Before multi-channel networks stormed YouTube, there was Rooster Teeth. Hell, before YouTube even existed, there was Rooster Teeth. The digital studio and network, founded in 2003, has been a fixture in online video ever since they thought it would be funny to create a series of animated videos using in-game player models from Microsoft’s dominant “Halo” franchise.
That show, known to many as “Red vs. Blue,” has since grown to 12 full seasons and a five separate mini-series — some of which have been financed by Microsoft itself. But that’s not why Rooster Teeth was the best network of 2014.
Since 2003, Rooster Teeth has grown from an online video production company to a multi-faceted business that includes original programming, branded content, a YouTube network, a podcast network, video games, and live events. Its seen “innovative, next-generation, disruptive” (pick your adjective) businesses rise and fall on the web, and it still stands, profitable and growing.
“We have gotten a lot of credit for having very progressive business models — live events, subscriptions, home video,” says Rooster Teeth co-founder and creative director Michael “Burnie” Burns. “But really for us, those are fundamentals. When we started this, there were no other ways to monetize content.”
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Last year was a triumphant one for video games, not only in terms of sales but also content, between revamps of older favorites like Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us; long-awaited sequels to Bayonetta and Super Smash Bros.; and emerging new favorites like Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
That said, 2015’s gaming year looks to be even bigger, with the arrival of several highly anticipated projects, as well as new ones like The Order: 1886 and Bloodborne that could turn a profit, along with a few heads.
Here now are some studios to keep an eye on for this year, as they’re likely to end up the real winners of the game industry once 2015 is finished:
Naughty Dog Studios
Naughty Dog has been around for over 30 years now, although this year could be its biggest yet with the arrival of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End on PlayStation 4. First featured last year at the PlayStation Experience, the game truly impressed with over 15 minutes of gameplay footage. No doubt this game will be a real star as the year goes on, and yet another notch in Naughty Dog’s impressive library of titles.
Yacht Club Games
This studio made an impressive debut last year with its KickStarter-funded old-school platformer Shovel Knight, a game that has racked up its fair share of Game of the Year awards. However, 2015 should give the studio even more exposure, as the game will be headed to PlayStation platforms very soon – complete with an appearance by Kratos from the God of War series. This will help push the game’s sales even further, and perhaps even inspire the team to work on a sequel. We can, ahem, dig it.
Black Tusk Studios
Even though we’re not likely to see the release of a new Gears of War title this year, Microsoft will probably make some sort of announcement revolving the latest title in the third-person action series, which has been quite popular on the Xbox 360 platform. This will give a new studio, Black Tusk Studios, the chance to show what it can do with the franchise, backed by the power of Microsoft’s Xbox One console. Who knows – we may even see something along the lines of Halo, with an HD collection of the previous games first, followed by an entirely new release.
Rocksteady Studios
Rocksteady has already made a name for itself by producing two of the best comic book-licensed games ever made, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. This year, it’ll wrap up the Dark Knight saga in style with the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, which arrives for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC this June. The title will no doubt impress fans of the Bat, with the ability to cruise around town in the Batmobile or lay waste to enemies with good old-fashioned survival tactics and combat. Plus, there’s the foreboding Arkham Knight, a foe that Batman himself may have trouble defeating. This will no doubt be a huge release this year…
Techland
The creators of the Dead Island series are no strangers to fast-paced zombie action, but this month’s release of Dying Light looks to take that up a few notches, with fast-paced action mixed with parkour antics to make the genre even more stylish. Light also includes some innovative create-your-own weaponry tactics, so players can experiment with different tools to take out their adversaries, alive or dead. This could be one of the year’s bigger gaming surprises – and a huge push forward for this development team.
CD Projekt Red
A small studio located in Warsaw, CD Projekt Red has been making slow but steady progress in the game industry with its adventurous Witcher games, including The Witcher 2, which made an impressive impact on both PC and Xbox 360. However, with the forthcoming The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, the team looks to take things to a new level, with an even bigger world to explore, a wide assortment of weaponry, and plenty of role-playing tactics and combat that audiences will thoroughly enjoy. It’ll certainly be time to Hunt when The Witcher III arrives this May for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
NetherRealm Studios
Finally, the team that brought the Mortal Kombat series to life (only to have its combatants slaughter each other in bloody fights) has returned, taking the series into the near future with a number of new and returning combatants. The visual style in Mortal Kombat X looks superb, even deeper than the previous release in the series, and the gameplay features more variety, with a number of styles to choose from for each combatant. Even if the new fatalities may be tough to stomach (they’re not for the squeamish), Mortal Kombat X will no doubt push NetherRealm to new heights when it arrives this April. Fight!
