players probably choosing to play online with their friends instead of inviting them over

since it’s just easier,” McDonnell suggests as the reason behind the disappearance. “Not offering local multiplayer also means that players need to buy multiple copies of a game, but maybe that’s too cynical.”

It’s not just down to a question of consumer interest, he adds – it also boils down to the changing priorities of developers.

“From personal experience I know that performance is a concern, as rendering your game four or eight times is a serious hit to the hardware. Without local multiplayer you don’t have to spend a lot of development time on optimisation. These days it just doesn’t make sense for triple-A, with development already being as bloated as it is.

“Local multiplayer is just another feature that needs to be made, tested and released – if the return on it is low, it just doesn’t make sense.”

It may sound like implementing local multiplayer is a fool’s errand. But McDonnell and his team saw the mode’s drawbacks

as a challenge while outlining Screencheat’s origins.

“After struggling with split-screen co-op designs we eventually settled on turning the flaws into a strength,” he recalls. “Local multiplayer just made sense.”

PC AND HARMONYHaving launched on PC earlier this year, Screencheat is now heading to PS4 and Xbox One. While console has long been regarded as far more suitable for local multiplayer than PC, due to factors like the ease of adding extra controllers, McDonnell observes that the PC’s recent convergence with the main TV has opened up the market for the platform.

“The growth of the living room PC and games like Gang Beasts and Towerfall is proof that there is still room for local multiplayer titles on the platform,” he states. “Consumers looking for local multiplayer are still best suited to console, as the controllers and hardware location in the household make more sense. But efforts like Valve’s Steam Machines are definitely helping to push the divide towards parity.”

McDonnell concludes that, after years of consideration as an online-only platform, the PC’s growth as a hub for more than just one player could drive the resurgence of local multiplayer.

“I have no idea if Valve will succeed in bringing together PC and console players,” he says. “But if they do, it will help a lot of people like us who are trying to bring the couch experience to PC.”

SOFA, SO GOOD: HOW SCREENCHEAT FLIES IN THE FACE OF MODERN MULTIPLAYER

In a market where launching without online connectivity is practically unheard of, there’s a select group of developers still making games designed to be played by people sat together in the same room. Nicholas

McDonnell, director and artist at Samurai Punk, tells Matthew Jarvis more

The growth of the living room PC is proof that there is still room for local multiplayer titles on the platform.

Nicholas McDonnell, Samurai Punk

Screencheat features eight player split-screen multiplayer – a rarity in today’s online-dominated market

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com30

INDIE INTERVIEW SAMURAI PUNKSponsored by

New AAA titles.

New mobile games.

New distributionchannels.

New trends.

New technologies.

New players.

New deals.

Your opportunity is now.

Register for E3 2015 todayat www.E3Expo.com to

experience the best in video games and hold the future

in your hands.

EXPERIENCETHE EVOLUTION.

Register today.

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com32

MARKETPLACE

How has business been for you recently?It’s been steady. Nothing special.

What has been selling well?Mortal Kombat X has been doing alright. That’s doing about as well as we expected it would. Bloodborne did pretty well on day one but after two weeks, sales trailed off .

How has hardware been selling for you?The bundles have picked up -

we’ve been selling quite a lot of them recently. But otherwise it’s been a quiet time of the year.

Have you been doing any events for some of the recent games?No. People aren’t interested into midnight launches anymore to be honest. They used to get really excited about them, but I can’t see them happening here anymore.

Why do you think this is?I don’t know. The market changes

quite a lot. Going back three or so years, it was diff erent. You can’t judge a year based on any other years. You can’t predict what people will want and why. It’s funny. I can’t judge it myself. It’s a bit of a challenge for us.

You have a website. Are you interested in online retail?We tried selling online before, we did that for over two years. But we couldn’t keep up with

MCV speaks to Sam Semaan, owner of Angel’s N1 Games, about the decline of midnight launches, the challenges of online retail and why he has decided to start stocking selfi e sticks

SHELF LIFE

TOP 10 PRE-ORDERS

PRE-ORDER CHARTS

1. STAR WARS BATTLEFRONTEA, PS4

2. Amiibo Light Blue Yarn YoshiNintendo ............................................................. Wii U

3. Amiibo Pink Yarn YoshiNintendo ............................................................. Wii U

4. Project CARSBandai Namco ...................................................PS4

5. Amiibo Zero Suit SmashNintendo ............................................................. Wii U 6. Amiibo PalutenaNintendo ............................................................. Wii U 7. Amiibo Dark PitNintendo ............................................................. Wii U

8. Amiibo GanondorfNintendo ............................................................. Wii U

9. Star Wars BattlefrontEA ................................................................................XO

10. Batman Arkham KnightWarner Bros ........................................................PS4

PRICE CHECK: NOTTINGHAM

IN STOREO

NLIN

E

DRIVECLUBSony, PS4

FORZA HORIZON 2Microsoft, XO

GRID AUTOSPORTCodemasters, 360NEED FOR SPEED

RIVALSEA, PS4

£34.99 £44.99 £24.99 £29.99

£29.99 £49.99 £21 £26.99

£16.64 £38.99 £17.86 £20.96

£22.39 £40 £23.49 £22.85

£29.85 £27.85 £37.85 £29.85

UPLOADINGThe latest digital releases coming

to market

WARHAMMER 40,000 REGICIDE

This turn-based futuristic strategy title is out on Steam Early Access

This one-man retro-themed plaformer is out on PC later in May

The classic arcade car series is making a return to PC this month

AXIOM VERGE CARMAGEDDON: REINCARNATION

OUT: MAY 21STOUT: MAY 14TH OUT: NOW

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201533

MARKETPLACE

the competition. So what we are doing now is advertising our location. It’s more of a brand building thing.

