Games close in on movies

By RICHARD WOOD

The gaming industry is closing in on the cinema box-office and video rentals in terms of value, with sales of games locally approaching the $100 million mark.

The intense rivalry between Sony's PlayStation 2 console and Microsoft's Xbox system is driving sales.

PC game sales have slowed.

Mike Wynands, president of the Interactive Software Association of NZ and local general manager of Electronic Arts, put the value of the gaming industry at $94 million.

That takes into account seasonal variations, and comes from figures from GfK Marketing Services, which started measuring the NZ electronic games market five weeks ago.

According to the Motion Picture Distributors Association, New Zealand cinema box-office takings were $142 million last year and video rentals were worth $130 million.

Music CD sales totalled $200 million in 2001, says the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand.

In the console market, GfK's New Zealand sales count for the week ending June 15 put PlayStation 2 at 68 per cent, Xbox at 30 per cent and Nintendo's Game Cube at 2 per cent.

Wynands said GfK's figures did not yet include major retailers The Warehouse and Central Park Interactive, and rental outlets.

Gaming would only get bigger as console games added online multiplayer capabilities, he said.

"Playing against people is an element that is unlimited."

Gaming had shaken off its geeky image and was well and truly in the mainstream. The industry was also tapping into other markets, with the soundtracks from games starting to enter the music charts.

"That shows the complete entertainment package that a game can provide," said Wynands.

GfK account director Phil Burnham, who is based in Australia, said PC games still had a significant chunk of the market by value, but consoles were catching up. Thrown into the console mix were games running on the handheld GameBoy Advance, which featured a backlit screen and new Pokemon titles.

He said Australian PC software sales accounted for 31 per cent of the market by unit volume and 22 per cent by value, with no change from the same period last year.

By contrast, consoles and their games were the bulk of the market and grew 29 per cent by volume and 26 per cent by value for the same period.

Burnham said the problem with PC games was the need to spend a lot of money upgrading the computer each year to play the latest titles.

Once consoles added online capability, the high end of the PC market would take a further hit, he said.

This might be mitigated by a surge in titles being sold below $20, a trend in both Australia and New Zealand.

But Wynands said the way games were generally sold in New Zealand favoured top-end PC games because there was a higher proportion of independent game stores here compared with a predominance of mass merchant selling in Australia.

Local distributors of electronic games include Electronic Arts, Atari, Roadshow, Sony Computer Entertainment, Monaco, Take 2 Interactive, Total Interactive, Flying Kiwi, Microsoft and Tech Pacific.