For decades, if you wanted TV channels you either had an antenna or a cable subscription. In the last few years many shows have become available over the Internet or through streaming services, but they aren’t arranged in channels in the same way that cable TV presents the content. However, coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this week, a pair of new services intends to bring TV programming to a new platform: Your game console.
First up, PlayStation Vue,which was initially announced last year, has finally been given the go-ahead to launch commercially in early 2015, according to Shacknews. The service has been in beta for the last few weeks, but Sony has confirmed it’s finally moving forward over the next few months, ready to be made available on PlayStation consoles first (both PS3 and PS4) before moving on to additional Sony and non-Sony televisions and other products. This includes tablets and mobile devices, like Apple’s iPad and iPhone line-up.
Pricing and availability details haven’t been revealed yet, but with Sony talking with several partners on the service, it’s likely to be worth it to those who are looking to do away with their skyrocketing cable bills.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will be getting its own shot at a broadcasting service. Dish Network’s Sling TV, which recently launched with a number of live TV networks across an Internet connection (for a convenient price of $20 a month), will be making its way to Xbox One in the months ahead, through a special app that can be downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace.
“Sling TV is an over-the-top, television service that will deliver live sports, lifestyle, family, news and information channels, Video-On-Demand entertainment, and the best of Internet video for $20 per month,” said the Xbox Wire announcement. “With Sling TV, there’s no commitment, contract, credit check, hardware installation or hidden fees. Confirmed channels include ESPN, ESPN 2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network and Disney Channel, with more to come. And Xbox One will be the exclusive gaming console when it launches in the coming weeks.”
Between these services, gamers may never feel the need to click on a cable box again. That is, if they perform up to snuff once they get out of beta and onto the marketplace, of course . . .
Since their release last fall, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been doing big business for Apple – and taking away some of the market share Android phones have garnered, according to a report from TechCrunch.
Using numbers provided by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech’s yearly figures (based on the first three months to the end of November 2014), Android actually lost a share in the U.S. for the first time since September 2013, based on the strong sales of Apple’s new devices.
Android has had a huge hold on the “phablet” market for some time, but this is the first time that a real threat has emerged with Apple’s larger devices. Kantar reports that the rate of those switching from Android to iOS remained around 18 percent – a “stable” number – and while that’s not a significant enough number to cause complete worry, it does mark an interesting shift in the “phablet” market, even though they’re still generally phone devices.
Android had a 50.4 percent share of sales over the three months from November 2013, although since then, it’s dropped down to 48.4 percent. Meanwhile, iOS has managed to increase by 4.3 percent, to a total of 47.4 percent – just one percent away from its competition. Meanwhile, Windows Phone dropped 1.6 percentage points, and others (like BlackBerry) dropped an additional 0.4 percent around the same period.
Meanwhile, Android had a bigger drop overseas in the U.S., with a decline of 6.7 percent over the previous year, down from 56.4 percent to 49.7 percent for 2014. iOS, meanwhile, jumped a staggering 12.2 percent, up to 42.5 percent – not as close as the race in the U.S., but still getting there.
Across five of Europe’s largest economies (including the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain), the general percentage drop for Android was 3.2 percent (to 66.8 percent), while iOS rose 6.3 percent (to 23.8) percent. Windows Phone barely hung on in third with 8.3 percent.
More statistics can be found here. Could 2015 be the year that iOS turns the tide in the “phablet” market
Virtual reality is prepared to have its biggest year yet, with the likes of Samsung, Sony, Google and Oculus VR set to debut their hardware at some given point this year. But are Hollywood studios prepared to keep up with the technology
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey already stated that content is just as vital to the experience as the headsets themselves. “Without content, nobody would be interested in this whole virtual reality thing.” So, obviously, having the right partners in tow would be a crucial move.