What’s your digital off ering like at the moment?We have everything – we have all the digital stock for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, as well as Steam goods. We have the digital side completely covered, which is pretty good. It’s quite helpful.

Have you diversifi ed what you sell at all?We have tried to expand and not just sell games, we want to have something extra, because we can’t rely on just one thing. We sell quite a lot of t-shirts. We have also recently started selling selfi e sticks. They have been a big seller, especially over the Christmas period. And now we’re getting to summer time they should start selling pretty well again because people are going on holiday.

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR OUTLET IN MCV?Contact acalvin@nbmedia.com or call 01992 515 303

N1 Games25 Baron Street, London N1 9ET

Phone: 020 7713 7979Website: www.n1games.co.uk

INCOMING RPG fans are in for an exciting period as the latest entry in the Witcher series fi nally comes to stores alongside Elder Scrolls MMO, Tamriel Unlimited

TITLE FORMAT GENRE PUBLISHER TELEPHONE DISTRIBUTOR

May 1st

Omega Quintet PS4 RPG Idea Factory 020 866 43456 Creative

StarDrive II PC Strategy Iceberg Interactive 01902 861 527 Pavillion

May 8th

Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush Wii U Platformer Nintendo 01753 483 700 Open

Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros Edition 3DS Puzzle Nintendo 01753 483 700 Open

Project CARS PS4/XO/PC Racing Bandai Namco 01215 069 590 Advantage

May 15th

Codename S.T.E.A.M 3DS Strategy Nintendo 01753 483 700 Open

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster PS4 RPG Square Enix 01216 253 388 CentreSoft

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood PS4/XO/PC Shooter Bethesda 01215 069 590 Advantage

May 19th

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt PS4/XO/PC RPG Bandai Namco 01215 069 590 Advantage

May 22nd

Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed Vita RPG Idea Factory 020 866 43456 Creative

Steins; Gate PS3/Vita RPG PQube 01216 253 388 CentreSoft

May 29th

Space Hulk PS3/Vita Action Funbox Media 01246 810623 Open

Splatoon Wii U Shooter Nintendo 01753 483 700 Open

June 9th

The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited PS4/XO RPG Bethesda 01215 069 590 Advantage

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com34

RACING WHEELS

PS4 racing game DriveClub was the best-selling single-platform exclusive of last year.

THE last six months have been full of innovative driving titles vying for players’ money, and the next year looks to be shifting things up a gear once again.

Long-awaited PlayStation 4 exclusive DriveClub was crowned the best-selling single-platform exclusive of last year, despite some early launch issues. Part of the game’s popularity stemmed from its common inclusion in PS4 bundles, leading to a 999 per cent increase in sales during Black

Friday week in November. The title outsold racing rivals such as The Crew, Forza Horizon 2 and Forza Motorsport 5.

Xbox exclusive Forza Horizon 2 established itself as DriveClub’s main competitor of last year. The game recently received a Fast and Furious 7 spin-off on Xbox to tie in with the new rubber-burning film – meaning motor fanatics are likely to have returned to the game, and will be on the lookout for accessories.

FERRARI 458 SPIDER RACING WHEEL

This 28cm wheel is an offi cially licensed 7:10 replica of the Ferrari 458 Spider’s racing wheel for Xbox One. The peripheral features comprehensive equipment for a variety of racing situations, including two paddle shifters, nine action buttons, one replica Ferrari Manettino dial, a D-Pad, the Xbox Guide button and a pairing detection LED for Kinect.

SRP: £79.99Manufacturer: ThrustmasterDistributor: EntatechContact: 0333 101 1000

Project CARS, The Crew, DriveClub, Forza, F1: the grid is currently packed with driving titles revving for attention. Matthew Jarvis puts pedal to the metal in hot pursuit of the best racing wheels

SIMRACEWAY SRW-S1 STEERING WHEEL

Laden with buttons, toggles and switches, this is the ideal PC controller for racing simulation enthusiasts.

SRP: £99.99Manufacturer: SteelSeriesDistributor: ExertisContact: 01279 822 822

MAD CATZ PRO RACING FORCE FEEDBACK WHEEL AND PEDALS

This robust wheel and pedal set for Xbox One is fi nished in premium leather and aluminium.

SRP: £349.99Manufacturer: Mad CatzDistributor: Mad CatzContact: reseller@madcatz.com

PS4 OFFICIALLY LICENSED COMPACT RACING WHEEL

This minimalist controller add-on boosts immersion without the need for a bulky steering wheel peripheral.

SRP: £9.99Manufacturer: 4GamersDistributor: A4TContact: 01204 369 230

RACING WHEELS

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201535

Sponsored by

gamingmerchandise uk

RACING WHEELS

Nintendo’s flagship racing series, Mario Kart, made its debut on Wii U last year. Mario Kart 8 became the fastest-selling Wii U title at the time, and re-ignited consumer interest in the console, influencing a 666 per cent rise in hardware sales. In January of this year, it was crowned the best-selling Wii U title to date.

