Board Games on iOS

Steve Jackson's games on iPhone... you know you'd buy some.

Board games are getting a new life on iPhones and iPads, as this article on Ars Technica discusses. (Pinball games too, which is cool, but not so interesting to board game geeks.) Many board games can move easily to the iPad; the iPhone is tougher due to the small screen size. Usually the big difficulty is working out a suitable AI in order to let people play the games by themselves. This can be a very tricky task if the game has a deep strategy.

(Though I wonder if this AI problem might not be solvable the way Google has dealt with translation: Brute force. Google's done wonders with translating, not through research into languages and careful rule-tweaking, but by having a zillion text samples to work with. Similarly, if you could track a board game's players over time, and record all their moves, you might be able to reverse-engineer a strategy AI... Nah, probably not feasible except for an immensely popular game.)

This does lead me to wonder: What if you took the money that you would spend on printing a board game and instead put it into developing an iPad version of the game? You could easily spend north of $50,000 printing up a board game, not even counting your production costs for artwork and such. If you weren't worried too much about the AI programming (by having a simple AI, or no computer opponent at all), you could get an iPad game created for less than a board game could be printed. True, you could only sell it for a fraction of the physical game... but then you could probably get an iPhone and an Android port for not much more, once you've got an iPad version. Let's say you can clear $3.50 on a $4.99 iPad game; sell 15,000 copies and you're in the black. That's a big number to sell, but if you could make $1 on an iPhone version and an Android version you'd have a shot at it.

Better still, if you had a number of board games (or card games) that were similar you could probably reuse a lot of the code, and get a whole string of board games onto iOS and Android. Now your economics would look a whole lot better... paging Fantasy Flight Games... Steve Jackson Games... c'mon, Christian, Steve, it's time to make the jump, isn't it? You've got a loyal following, enough properties to pour into a code base to amortize costs, a web presence...

Social Games Revenue Revealed

The Call of Duty numbers are slightly cut off in this view, but it's 12 million players.

While it's pretty clear that social games are virtually printing money, since the major players are private companies the exact height of their stacks of cash has been a matter of some conjecture. Estimates appear in the press, but they're just educated (or wild-ass) guesses. Now we have a bit more of an attempt to add up the numbers by IGN, and they compare the results to some of the top console games. The results probably shouldn't surprise you: Zynga's making a lot of money. More so than any console game except the latest Call of Duty title, which has set new records for a console game.

These numbers are guesses, though, for the social games. They may well be wrong... probably on the low side, is my guess. This gives you some insight into why EA and Disney are trying to buy their way into the social game market with purchases of Playdom and Playfish. (Though it doesn't explain why Activision is avoiding it.)

Game development costs are, of course, far lower for social games than for console games. I have no doubt that Zynga spent a lot more developing CityVille than they did on previous titles... and I also have no doubt it's still an order of magnitude or two less than Activision spent developing Call of Duty: Black Ops. Another key advantage of a social game is that the developer can continuously tweak it to optimize revenue (and user enjoyment). Given the number of players, social game developers have a huge stream of data to work with, and they can try things out and see the results very quickly. And they see how those decisions affect revenue right away, so they can optimize revenue rapidly.

It's because of this inherent feedback advantage that I see social games continuing to expand their revenue. They'll keep finding ways to get new players, and ways to get them to spend money. I've been resisting playing social games too much because of the time required, but now that my son has beaten my gladiator in Spartacus I'm tempted to buy a new fighter to whup him good... and so the social games tweak my amygdala to make themselves some money. Damn, that combination of game design, marketing and psychology is powerful...

E-Book Market 2011: Apple Tightens Its Grip

Interesting news coming out of Cupertino... Apple is getting tougher with apps that sell products outside of Apple's usual 30% cut. Apparently Apple has blocked Sony's e-reader app and mandated that purchases of e-books cannot be sold without giving Apple their cut. Even books you bought outside the App would not be allowed within.

This has massive implications. Kindle has been successful partly because the software is available on all sorts of platforms, and wherever you bought your Kindle book it's available, and bookmarked the same. So if you start reading a book on your Kindle reader, then go to it on your iPhone, it's in the same place. No longer; under Apple's new policy apps can no longer access content purchased outside the App Store.