Video games will play a big part in that, but Hollywood studios need to keep up as well, with production studios ready to make the transfer to a whole new world. Variety recently reported on studios truly to make this jump, although some aren’t quite sure where it will exactly go.
“There are no real marching orders, because there’s no defined place where things will end up,” said Ted Schilowitz, leader of the Fox Innovation Lab for 20th Century Fox studios. “You have to be very nimble at this point.”
Consumers could play a big part in the virtual reality demand, especially with the introduction of new headsets on the market. But now it’s a matter of how effectively content is used to transport them into another world, based mainly on Hollywood franchises and/or original ideas.
Some have already experimented with this in the past, particularly at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, with Oculus-based demonstrations based on Pacific Rim, Batman, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Into the Storm, amongst other franchises. Studios are also stepping up with original efforts, like the virtual reality-based movie Zero Point, being produced by Condition One.
“There is a lot of energy in Hollywood around immersive video as a new content type that they’re interested in exploring,” said Nick DiCarlo, vice president/general manager of immersive products and virtual reality for Samsung. “That all looks like real investment and the risk-tasking necessary to get something like this off the ground, so I’m very encouraged.”
However, some studios have taken a cautious stance due to trends dropping off, including the fading-out of the 3D television fad, but virtual reality has a much different approach. “We’ve learned you have to create the content for the experience: just converting what you’ve got doesn’t work. You don’t get the immersion you’re looking for,” said Warren Mayoss, head of technology product development for DreamWorks Animation.
Cory Strass-burger, producer for VR who previously worked with NBC Universal and Lionsgate, added, “The market is nonexistent really, so you have a lot of creative people wanting to make stuff for installation-based things.”
With the introduction of the devices, however, things could certainly take a turn – it just depends what market shows the most interest. “If VR is only ever for gaming, it is a good business,” added DiCarlo. “Expand it past gaming, it will be a great business.”
Setting up advertising for a new platform is a “risk-and-reward” process, as it provides a new platform in which to present innovative new ways to advertise, while, at the same time, coming up with problems that some ad agencies may have a hard time overcoming.
In this particular case, the Apple Watch could face an uphill struggle. TapSense recently unveiled a new ad platform that works specifically with the device, and, as you can see above, it provides some interesting advertising techniques that take up the full display of the Apple Watch.
While the platform looks workable on the surface, some questions have come into play regarding its effectiveness. The platform was originally advertised as “hyper-local targeting” with “Apple Pay integration.” However, according to Apple Insider, this may not be the case, as the advertising won’t be able to utilize advertising that works with built-in watch fades, nor will it be compatible with the Apple Pay service. In addition, development guidelines put in place by the company may not even allow advertising to be used on the device in the first place. Concerns have also arisen in regards to keeping users’ privacy in check, as certain ads would utilize location and other pieces of information for specific targeting practices.
Since the original announcement yesterday, TapSense updated its initial announcement, stating that the advertising intentions could be blocked entirely with Apple’s development guidelines. “Both Apple’s WatchKit SDK and the TapSense SDK are in Beta and APIs are subject to change,” the company explained. “As and when Apple makes the WatchKit guidelines available, we will review it carefully to ensure our DSK is both in compliance and approved by Apple.”
Apple hasn’t confirmed any plans in terms of approving a plan for advertising on its Apple Watch just yet, and there’s no guarantee that such plans will be put in place. While some of the company’s more popular devices do utilize advertising, others, like Apple TV, don’t use it at all, outside of displaying key choices for movies and TV shows from the App Store.
Another question with the effectiveness of advertising is the inability for advertising to use the Apple Pay service. TapSense’s firm stated “although Apple Pay integration with Apple Watch is a great convenience for the consumer, the TapSense SDK will not integrate directly with Apple Pay. To redeem a coupon from an ad, it would need to have a readable barcode that can be scanned at the point of sale, or the ad could be added to Passbook and then delivered to Apple Watch to be redeemed.” For some, this could be more troublesome than the initial discount is worth.
Oculus, the well-known virtual reality startup recently acquired by Facebook, sees their field as a prime opportunity for entrepreneurs.
