Game firms see a green Christmas
New consoles likely to top kids’ wish lists
COLOGNE, Germany Four months before the holidays, Frank Gibeau can’t tell you whether to expect a white Christmas. But for his company — video-game producer Electronic Arts Inc. — he’s predicting lots of green.
“It’s going to be a great Christmas because game consoles are going to be at the top of every kid’s list, not phones, not other electronics,” Gibeau, EA’s game-development chief, said while sheltered from the blips and blasts of games in the company’s lounge at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne.
Two months after Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. took centre stage at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles to unveil a new generation of machines, EA, Ubisoft Entertainment SA, Activision Blizzard Inc. and scores of other publishers have come to Gamescom to show off their holiday lineups.
The prognosis is that Santa Claus will get lots of mail about zombies, assassins and car crashes, as game makers are seeing strong orders for titles designed for the new consoles. Gamescom, with some 275,000 attendees over five days through Sunday, will provide a sense of what players want.
“What’s great about Gamescom is that it’s a consumer show — we can tell by the length of lineups if a game is a hit or not,” Gibeau said.
Within 15 minutes after doors at the Koelnmesse opened at 10 a.m., hundreds of gamers were in line — some with beer and pizza in their hands — to be first to try out Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Anticipation of a surge in demand has lifted stocks of game publishers this year. EA, based in Redwood City, Calif., jumped 84 per cent before Thursday, and Santa Monica-based Activision rose 56 per cent.
“The beginning of a new cycle gives the traditional players of the gaming industry a chance to step back into the spotlight,” Richard Beaudoux, an analyst with Natixis Securities in Paris, said in a note. “No more getting their thunder stolen by new players in cloud gaming and mobile games.”