This month finally sees the release of long-anticipated driving title Project CARS, after three delays. The simulation game has

already catalysed interest in fans thanks to its graphical prowess and support for 12K resolutions on PC.

Racing fans will then be treated to the return of the realistic F1 franchise, with F1 2015 launching in early June.

Later in 2015, Need For Speed will make a return after last year saw the series take a break from new releases. Beyond that, EA has already teased a new title from Burnout creator Criterion Games, which may resurface at E3.

T80 RACING WHEEL

Fully compatible with both PS4 and PS3 thanks to a sliding switch, this wheel is coated with a rubber textured grip for better control. Accompanying the wheel is a large optimised pedal set with an adjustable angle of inclination for each pedal – the brake pedal also has progressive resistance. Players can fully program the wheel’s functions across its pedal set, two sequential levers, 11 action buttons and D-Pad.

SRP: £79.99Manufacturer: ThrustmasterDistributor: EntatechContact: 0333 101 1000

MARIO KART 8 RACING WHEEL

With room for a Wii Remote, this Mario-branded wheel can be used on both Wii and Wii U.

SRP: £9.99Manufacturer: PowerADistributor: ILT DistributionContact: 0845 519 7053

PLAYSEAT EVOLUTION BLACK

Modelled on a real racing cradle, the Playseat off ers a more immersive experience for driving game fans on PC and console.

SRP: £229Manufacturer: PlayseatsDistributor: PlayseatsContact: playseat.com

STEERING WHEEL STAND

Compatible with most third-party wheels and pedals, this versatile stand is fully adjustable.

SRP: £49.99Manufacturer: Wheel Stand RacingDistributor: Wheel Stand RacingContact: wheelstandracing.com

36

HOT PRODUCTS

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

Sponsored by

HOT PRODUCTS

AUDIO-TECHNICA ATH-PDG1 GAMING HEADSET

COMPLEMENTING its ATH-PG1 closed-back counterpart, Audio-Technica’s ATH-PDG1 gaming headset features an open-back design.

This means that the headphones exhibit a more natural and spacious sound, which is claimed by Audio-Technica to be the optimum preference for fi rst-person shooters and adventure games.

The open-back profi le should also improve air fl ow, keeping players’ heads cool during long sessions.

Inside the two ear cups sit large 40mm drivers and lightweight copper-clad aluminium wire voice coils, meaning that users should be able to hear more delicate noises.

This is supplemented by an aluminium honeycomb casing, which contributes to the improved audio quality. Comfort is boosted by soft leather earpads and lightweight headbands.

A fl exible ‘gooseneck’ boom microphone is included for chatting during online gaming sessions.

This is joined by an in-line remote featuring mute and volume buttons.

Three detachable cables for connection to various diff erent audio sources are included.

The 1.2m boom-mic cable is suitable for use with PC and PS4. An additional 2m extension cable with two 3.5mm plugs is suitable for a microphone and audio port set-up on PC.

Meanwhile, a 1.2m cable with in-line controller and microphone allows connection to a mobile device.

The headset can be used on Xbox One when paired with the Xbox One Stereo Headset Adaptor.

CALIBUR11 PS4 BATTERY PACK

FOR players gaming on PS4 who fi nd their controller just doesn’t have enough battery life, Calibur11 has a proposed solution.

The accessories fi rm’s PS4 Battery Pack clips onto the back of the standard DualShock 4 pad, adding extra longevity to the controller’s integrated rechargeable power.

Available in both black and white colour schemes to complement two tones of Sony’s offi cial peripheral, the plastic addition has a power button and charging port on the top of its design. It is also branded with the Calibur11 logo.

The high capacity device is claimed by Calibur11 to approximately double the DualShock 4’s battery life. A USB charging cable is included.

[INFO]

RRP: £159Release Date: Out NowDistributor: Audio-Technica Limited Contact: 0113 277 1441

[INFO]

RRP: £14.77Release Date: May 29thDistributor: Calibur11Contact: calibur11.co.uk

MCV takes a look at the best accessories heading to UK retail. This week, Audio-Technica has a brand new headset on shelves and Calibur11 charges up its PS4 Battery Pack

TO LIST YOUR COMPANY HERE AND ONLINE EVERY WEEK PLEASE CONTACT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM OR CALL 01992 535647

DIEGO MANCA MURATel: +44 (0) 2032909246 (UK) +39 328 2730697 (Italy)www.diegomancamura.com

........................................................................................................

PRESSXTRA.NET(Part of the Indigo Pearl Group)Tel: 0208 964 4545http://PressXtra.net

........................................................................................................

PERFORMANCE DESIGNED PRODUCTS LTDTel: 01628 509047www.pdp.com

........................................................................................................

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

GAMING ACCESSORIES & MERCHANDISE

CREATIVE & PROMOTIONAL STUDIO DIVATel: 0117 214 0404www.studiodiva.co.uk........................................................................................................

BRIDGE MEDIA GROUPTel: 020 3283 8466www.bridgemediagroup.com........................................................................................................

FLUIDTel: +44 (0)121 212 0121www.fl uidesign.co.uk........................................................................................................

GAME ROOMTel: +44 (0) 20 7729 3033www.gameroom-agency.com........................................................................................................

BY FRONTROOM

CLD DISTRIBUTIONTel: +32 81 83 02 02www.cld.be........................................................................................................