As you can imagine, there's already widespread concern since this article was published in the New York Times. I can understand Apple's concern, because at its logical extreme this would encourage app makers to funnel in-app purchases to outside places, and Apple would lose what's currently 50% of App Store revenue: the in-app purchase. On the other hand, you can see where Amazon wouldn't want to take an extra 30% hit on ebooks they sell... there goes the profit margin, and then some.

Conceptually there seems to be a difference to me between buying an e-book on Amazon, then wanting to read it on my iPhone or iPad, versus going to an app on my iPhone and buying an ebook there. Though it gets fuzzy when I think about using a Kindle app on my iPhone to buy an ebook... would the user even know where the transaction takes place, or care? Well, Apple and Amazon sure do.

So this struggle is going to be a major one, and it may well affect how ebooks are sold and distributed and read. I'd hate to see ebooks become walled off based on the platform where you purchased them, and I don't think consumers will sit still for that, either. This same policy would also affect things like Sony's plan to bring PSOne games to iOS, for instance; Apple would not allow sales of Sony games within a Sony app unless Apple got a cut, under this policy. Would Sony sit still for that?

This also bears on the magazine/newspaper subscription revenue issue that's still outstanding.

Apple's going to be in the middle of some interesting discussions. I hope this ultimately plays out to the benefit of the customers. Apple may have to make its simple 70/30 split structure a little more complicated to accommodate reality and customer needs.

UPDATE: Apple has responded, to clarify that content purchased elsewhere is OK as long as it is also available through an in-app purchase (where Apple can get its cut). If the app developer doesn’t want to use Apple’s in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can’t access content purchased elsewhere either. I don't think this solves the problem, and no doubt the discussions will continue.

NGP Vs. 3DS: How Sony Can Win

Sony has surprised me in several ways with their most recent announcements. First, I didn't expect that they would put so many features or so much power into the NGP (Next Generation Portable, formerly known as the PSP2). The device had been rumored for so long I was afraid it had lost its way. Apparently Sony has been busy seeing just how many things they could stuff into it, and the answer is: A lot. If you gave me a clean sheet of paper and asked for a feature set that would be possible (maybe not reasonable)  for a cutting-edge handheld gaming device, it would pretty much look like the NGP. About the only thing I can think of that they left off is an HDMI output, and I can see why they might not want to do that... it could impact the PS3 if you could plug an NGP into your TV set.

The elephant in the room, though, is the retail price. Sony won't say what the NGP will cost, and the cost could be so high it could strangle sales for a long time. (Remember the PS3 at $699? Ouch.)

I remember the PSP introduction, and it seemed like an amazing piece of hardware... but it was expensive. And the capabilities were never realized for a long time; not enough cool games, awkward attempts at movie sales, no online store for music, movies, etc. The device did quite well in Japan, but never was a big hit in the USA. The DS juggernaut squashed the PSP, and price was an important reason. Another was the DS's array of interesting and useful capabilities, like the dual screen, the touchscreen, the microphone, and so on. Game designers got creative, and there were many interesting games. The PSP never had enough games... although that's been changing, but it was too little, too late.

Enter the second big Sony announcement, which in some ways may be more significant than the NGP: The Playstation Suite. Or as I like to think of it, Sony's Playstation Android Terminator, a heavily armed, unstoppable device designed to seek out and terminate its target: The 3DS.

Wait, what is this Playstation Suite? It's a software development toolkit and specifications for putting PS One games on Android phones. There are many details left to fill in, but it looks like any phone that runs Android 2.3 will be able to handle PS One games (assuming the hardware is beefy enough... which most any new Android phone is). Sony will be selling PS One games on Android phones, raking in revenue for games that they wrote off all costs for many years ago. Better still, they'll be getting people interested in Sony games, perhaps looking for sequels on the PS3 or the NGP. I'm sure Sony is exploring the possibility of making the same thing available on the iPhone or the iPad. And I'm sure the Playstation Suite will be working just fine on Google TV, which (no coincidence) is built into some new Sony TVs.

