Dave Horvath
16 Aug 2007 19:21
The pioneer in music television, MTV Networks has announced plans to invest some $500 million in video games, wanting to grab hold of a part of the $30 billion market. Their main goal in seeking out the video game market is to reach their consumers everywhere they spend money. This is in part of a two year global strategy to incorporate game development at the inception of all new programming plans and not as an afterthought.
"As we take our brands narrow and deep to serve our targeted, niche audiences, we're putting well over $500 million behind building our games business across all of the brands in our portfolio," said MTV Chairman and Chief Executive Judy McGrath. Ms. McGrath also stated that she'd like to see more games developed based on the ideas behind the network's shows.
Some analysts feel that this is a bad move for a media organization to get into video game development. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter stated that "Media companies are crazy trying to bring video-game development in house. They act like anyone can do this. The fact is not everyone can."
Dispite reports that MTV has been gradually losing its audience, the executives there feel that bringing video games into the foray will hold the attention of the younger audiences as well as adults.
MTV had setup a few web-based gaming sites and advertised on their television channels. There were approximately 42 million unique visitors to their sites which lead them to believe that 47% of MTV's viewers also enjoy playing games. MTV's first sacrificial lamb will be an upcoming game slated for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 called Rock Band allowing gamers to play guitar, drums and even sing along with the game. It all remains to be seen how all of this shapes up.
Source:
Reuters