GAMING MERCHANDISE UK LIMITEDTel: 0207 167 6997www.gamingmechandiseuk.com

........................................................................................................

SOUNDING SWEET LTDTel: +44 (0) 1789 297453www.soundingsweet.com........................................................................................................

STUDIO CO2Tel: +44 (0)1483 414 415www.studioco2.com........................................................................................................

SUPERHEROTel: +4020 3031 6180www.superheroscreen.com........................................................................................................

THE AUDIO GUYS LIMITEDTel: +44 (0) 1934 710024www.theaudioguys.co.uk

........................................................................................................

ÜBERTel: +44 (0)114 278 7100www.uberagency.com

........................................................................................................

CLICK ENTERTAINMENT LIMITEDTel: +44 203 137 3781www.click-entertainment.com

........................................................................................................

Wholesaler and distributor of video games, consoles and accessories

DEAD GOOD MEDIATel: +44 (0)7780 600 728www.deadgoodmedia.com........................................................................................................

KENNEDY MONKTel: 020 7636 9142www.kennedymonk.com........................................................................................................ MANUFACTURING

OK MEDIA LTDTel: 02076886789www.okmedia.biz........................................................................................................

KEYWORDS STUDIOS GROUPTel: +353 1 902 2730www.keywordsstudios.com

........................................................................................................

U

LOCALISATION, QA & TESTING

LOCALSOFTTel: +34 952 028 080www.localsoftgames.com........................................................................................................

POLE TO WIN EUROPE LTDTel: +44 (0) 20 8607 7900www.poletowineurope.com

........................................................................................................

Localization Services

UNIVERSALLY SPEAKINGTel: +44 (0) 1480210621www.usspeaking.com

........................................................................................................

VMCTel: +44 (0)1753 849 700 (UK)www.vmc.com........................................................................................................

MONETISATION & PAYMENT

MILLENNIAL MEDIATel: +44 (0) 207 151 3320www.millennialmedia.com........................................................................................................

KEY CONTACTS:

Liz Princeliz.prince@amiqus.com

Stig Strandstig.strand@amiqus.com

Simon Pittamsimon.pittam@amiqus.com

Meg Daintithmeg.daintith@amiqus.com

ADDRESS:

101 Dalton AvenueBirchwood ParkWarringtonWA3 6YF

AMIQUS is a specialist, award-winning agency with over 14 years of experience recruiting for the games sector. We work together with our clients to strengthen their teams, supporting the growth of the industry.

We love what we do! Based in the UK, working with studios locally and internationally, we have built a trusted reputation for delivering quality and results. Our approach brings a fresh perspective – companies need to recruit the right people, but we believe the way this is done has a signifi cant eff ect on the results. Our consultants off er exceptional knowledge to clients and candidates; we appreciate the challenges and demands of the sector and understand how best we can help.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS COMPANY AND MANY MORE ONLINE NOW AT:

COMPANY PROFILE / AMIQUS

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDETO INTERACTIVEENTERTAINMENTAGENCIES AND SERVICE COMPANIES

AMIQUSTel: 01925 839700www.amiqus.com........................................................................................................

RECRUITMENT

MEDIA & MARKETING

LIS WELSH SEARCH & SELECTION LTDTel: +44 (0) 7968 114812www.liswelsh.com

........................................................................................................

SPECIALMOVE CONSULTANCY LTDTel: +44 (0) 141 530 4555www.specialmove.com

........................................................................................................

WAYFORWARD RECRUITMENT LIMITEDTel: 020 7734 4664 (London) 0117 966 6038 (Bristol)www.way-forward.com ........................................................................................................

CURSE, INC.Tel: +1 415 856 0056www.curseinc.com........................................................................................................

IGNTel: 0203 701 5682www.ign.com........................................................................................................

DIRECTORY

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com40

CREATIVE Fink ................................................................. info@fi nkcreative.com

DISC REPAIR Total Disc Repair ..................................+44 (0) 1202 489500

DISTRIBUTION Click Entertainment ............................ +44 (0) 203 137 3781

Creative Distribution ......................+44 (0) 20 8664 3456

Curveball Leisure ................................... +44 (0) 1792 652521

Enarxis Dynamic Media ............................. +302 1090 11900

Sony DADC ............................................ +44 (0) 207 462 6200

GAMING ACCESSORIES L3I............................................................................+ (0)1923 471 020

Venom ............................................................... +44 (0)1763 284181

MCV DIRECTORY KEY CONTACTS

RATES £70 per two column box (100mm x 75mm). To run weekly for a minimum of 1 year. Please phone for other size and/or position requirements.