It's a brilliant strategy, one that Nintendo would do well to emulate... but probably never will. They're apparently going to stick with their business model, regardless of how the world might have changed.

Sony, at least, seems well aware of the changes in the marketplace. Sony's not dismissive of smartphones and the impact they've had on mobile gaming; Sony is actively looking to harness that power to their own ends. Nintendo prefers to pretend that smartphones have absolutely no effect on Nintendo's sales.

Sony's executives clearly know the market and what it will take to succeed. They've put together a handheld gaming device with a quad-core processor, a 5" OLED touchscreen, dual analog joysticks, a backside touch panel and a full array of sensors and networking capability. This puppy makes the 3DS look like a DSi with a 3D screen gimmick tacked on and a bit faster processor, which is about what it is.

What does Sony have to do to win?

Three words: Price, Price, Price. Those are the three most important things. The sheer size of the feature set makes you wonder just how much Sony will sell it for. I could easily see a $499 price point, if not more, if you needed to make a profit on every sale. If they price the NGP there, it's pretty much going to be a lovely thing you'll never see in the wild. At $249 they would stomp the 3DS flat. So how much can Sony afford to lose on each unit? That's an unknown. I'm sure they'll hold off on pricing as long as possible, waiting to see what the component prices will be when they actually go into production... and what the game lineup looks like, and how much they can expect to make from it. If the NGP is over $299 it's going to be tougher to get good sales momentum.

Unleash The Media. No, not the Kraken... though maybe that would help, if it could take on some recalcitrant executives within Sony. This device should do what the PSP should have done: have a full array of movies and music available to play on it. (See iTunes for hints on how to do this.) Sony owns a ton of media; if they can just boot a few executives out on their ass in those divisions, maybe they can get some cooperation. Digital distribution is the future of media. The NGP should have books, music, movies, TV, and the Internet...sell them all and you will make a mint, Sony. Don't worry about cannibalizing your other devices; better you than some other company. Like Apple. Duh.

The NGP Needs Apps. Not just games, Sony. The NGP should be able to handle just about every App in the App Store or the Android Market. Make it so. Open the doors to developers, make it easy to get an App in your store. The NGP needs a full range of capabilities to compete with smartphones. You don't have to build them; just give developers the invite and then stay out of the way to avoid getting trampled.

Embrace new revenue models. In-app purchasing, baby. Freemium. Include some free games with the NGP that have a freemium model, and watch the dollars roll in.

Skype. You don't need a phone carrier. Just a killer Skype implementation. There will be a 3G version of the NGP; with that and Skype you can compete with a smartphone very nicely, thank you very much.

DLC. Sell the add-ons to games, new and old. Extend each game in every way you can, and let the fans pay for what they want. Sure, give out free stuff to chum the waters; you'll get plenty of bites on the pay stuff.

Connect to the PS3. Use the Playstation Network. Make sure every NGP owner wants to become a PS3 owner, if they're not already. Have some games use an NGP as a cool add-on (hidden information).

Sony, you have shown hardware that can take the handheld gaming crown away from Nintendo, and defend it against the smartphones. Now it's all about the execution... so do it right.

7 Ways Nintendo Can Win

It's possible for your fans to be too devoted.

Nintendo's been around since 1889, so they have seen business cycles a time or two. They have been up, and they have been down, but overall they've continued to thrive. Lately they have been looking a little tired, as the Wii begins to show its age, and the amazing run of the DS line is also beginning to weaken. As far as the world knows, Nintendo is not planning any immediate changes in the Wii product marketing strategy, and appears to be pinning its hopes for 2011 on a successful launch of the 3DS, their new handheld console. They need something to look forward to; profits have dropped 74% since last year, and sales are down significantly in all areas. Nintendo has lost its mojo; can they get it back?

