Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Week 2 EOC: Boston Consulting Group - Video Games

Star: Easily, the mobile device application market is the star of the video game world. The majority of people in developed countries have phones or tablets with numerous applications, and the potential for growth and innovation is seemingly unlimited, given how games evolve alongside the features that develop with each generation of mobile devices. Such games are also the most widely accessible both in terms of pricing and in terms of attention span and entertainment value.

Cash Cow: The PS4 can be considered a recent example of a cash cow. It doesn’t offer many new features when compared to the PS3, but managed to take hold of the market and find success over Microsoft’s Xbox One after the consoles’ initial releases. Still, the PS4 is just a means for Sony to continue profiting from console gaming with little innovation. “Sony's profits have more than tripled year-on-year in the April to June quarter (PDF link), thanks to strong sales of camera sensors and the PlayStation 4, which has now sold 25.3 million units globally to date.” (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/sonys-profits-triple-as-ps4-sales-reach-25-million-units-worldwide/)

Question Mark: Online gaming of the PC variety comprises a respectable portion of the modern gaming industry, seeing growing profits in recent years. It can be considered a question mark as it has the potential to continue growing, especially with regards to Steam and other companies’ reliance on that platform. That said, people who are not at least casual gamers will likely not see value in spending excess time and money on the lengthier, more expensive, and more time-consuming titles. “…the quantity of game releases on Valve’s Steam have more than doubled from 2014 (1,500) to 2015 (almost 3,500). That’s in all likelihood to the explosion of Steam Greenlight, where almost every title is accepted within a week…” (http://wccftech.com/eedar-xb1-sales-20-million-dec-2015-steam-game-releases-twofold-yearly-increase/)


Dog: "Nintendo came up very short in gamers’ eyes when it comes to the new Wii U. Yes, there are definitely some great titles for the console and many more on the way, but gamers didn’t see enough new features on the box to warrant an upgrade from the wildly successful Wii." (http://bgr.com/2015/02/18/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-wii-u-lifetime-console-sales/) The Wii U appears to be a dog in the video game market due to its necessity for heavy funding only to see limited success, growth, and popularity. The majority of customers don’t seem to value it as highly as its predecessor, the Wii.

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