TOTAL DISC REPAIR DISC REPAIR

Tel: +44 (0) 1202 489500 Web: www.totaldiscrepair.co.uk

DIRECTORY

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201541

ENQUIRIES

CONOR TALLONTel: 01992 535647ctallon@nbmedia.com

SONY DADC DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 207 462 6200games@sonydadc.com

www.sonydadc.com

Empowering your creative business

Tel: +44 (0) 207 462 6200 Web: www.sonydadc.com

CLICK ENTERTAINMENT DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 (0)203 137 3781 email: sales@click-entertainment.com

FINK CREATIVE

Artworking Mastertronic Brand Identity Ukie Localisation Rising Star Games Advertising BBFC Website Design Deep Silver Exhibition Bethesda Illustration Appynation Digital Media IntentMedia Charity GamesAid Banners & Takeovers Konami Packaging Design Just Flight

Just Flight

Email: info@fi nkcreative.com Web: www.fi nkcreative.com

CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 (0) 208 6643456 Web: www.creativedistribution.co.uk

CURVEBALL LEISURE DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +44 (0) 1792 652521 Web: www.curveball-leisure.com

ENARXIS DYNAMIC MEDIA DISTRIBUTION

Tel: +302 1090 11900 Web: www.enarxis.eu

DIRECTORY

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com42

L3I GAMING ACCESSORIES

Tel: + (0)1923 471 020 Web: www.logic3.com

VENOM GAMING ACCESSORIES

Web:www.venomuk.com

Phone:+44 (0)1763 284181

Email:darren.scott@venomuk.comsam.phipps@venomuk.comtom.hodge@venomuk.com

Venom UK Gaming

@VenomGamingUK

w w w. v e n o m u k. c o m

New officially licensed products

“ ”, “PlayStation” and “DUALSHOCK” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Also, “ ” is a trademark of the same company. All rights reserved.

DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controllers sold separately.

Rechargeable Battery Pack

Fully recharges the DUALSHOCK®4 wirelesscontroller for up to 20 hours of gameplay.

Tel: +44 (0)1763 284181 Web: www.venomuk.com

WANT TO ADVERTISE IN OUR DIRECTORY?

ADVERTISE WITH US

CALL CONOR TALLON ON 01992 535647 OR EMAIL HIM AT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

43www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

INSIDER’S GUIDE

Tell us about your company.The ORB brand was created almost five years ago and has steadily established itself in the marketplace ever since. Working on the strategy of delivering quality products across all of the formats at a really great price, we have customers large and small in the UK market, across Europe and beyond. What is your biggest success so far?Operating in a declining market is always tough, but to deliver a steady 20 per cent growth in the last two years and gain market share is something we’re proud of. What projects do you currently have in the works?Following the success of our range of accessories for the PS4 and Xbox One launches, our research and development team is hard at work creating the new additions to those ranges for later this year. This should give us the platform to deliver our plans for further expansion into international markets. What are the biggest challenges you face?The biggest challenge is easily the ever-changing retail landscape and the insecurity of where the software market is going. It’s important for the accessory market to feed off of the footfall generated by software releases. The never-

ending debate on whether or not software will go digital will have a big impact on how accessory brands like ourselves need to position themselves. Tell us something about your company no one knows.The whole team has an extensive retail background with blue chip companies, with many having worked as buyers. Having been on the other side means we can go much further to understand the needs and frustrations that our retail partners face on a daily basis. And, bizarrely, one of our development team has six toes.

Vinal Patel, MD of ORB Accessories, explores the challenge of growing in a declining market

Specialism: Peripherals and accessoriesLocation: Room 8, Arlingham House,St Albans Road, Potters BarHerts, EN6 3PH

Contact: W: www.orbaccessories.comE: sales@orbaccsories.comT: @ORB_AccsF: facebook.com/orbaccessories

INSIDER’S GUIDE

THIS MONTH’S DIRECTORY SPOTLIGHT:

ORB

Epic Games .................................................. www.epicgames.com/careers

To be included in the Develop Directory (which appears every month in Develop and now every week in MCV) contact aboucher@nbmedia.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

Develop is the only dedicated publication for the UK and European games development community. It reaches over 8,500 subscribers every month.

DIRECTORY WHO?

FOR GREAT ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES, CONTACT ALEX BOUCHERABOUCHER@NBMEDIA.COM

PLEASE CONTACT MJARVIS@NBMEDIA.COM OR CALL 01992 515 303

WANT TO FEATURE YOUR COMPANY IN INSIDER’S GUIDE?

The debate on whether software will go digital will have a big impact on accessory brands.

Sponsored by

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com44

FINLAND is renowned for its domination of the mobile sector, with giants Rovio and Supercell both hailing from the country.

This has potentially been driven by the region’s long history with mobile – handset maker Nokia contributed a quarter of the entire country’s economic growth from 1998 to 2007, according to the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.

According to market tracker Neogames, 83 per cent of Finnish studios operating in 2014 were working on an iOS title, with 71 per cent aiming for release on Android. Comparatively, 45 per cent were working on a PC title, with 12 per cent preferring Xbox and 13 per cent targeting PlayStation. Titles on non-mobile platforms from Finnish creators have seen success, too. Colossal Order’s PC exclusive title Cities: Skylines sold over one million copies worldwide in just over

a month after its release. Additionally, established Finnish studio Remedy’s upcoming Xbox One release Quantum Break was revealed alongside Microsoft’s console, following the global success of the firm’s Alan Wake and Max Payne franchises.

An estimated 260 development studios were still actively working in Finland by the end of 2014. The development scene is driven by start-ups; 69 per cent of all Finnish studios are estimated to be less than five years old. These

start-ups have been propelled by bountiful funding; Finnish games industry investment totalled $28 million (£18.7m) last year.

Research outlet Newzoo states that the Finnish games industry saw revenues of an estimated $205.8 million (£137.1m) last year, with Neogames predicting that the entire sector will exceed a value of €1 (£0.67bn) by 2016.

83 per cent of Finnish studios operating in 2014

were working on an iOS title.