The Wii still has life, but not at $199. The time has come for another price reduction for the Wii; the last time it was reduced was in September of 2009. It should be obvious to anyone that the Wii has not been able to keep its sales numbers up against an Xbox 360 and a PS3 priced $100 more; the 360 outsold the Wii over Christmas, and the PS3 was close. Don't wait around, either. Drop that price now, before the 3DS dominates the story. Renew your commitment to the Wii; make sure the fans know about some killer new games coming for it. At $149, it should see a nice sales boost. Plan to send it into orbit for Christmas 2011 by dropping the price to $99 in September. Let's see Microsoft and Sony go broke trying to match it. Use the higher sales numbers by making a greater effort to attract third-party developers. Revamp your publishing program completely; you want Nintendo to be know as the easiest manufacturer to work with, rather than the most difficult one.

Get creative with the Wii. A price drop is nice, but you need some innovation. Look for a deal with a TV maker to build a Wii into their TV sets. Get the Wii built into minivan entertainment systems for the kids. Make a special bundle for afterschool programs with fitness titles. Create some PR! Get out there and generate some more stories.

The Wii 2 is overdue. You've missed the window for 2011; the clock is ticking for 2012. If you still want to sell a lot of consoles, you're going to need a new one. The Wii is underpowered and not HD capable, and the games are showing it. The Xbox 360 and the PS3 now have motion control options, taking away the Wii's one unique ability. So it's time to change the equation.  Sure, better graphics performance and HD output are a must. Don't try to outmuscle the competition, though. You need to outsmart them. Some spiffy new interface idea would be great, if you've got one tucked away. Improvements to motion control? Other types of sensors? Whatever you can throw in there. Most important, though, is a strong online component, traditionally your area of weakness. This has to change. You need the best online interface, the best environment for players, the best set of downloadable software. And price it all at $299 for the hardware, if not less.

Make the 3DS more than just a game device. You're competing against smartphones with thousands of capabilities. You should at least make it easy to play music and videos. There have been hints you'd like to play 3D movies; get busy and make it happen. I don't see a downside to putting a music and video player on this thing, though I guess storage is the main constraint, but since you have an SD card slot you'll at least be able to put a few GB in there (and it comes with a 2 GB card). While you're at it, open up the eShop to non-game apps, and let developers expand the machine's capability. The whole App Store thing has been instrumental in Apple's iPhone success; why not use that idea yourself?

Reduce the DSi price. Yes, I know you're hoping everyone buys a 3DS, but $249 is too much for many people. Drop the DSi to $99 and watch the sales soar again, especially when you point out they can use the DS games they buy on the 3DS when they get one of those later.

Really leverage your library. Yes, it's cool you can buy old NES games for your Wii... but the pricing is absurd. Why not experiment with prices and see what price point maximizes your revenue? You can always change those digital prices. While you've got the hood open, why not steal Sony's great idea and make your old games available on iOS and Android? It's more revenue; it's great advertising; and it might get people hooked on your iconic characters, whose latest adventures are only available on your proprietary hardware. I know you've been afraid to do this lest you slow sales of your hardware, but that that's not really an issue for old NES and SNES titles, is it?

Innovate. It's really nice that you have a slew of great characters that people love: Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Kirby, Samus... but when's the last time you created a new one? Sure, keep doing new titles with familiar characters, but take a stab at making some new ones, too. Innovation is not doing a new Mario game, or even coming out with a Wii in a red case instead of white. Come up with something new in your games. More than that, innovate with your business models. Really embrace digital distribution. Try different monetization schemes; have you heard about free-to-play and how much money it's making? Enable in-game purchasing and watch the dollars roll in.  Try licensing some of your characters to an MMO or a PC game... or a theme park or a new animated series.  Hell, just a series of digital comics released on the 3DS... 3D digital comics, that is. Get some buzz going about all the cool stuff Nintendo is doing... which means you have to do some cool stuff. Get busy!

Will Nintendo actually do any of these things? Maybe, but they'll probably do them later rather than sooner. Management seems averse to sudden movement or change. Perhaps continued poor financials will goad them into swifter action, but I'd hate to see it get to that point. If Nintendo can rev up their engine this year, we'll look back on this as just a minor rough patch for them. I hope that's what happens.

PSP2 (Now NGP) Vs. 3DS Vs. Smartphones: Who Wins?

