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What is EVOGAME?
Evogame (also known as Light of Evolution) is a strategic space simulation game with hundreds of players across the world competing with each other simultaneously. All you need to play is a standard web browser. The content of evogame is a text-based, resource-management and space-war themed online browser game.
Bobby Kotick and a partner bought the once-struggling Activision for $440,000 in 1991, at a time when it was losing $30 million on $10 million in revenues. Now the world's biggest independent computer games company, it has a market value of $16 billion (£10 billion) and operating profits of $179 million in the first quarter on sales of $981 million.
Activision overtook Electronic Arts last July when it was in effect taken over by Vivendi of France in a deal where Vivendi injected World of Warcraft into the company for a 56 per cent stake. With such success, Mr Kotick, who runs the business from Beverly Hills, can probably get away with saying anything, which, soon enough, he does.
The target is Sony, the once-dominant hardware maker. “I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation,” he says.
It is not a very subtle hint, although Mr Kotick says his company paid $500 million to Sony in royalties and other goods last year, which “probably still worked out at 400 per cent of the profit they made”. Actually, Sony's games division lost $597 million last year, and Mr Kotick seems to think it may have to risk more losses if the £299.99 PlayStation 3 is to develop.
**IWCgame an online webinterface real time text game. Build mines, ships and defense. Then take over the Universe. Oh, did we mention the real time is at 20x speed.
In the three years since it first launched, the Nintendo Wii has sailed past competing systems from Sony and Microsoft to consistently claim the top spot in the console war.
But if a recent rash of troubling stories about the Wii is a vision of things to come, the tide might be turning for the seemingly unbeatable machine.
Kinks in the system's shiny white armor starting showing last month. Despite steady success in Japan, the Wii fell into second place in March as the underdog Playstation 3 clambered atop the region's sales charts for the first time in 16 months. That was enough to garner some uncharacteristically somber comments from Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, who deemed the climate in Japan "unhealthy" for the Wii.
But to Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz, the U.S. market isn’t necessarily any healthier, at least if you're thinking of investing in a console game. In an interview with Gamasutra, Creutz called the Wii "fool's gold" for third-party game developers.
"The choice here is really between investing for the Xbox 360 and PS3 -- since their capabilities are fairly similar -- or the Wii," he said. "I would caution investors and developers that the larger installed base of the Wii is really a bit of a red herring."
Crueutz goes on to point out that while the 19 million Wiis in North America trounce competing consoles individually, combined sales of the 360 and PS3 actually top 22 million. That represents a larger chunk of the pie for game developers who can more easily port games back and forth from the two systems. Additionally, Creutz notes that Nintendo's first-party games and the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises account for nearly one-half of all Wii software sales, a far larger percentage than what's found on the other consoles. Comparatively, the Wii is simply a tougher nut to crack for third-party developers.
Peter Moore, president of enormous third-party game maker EA Sports, echoed Creutz's concerns while speaking at a recent conference.
"You simply can't take what you're doing on the PS3 and Xbox and port - that's a dirty word - down to the Wii," he said, insisting that instead you have to build Wii games "from the ground up."
He's not the only one at EA with issues. Earlier in the month, an EA producer confessed to having trouble incorporating Nintendo's upcoming Wii MotionPlus control attachment into its Grand Slam Tennis game, raising questions about when the tech would be ready for consumers. Nintendo answered that by officially announcing a release date only to curiously push back the release of the game they've repeatedly used to show off the new technology, surefire smash sequel Wii Sports: Resort.
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