FACTFILE FINLAND

FACTFILE: FINLANDPopulation: 5,477,359Capital City: HelsinkiCurrency: EuroGDP (Per Capita): $50,450

KEY RETAILERSKonsolinet, GameStop, Discshop, CDON, Anttila, Expert, Gigantti, Puolenkuun Pelit TOP DISTRIBUTORSKoch Media, Nordic Game Supply, Amo Oy, 3H, ALSO, PAN-Visions

TOP DEVELOPERSHousemarque, Rovio, Remedy, Supercell, Kukouri Mobile, Colossal Order, Bugbear, Frozenbyte, RedLynx

PUBLISHERS IN THE REGIONUbisoft/RedLynx, Valve, Rovio, Supercell, Sony, Microsoft, EA, Warner Bros

INTERNATIONAL

MEANWHILE IN... AUSTRALIA

THE government of Southern Australia is utilising the creative juices of upper primary school students in the region to improve its national parks.

Children are being invited to build their ideal national park in sandbox hit Minecraft, or to design changes to existing parks using the title.

The competition is open to students in years four, fi ve, six and seven from throughout Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills region.

The winning designs will help shape national park upgrades worth around $10 million.

“The parks they design as part of this competition might include trails for

bushwalking, mountain biking or horse riding, barbecue and picnic areas, campgrounds, places to launch canoes – or something completely diff erent,” said sustainability, environment

and conservation minister Ian Hunter. “Whatever they create on the screen needs to be able to be translated into the real world.”

The South Australian government is utilising the power of Minecraft to design changes to the state’s national parks, with the help of students

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 2015

FINLAND FACTFILE

45

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

WORLDWIDE

CLICK ENTERTAINMENT LIMITEDEmail: info@click-entertainment.comWeb: www.click-entertainment.comPhone: +44 (0)203 137 3781

TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION PLEASE CONTACT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

MCV WORLDWIDE

GLOBAL DISTRIBUTORSIF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR NEW PARTNERS OVERSEAS, THEN LOOK NO FURTHER

SWEDEN

GAME OUTLET EUROPE ABPO Box 5083, S-650 05 Karlstad, SwedenSales dept: ali.manzuri@gameoutlet.seSales dept: andreas.lindberg@gameoutlet.sePurchase dept: hamed.manzuri@gameoutlet.sePurchase dept: david.nilsson@gameoutlet.seWeb: www.gameoutlet.se

AUSTRALIAAFA Interactive, Bluemouth Interactive, Five Star Games, Mindscape, Namco Bandai Partners, Turn Left DistributionBENELUXCLD Distribution, Koch Media, Gameworld Distribution B.V.CANADAE One, Importel, Just4Games, Solutions 2 Go, VidéoglobeCYPRUSAccess, Gibareio, Zilos, Nortec MultimediaCZECH REPUBLICCenega, Conquest, Comgad, Playman, ABC DataDENMARKBergsala, Elpa, Impulse, Koch Media, Nordisk Film Interactive, Nordic Game Supply, PAN VisionFRANCEBig Ben, Innelec, Koch Media, SDO, SodifaGREECEZegatron, CD Media, Namco Bandai Partners, IGE, Nortec, Enarxis, BeaconHUNGARYCNG.hu/Cenega Hungary, CTC Trading, Magnew, PlayON, StadlbauerICELANDSena, Myndform, Samfilm, OrmssonINDONESIAMaxsoft, Uptron, Technosolution IRELANDMSE Group, BaumexJAPANAjioka, Happinet, JesnetNORWAYBergsala, Game Outlet, Koch Media, Nordic Game Supply, Nordisk Film, Pan VisionPOLANDCD Projekt, Cenega, Galapagos, LEMPORTUGALEcoplay, Infocapital, Koch Media, Namco BandaiROMANIABest DistributionSERBIAComTrade, Computerland/Iris Mega, Extreme CCSPAINDigital Bros, Koch Media, Namco Bandai Partners, NobilisSWEDENBergsala, Koch Media, Namco Bandai, Nordic Game Supply, PAN Vision, Wendros, Ztorm (digital)UAERed Entertainment Distribution, Pluto Games (LS2 Pluto), Viva Entertainment, Gameplay Entertainment, Geekay Distribution

UAE

ALESAYI UNITED COMPANYVideo Games Distributor in the Middle East, P.O BOX 16999 Jebel Ali Free Zone Dubai U.A.E.Tel: 00971 4 883 5960Fax: 00971 4 883 5175Email: marketing@alesayi.ae U.A.E. Website: www.alesayi.ae Group Website: www.alesayi.com

NORDIC

WENDROS AB SWEDEN, NORWAY, DENMARK & FINLANDJakobsdalsvägen 1712653 HägerstenSwedenPhone: +46 8 51942500Fax: +46 8 7466790Email:HM@wendros.seLM@wendros.seWeb: www.wendros.se

CYPRUS

G3 GREAT GAMES LTD4 Gregoriou Papafl essa Street, Offi ce 101, Engomi, Nicosia 2414, Cyprus.Tel: +357 22 666612 Web: www.greatgames.com.cy

BRAZIL

Sony Music Entertainment Brasil# 1 Physical Distributor in BrazilRua Lauro Muller n°. 116 – 40°. AndarSalas 4001 a 4003 BotafogoRio de Janeiro RJCEP. 22.290-160Tel. +55 21 2128-0771Fax: +55 21 2128-0747Email : rodrigo.altieri@sonymusic.comWebsite: www.sonymusic.com.br | www.day1e.com.br