2011 will go down in history as the Final War for domination of handheld gaming. The declarations of war have been made (in the guise of launch events for the gaming press), and the machines of war are heading to the battlefield. Three platforms enter... will only one leave? The situation is more complex than that.

Nintendo plays the role of Rocky Balboa, the scrappy kid who became the world champ a long time ago and has been resting on his laurels far too long. Sure, he's been in training some, had some bouts, made a few minor comebacks with the DSi and the DSi XL. But sales have been dropping... Nintendo just announced their latest numbers, and have once again revised their sales estimates downwards for the fiscal year, as their profits have dropped 74% and DS sales will end the year with about 22 million sold, for an all-time total of about 145 million.

Nintendo's war machine for this battle is the 3DS. It's basically a DS with a faster processor and a 3.5 inch 3D display, with a resolution of 400 x 240 in 3D mode. The trick is that the 3D effect doesn't need glasses, but the battery life of the 3DS is a fraction of the DS; 3-5 hours instead of 12-15. The price is $249, and games will be in the $40 to $50 range. Backwards compatibility with DS games is included. The 3DS ships at the end of March in the US. Nintendo's got Rocky Balboa who's been trying to get back into shape.

Sony has finally opened the kimono to reveal the PSP2, now called (for the time being) the NGP (Next Generation Portable). It's got a 5 inch screen at 960 x 540 resolution, dual analog controls, a back-of-the-unit touchpad for control, an Organic LED (OLED) touchscreen, a gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, GPS, front and rear facing cameras, an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor, an SGX543MP GPU (a PowerVR chip), 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi b/g/n, and a new flash memory storage for games. Plus backwards compatibility with PSP games. It will ship around the end of 2011, and the price is as yet undisclosed. But you can bet that it won't be cheap; with that spec list I'd put it around $399 at least, that's if Sony wanted to make money on the device from the hardware sales alone. Sony has Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren from Rocky 4), the incredible physical specimen with unreal stats.

A glimpse of Sony's NGP.

The final contender is the iPhone 4, and probably this summer the iPhone 5 (as yet, still just a speculation). The current iPhone 4 has an Arm Cortex A8 processor (Apple's version, the A4 chip) with a PowerVR GPU, a 960 x 640 3.5 inch screen, front and rear cameras, full sensor array, and an App Store stuffed with 300,000 titles. The rumored iPhone 5 will use an ARM Cortex A9 dual core, along with a spiffier PowerVR GPU. Apple's bringing a Mixed Martial Arts expert to this boxing match. Pricing will probably be around the current iPhone 4 pricing, with the iPhone 4 moving down to $99 (subsidized) and the iPhone 5 at $199 or $299 (subsidized).

Really, Nintendo's decided to once again avoid battling on sheer technical specs of resolution, polygons, and processor speeds, and instead try to do something different. This is how they succeeded with the Wii; knowing that Microsoft and Sony would be shooting for the most power in a console, Nintendo opted to be different with the interface, and won handily. The 3DS is a hope that 3D without glasses will be a hit with gamers, much more so than mere polygon counts. It's not an unreasonable hope.

Sony's decided, apparently, that the way to win the handheld market is sheer muscle. Bigger, better, faster, stronger, as well as cooler. Interface? Sure, let's throw in all of the sensors and interface ideas we can, and perhaps something awesome will emerge. Actually, it's not an unreasonable hope; give game developers a lot of different tools and they will surprise you every time.

Apple's competing against phones, not handheld gaming devices, but their iPhone 5 will be a pretty close match to Sony's NGP, at least much closer than the 3DS. If game developers can really start to charge somewhat higher prices for really awesome games, perhaps the return on investment for iPhone game development might look more like handheld game development.

Android phones will continue to march along with a wide variety of hardware specs, but you can bet on increasing processor power and more attention to GPU strength. The best Android phones will likely be pretty competitive with Apple's iPhone offerings.