Oculus head of studios Jason Rubin, referencing public statements of reluctance to embrace virtual reality made by EA’s Blake Jorgensen and Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick in recent months, delivered his remarks at a CES 2015 panel in Las Vegas.
“The early movers do really well in these situations because they fail, and they learn how to do the right thing on the second or third attempt,” Rubin said, pointing to a tradition of established corporations allowing smaller competitors to champion new — and, by extension, largely unproven — technologies. “And by the time the big companies that are looking at a number of assets they can deploy to make various games – and they say “there is a zero install base in VR right now, we need to focus on these other (things)” – they will miss it, they always do.”
Rubin, formerly of Crash Bandicoot creator THQ, thinks the untold riches virtual reality will surely produce are ripe for a startup’s taking. “One of these early teams will generate a billionaire or a group of splitting of a billion dollars, just as Rovio did and just as Zynga did.”
Pressed for specifics on what a Rovio or Zynga-esque VR company could look like, Rubin saw the future as being just as wide open and unpredictable as the sharing economy was when the iPhone came into existence.
“…we have no idea what the Uber is of VR. When they put the iPhone out, no one said “this is going to revolutionize taxi driving”… people will use VR for its inherent advantages over other past platforms, and it will become a future platform.”
Rubin praised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his company’s acquisition of Oculus, saying the social visionary’s belief that a new platform rises roughly every decade points to virtual reality as the next great leap forward.
Though virtual reality might be a brave new world rife with uncertainty for the moment, it would appear from Rubin’s remarks that a host of startups are willing to step in to take the technology to soaring new heights, delivering previously unforeseen benefits for consumers and marketers alike.
The Interview, the now-infamous lowbrow political comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogen, is making news in a positive way just weeks after it sat at the center of a massive hacking attack on distributor Sony Pictures.
Sony Pictures announced today that online sales and rentals of The Interview — launched through the Internet and video-on-demand distribution channels after threats of violence compelled major theater chains to scrap its Christmas release — total over $31 million, making Franco and Rogen’s controversial flick about an assassination attempt against North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un Sony’s most successful online film of all time.
Though Sony still has a long ways to go to recoup The Interview’s $44 million pre-promotion production budget, it is likely the film will serve as an important trial balloon for studios looking to hop on the mobile bandwagon, if unintentionally so.
Competitors eager to adapt to consumers’ desire to watch their favorite shows on the go could make The Interview the opening shot in a long series of films following mobile-first release schedules.
It’s no secret that Microsoft has a wealth of data at its disposal. With its own personal database, as well as access to data gathered by 3rd parties who survey people and ask about their gaming habits, Microsoft can get its hands on a plethora of data regarding who is using their products and how – all with ease.
Microsoft tends to utilize Bing data to judge the popularity of a game compared to other releases. It can also determine how its users are using its gaming consoles, which in turn helps advice Microsoft where to focus its efforts.
The results regarding the typical gender or age of gamers have been shifting since the introduction of mobile games. According to a study done in the UK by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), Microsoft can observe that 52 percent of gamers are female while the remaining 48 percent are male. In addition to more female gamers, there also seems to be a bigger age range of gamers, the largest group being between the ages of 25-44. This study shows how the arrival of mobile devices has enabled everyone from all ages to game wherever they are. This being said, the definition of “gamer” has now been update to include players of casual mobile games like Candy Crush or Flappy Bird.
What you can take away from all this is simple – a game’s initial popularity can now be tracked by following web search results, a process Microsoft uses Bing data to accomplish.
The release of Destiny marked a big day for gamers, which is apparent when analyzing search results (above). Destiny was launched around the same time as the Sims 4 and FIFA 15, however it had a dramatically higher number of searches regarding it. Using data like this, Microsoft can focus their advertising and offer deals to boost sales.
By following the activity of Xbox One consoles, Microsoft discovered that in the last month 91 percent of consoles were used just for gaming, 45 percent of them were used for video, 43 percent socializing, 38 percent internet, 37 percent music, and 12 percent live TV. It’s clear that gaming consoles are used for much more than purely gaming; however gaming is still its dominant use.
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