NETHERLANDS

SOEDESCO B.V.Koddeweg 13, 3194 DH RotterdamThe NetherlandsTel: +31 104722462Fax: +31 104722893Email: info@soedesco.comWeb: www.soedesco.com

IRAN

DC GAMES GROUPNo.9, Hemmatian St.,Takestan St., SattarkhanTehran, IranTel: +98-912-1014090 +98-21-44228670Email: Bahizad@Doostan-Co.comWeb: www.Doostan-Co.com

WWW.MCVPACIFIC.COM

Editorial: + 61 (0)424 967 263Leigh.Harris@mcvpacifi c.com

Advertising: + 61 (0)417 084821Joel.Vandaal@mcvpacifi c.com

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com46

MORE DISTRIBUTORS

Sponsored by

BELGIUM

CLD DISTRIBUTIONRue du Grand Champs 14 , B 5380 Fernelmont BelgiumTel: +32 81 83 02 02Fax: +32 81 83 02 09Email: infos@cld.beWeb: www.cld.be home of www.dragonwar.eu & www.mawashi.eu

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201547

DIARY DATES

FOR MORE DETAILS CONTACT CDRING@NBMEDIA.COMTO ADVERTISE CONTACT CTALLON@NBMEDIA.COM

EDITORIAL PLANNER

MAY 2015.............................................................................

MAY 15TH Indie Games Publishing Special Territory Report: Africa International Factfi le: Austria

MAY 22ND Summer Digital Games Market – Retail

Education Guide International Factfi le: Norway

MAY 29TH QA and localisation Special International Factfi le: Russia

JUNE 2015.............................................................................

JUNE 5TH E3 Preview and Show Tips International Factfi le: China

JUNE 12TH E3 SPECIAL Territory Report: USA International Factfi le: Luxembourg

JUNE 19TH E3 Announcements Issue International Factfi le: South Africa

JUNE 26TH/ JULY 3RD E3 Review Issue International Factfi le: Turkey

YOUR GUIDE T0 THE SPECIAL FEATURES COMING UP IN MCV

INTERFACE..................................................THURSDAY MAY 14TH CANDID ARTS TRUST, LONDON

This brand new event from MCV and sister title Develop allows games studios to showcase their projects, fi nd investors, partners and pitch ideas.

WWW.INTERFACE.EVENTS

GAMES 5s 2015..................................................THURSDAY, MAY 21ST BARNET POWER LEAGUE FOOTBALL GROUNDS, LONDON

The games fi ve-a-side tournament is back. Teams from around the industry will be competing for the sought after Winners Cup. Teams so far include Rockstar, Exertis UK, Sports Interactive and Xbox.

E3 2015..................................................TUESDAY JUNE 16TH – THURSDAY JUNE 18THLOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTRE, USA

Once again, the global games industry will descend upon Los Angeles for the biggest announcements and news the market has to off er.

WWW.E3EXPO.COM

HOW TO MAKE YOUR INDIE GAME A HIT

Including:

UK indie games developer census The stories behind the hit indie games Indie Games to Watch Indie Games Developer roundtable Where to sell your indie games Publishers – Do you need them? Tips on PR, marketing and sales The indie battle: Sony vs Xbox vs Nintendo vs Steam

E3 MONTH

Including:

Interview with E3 organisers, ESA Who is E3 for? Find out if you need to attend E3 predictions E3 Survival Tips E3: Where to eat, where to meet Around the clock coverage of the biggest games

show on earth. News, opinion and live video E3 review: What MCV thought E3 review: What the industry thought MCV’s Games of E3

SAVE THE DATE

MAY 2015 ON MCVUK.COM

JUNE 2015 ON MCVUK.COM

OFF THE RECORD

SOLID GOLD

GAME Castlepoint in Bournemouth added a touch of glitz to its store when it played host to WWE wrestler-cum-living Oscar statuette Goldust.

Visiting ahead of a wrestling event in Bournemouth International Centre, Goldust spent two hours snapping selfi es, signing autographs and chatting with fans.

“The WWE franchise is hugely popular amongst both wrestling and gaming fans alike, so we were very excited to welcome Goldust to the Castlepoint store with a fantastic turnout of over 400 people, some queuing from 10am,” said GAME Castlepoint store manager Dave Cooke.

Cooke then hit Goldust with a chair and threw him through a wooden table – as is traditional when discussing wrestling in any form.

OFF THE RECORD This week, GAME Castlepoint gets into the ring with WWE star Goldust, SpecialEff ect revs up its next fundraising rally and industry runners raise a Monster amount of money

48

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO WIN AN XBOX ONEWIN GREAT PRIZES BY TAKING PART IN MCV’S #ALLFORONE COMPETITIONXBOX has teamed up with MCV to run a series of new weekly challenges.

Every Friday, Xbox will test gamers and pose key questions based around upcoming events.

Just for industry folk and retailers, there’s a way to take part via MCV which could win you some fantastic prizes.

Here’s how it works: every week, MCV will print a challenge on this page. You simply need to show us your answer - tweet it to us, email us or post on our other social feeds.

MCV XBOX CHALLENGE NO.5:

MINECRAFT MAY DAYIt’s May Day, so to celebrate we have yet another Xbox One console up for grabs. This week, all you need to do is show us your best Minecraft creation.