The interesting part is beyond the hardware specs; it's the software and online offerings. Nintendo is trying to advance a bit, ditching the unbelievably awkward Friend codes and moving to a somewhat easier multiplayer matching. They're touting their eShop as a way to buy less expensive games, but of course they will continue to keep those games completely separate from the full price games sold only at retail stores. Sony's got more interesting things going on, with a development environment designed to bring Playstation games to any Android device. This is a brilliant move, basically trying to coopt the smartphone market by bringing the Playstation games to them. It's not clear what pricing will be like, but the really interesting part is that Sony's trying to make it easy for developers to bring games to any platform.

Meanwhile, Apple's going to make progress in the game market without really trying, as they work to compete in the phone market.

Here's my assessment of the three contenders.

Nintendo'ssmartphones and computers. Nintendo's not really changing its business model, and mostly ignoring the digital possibilities, and that will become more and more of a problem for them in the future. They really have to put some serious effort into their digital offerings if they hope to compete. I think Nintendo will have a good launch, but I think by the summer they will be selling 3DS at a rate lower than the current DS rate unless they lower the price.

Sony's exceeded my expectations on their hardware; they are clearly swinging for the fences. They have obviously spent time thinking about the current market, and their Playstation Suite plan is a good response with lots of possibilities for the future. The major question mark is the price; if it's $399 I think it will merely be a niche product. Even at an aggressive $249, it's going to be a touch sell given its size (see below).

Still, there will be multiple SKUs and perhaps some interesting phone-like capability (built-in Skype would be amazing, especially with reasonably priced 3G connectivity options) which may make it a reasonable choice for your only pocket device. Sony will probably want to see a range of full price games, but they're liely to have many more low-cost game choices than Nintendo.

Apple's certainly going to keep introducing better devices, but they'll never add dedicated gaming controls like an analog joystick. Still, they have established themselves as a huge game market without hardly trying. If they finally activate the Apple TV app store and bring those games to the family room, the whole issue gets even more complex. Apple will be hampered if they fail to develop a market for higher priced games, but at least for the iPad and the iPhone 4 there are some encouraging signs.

For developers, it's just getting more difficult to make choices. You have to decide on allocating your development resources, and that is getting tougher. One thing's for sure, though: Develop your brands and milk the IP you create as much as you reasonably can. Any game you create should be considered as a product line, not just a product. The development is an ongoing process, and so is the marketing, not a one-off event that you fire and forget. Create something that's extensible, refine it, make it popular, then put it on everything that uses electricity.

Facebook Drops The Bomb

Yeah, winning loot is easy... if you're Facebook.

The move was inevitable; the only question was when it would happen. We now have the date for the nuclear event: July 1, 2011. That's when Facebook will require all Facebook Games to implement Facebook Credits, which means a cool 30% rakeoff for Facebook.

Oh, it's not exclusive; developers will be free to use their own credit system as well as Facebook Credits. But all games will have to use Facebook Credits. Facebook will also offer incentives for developers that use Facebook Credits exclusively, such as premium placement on their Games Dashboard and special promotional opportunities.

Rumor has it that Zynga ships Facebook $30 million or so every month for its share of Facebook Credits; I'd have thought it would be somewhat higher. Clearly this will help Facebook reap more revenue. But it also has benefits for developers. A unified currency will benefit smaller developers, because a user will already likely have Facebook Credits handy... so they won't have to pull out their wallet to buy something inside your game. Yeah, it's a bummer for games already on Facebook, as they stand to lose 30% of their revenue stream. But this has been clear for almost a year, so companies have had plenty of time to adapt to it.

Facebook's giving some warning so there's still time to modify the plan based on feedback from game companies. (Feedback: The high-pitched whining noise coming from game developers.) I can't really blame Facebook for wanting to get their cut of the action, and Facebook Credits do offer a useful service. Companies thinking about putting a game on Facebook will just have to decide if giving up 30% of the income is worth the additional exposure; I'd bet it is in most cases. But companies will do well to create their own brand, identity, and gaming possibilities outside of Facebook as well, so they aren't too dependent on what moves Facebook may make in the future.

The largest social game companies have been busy doing just that in the past year or so. Mobile gaming is a major growth area for them. But the Facebook juggernaut is heading in that direction, too... it's a rapidly evolving market, fraught with danger for the unwary or the slow to change.