It could be a castle, statue, spaceship or even your own retail store remade in block form – let your imagination run wild.

Simply send us a picture of your handiwork via email or social media (see right) and you could win a brand new Xbox One. Easy!

HOW TO ENTER Tweet us with a picture or

video of your entry (if relevant) to @MCVonline - don’t forget to use #AllForOne with your entry. Make sure you use both!

You can also send entries to off therecord@nbmedia.com - use #AllForOne in the subject

Alternatively tell us via Facebook - you can fi nd us at facebook.com/MCVonline

Deadline for entries is 5pm on Friday, May 8th

WIN!

HAVE YOU ENTERED ANY OF OUR PAST CHALLENGES? STAY TUNED – THE FIRST WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com

OFF THE RECORD

www.mcvuk.com May 1st / May 8th 201549

@azwah After FIVE years building social and community at GAME I’ve decided to leave and embark upon a new sea of adventure. Yargh! Back soon!

Aaron Cooper, GAMEWednesday April 22nd

@MikeBithell It’d be really swell if we stopped pretending indies were any more passionate, creative, innovative or cool than their peers working in triple-A.

Mike Bithell, developer Sunday April 26th

@Wesley_Copeland Nearly just snapped my DualShock 4 in half. Time for a break from Bloodborne, I reckon.

Wesley Copeland, IGNWednesday April 22nd

@GAMETelford Knew I shouldn’t have bought my Amibo from that online auction.

GAME TelfordThursday April 23rd

@scully1888 Glad 20% fewer gamers are pre-ordering. Take note, publishers: your dodgy pre-order exclusive DLC shit isn’t working.

Chris Scullion, games journalistThursday April 23rd

@_wotta So Bethedsa and Square are having an E3 conference. This year is going to be good and f**ing busy, too.

Joe Anderson, ShopToThursday April 23rd

@Doctoe The diff erence in earning for female vs male eSports athletes is phenomenal.

Jo Twist, UkieThursday April 23rd

@AoifeLockhart Telltale working with Marvel. Big news, hope that it doesn’t limit their creative freedom.

Aoife Wilson, EurogamerFriday April 24th

THE WEEK IN 140 CHARACTERSThe Tweets you might have missed in the last seven days

AND THEY’RE OFF

CHARITY SpecialEff ect will once again be using the fast and the furious to fundraise this year, organising another instalment in its Twin Town Challenge (TTC) rally in the hope of raising £250,000.

TTC16 will see 100 cars costing less than £500 drive from Witney to the town’s twin of Le Touquet and back again via UK circuit Brands Hatch and French track Croix en Ternois, from Friday, May 27th to Monday, May 30th.

Naturalmotion, Sega, Audiomotion, Atomhawk and Playground Games are a few of the games fi rms to have already signed up for the series of twelve point-based challenges.

Among those outside of games supporting the rally is Radio 2 presenter and car fanatic Chris Evans, as well as newly-made man of leisure Jeremy Clarkson, who thankfully kept his hands by his sides. (He wasn’t even allowed to hold the sign himself, it seems.)

OFF THE RECORD

May 1st / May 8th 2015 www.mcvuk.com50

A MONSTER ACHIEVEMENT

RUNNERS from NaturalMotion, Disney, Target Media, New Star Games and Attention Seekers threw themselves around the annual Monster Race at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire on Saturday, April 18th, all in the name of charity.

The full course, fi lled with obstacles such as barbed wire and tyre crawls, log carrying sections, climbing walls, tank traps and the charmingly-titled ‘Bog of Eternal Stench’, runs for 10 kilometres – but a shorter fi ve kilometre version was on off er for those looking for a pleasant afternoon jog. (Through mud, water, sweat, ditches andhay bales.)

Overall, those brave (or perhaps foolish) enough to take the trial and emerge stinking, sodden and exhausted – but victorious – helped raise around £10,000 for SpecialEff ect.

DinkyPrincess@dinkyprincessa

PT has to be up there. Also, the Oculus Rift 3D Scan walkthrough can be really immersive and scary.

dgeesio & ronMctube @Dgeesio

Unreal when the lights go out in the corridor one-by-one.

The latest game would be Outlast.

WHAT’S THE SCARIEST GAMING MOMENT

YOU’VE EVER HAD? #GMGASKS

Because...boomerangs @HIYLJ

Headcrabs and other stuff that leaps at you in Half-Life.

salpo nolobio @NiccoloTerreri

Clanker’s cavern in Banjo Kazooie.

Florian Bucaille @Kednavikit

that game was so scary.

Ruby@AmissaRS

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was pretty terrifying as a 5-7 year old. I couldn’t get past the Deku Tree ‘cause it was too scary.

Ian Childs @Percinio

When I saw a DLC course in the Tiger Woods career mode and realised where gaming was headed.

John C. Williams @TYPOGRAPH1C

F.E.A.R. 1 back in the day had me freaking out while it was still broad daylight outside, so there’s that. *shudders*

Martin van Vuuren @Nokterian

If you remember Karazhan in World of Warcraft. It’s one of the creepiest dungeons and still holds today.

Chris Brown @SilasEmbargo

souls in Dark Souls. Or when my mum walked in during the

Auto: San Andreas.

Images of Matt Cuttle (above) and mud bath courtesy of The Little Picture Co.