IndustryGamers
Picking winners for 2011 was hard task; the year was crowded with many new releases and exciting news in a time of vast changes in the gaming industry. We've narrowed the list down to our Top 5 Winners for 2011, and added some Honorable Mentions that didn't quite make it into the top 5 but still deserve notice.
#5 The Xbox 360
2011 was going to be the year of the PS3, according to many analysts. Yet here we are at the end of 2011, and in the US the Xbox 360 has stayed at the top of the sales charts all year. The Xbox 360 has ended up selling around 60 million units worldwide in its lifetime, which is about where the PS3 is at. That is despite the Xbox 360 selling almost no units in Japan, where PS3 sales have been good all along. In a year where consoles are beginning to look their age, and even when the PS3 dropped its price by $50, and the Wii can be found on sale for $99, the Xbox 360 continued to sell. Sure, the strong lineup of exclusives likeGears of War 3 helped. The Kinect also provided a boost by providing a new way to interact with the 360. The Xbox Live dashboard has seen a slick re-imagining, and Microsoft has been busy lining up new content deals for the Xbox 360 ecosystem. Now more than ever the Xbox 360 is a multimedia powerhouse in the family room, even without a Blu-Ray drive.
During the all-important Black Friday selling period, the Xbox 360 sold nearly 960,000 units (800,000 of those in 24 hours), and 750,000 Kinects, for a total of 1.7 million Xbox 360's in November. This handily beat out both the Wii (860,000 units) and the PS3 (Sony declined to give numbers). The Xbox 360 is close to beating its sales for last year, which is rather remarkable considering the general decline in retail sales.
What will 2012 bring for the Xbox 360? Even without knowing when the Wii U is coming, or the price and features, the Xbox 360 looks poised to have another year on top of the sales charts. At least until the next generation of consoles arrives, and maybe even after that.
#4 Freemium
It may seem odd to give a business model a Winner Of The Year award, but this business model and its variations deserve it. (Freemium is also known as Free-to-play, F2P, and in an earlier incarnation as shareware.) The basic idea is simple: Give players a chance to play the game for free in order to maximize the number of players, then make money by selling something to some of the players. The “something” varies from all kinds of virtual goods to subscriptions that provide access to premium features of the game.
This year has seen in-app purchasing go from around 14% of iOS revenue to well over 50%, with games leading the way. Some publishers, like ngmoco, have said that it's the only way they plan to monetize their games. The fun is just getting started on Android, where in-app purchasing wasn't added until the middle of 2011 (and with the fragmentation of the Android installed base, it may take a while to become a standard feature for the installed base).
The social game market began with freemium play, and it's done well enough to let Zynga go public with a billion-dollar IPO despite only 3% of their users actually paying to play their games. New social games that have been introduced all use this model; it's unthinkable to try any other way to offer a social game other than free, apparently.
Online games are joining the party, too. The free-to-play MMO was just an oddity in South Korea a few years ago, and now World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic are starting to seem like holdovers from the Cretaceous era: Massive subscription dinosaurs surrounded by nimble freemium mammals that are eating their eggs. Except that many of these mammals were once subscription-based MMOs that switched to freemium in order to survive and expand their user base. Many have seen their revenues increase dramatically since switching to this business model. Oh, and let's not forget that little game League of Legends, which has ballooned to over 30 million players and is now offering $5 million in prizes for the second season of play. Not bad for a free game.
The last bastion of the paid game seems to be the consoles, but even they are under siege. Sony's allowed Free Realms onto the PSN, and DC Universe Online has gone freemium both on PC and PSN. We're not sure what the next generation of consoles will look like or when they'll arrive, but they'll probably be running freemium games when they do.
#3 Mobile Gaming
The entire mobile category of gaming grew tremendously in both hardware and software in 2011, and it shows no sign of slowing down. There are so many winners here we decided to give the Winner award to the entire category. Let's look at how this category is not only growing, it's taking a bite out of other gaming categories.
Apple's iOS devices continue to sell and sell and sell. The iPad 2 still owns 85% of the tablet market even as tablet sales soar. The iPhone 4s, while not the iPhone 5 envisioned by the rumor mill, has been a smash success and leads the way to Apple selling around 30 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2011. (If you're keeping track, that's 10 million gaming devices a month, or more than 5 times the amount of Xbox 360's sold during November, every month.)
Meanwhile, Android device activations have hit an astounding 700,000 per day, which means somewhere north of 20 million Android devices (mostly phones) are turning on every month and looking for games to play.
The hardware isn't exactly standing still when it comes to graphics power, either. We've seen the performance advance roughly 4x or 5x over last year. Now the quad-core chips are coming, we see output to HDTV on tablets and phones, and wireless controllers are becoming a thing you can get to add to your phones or tablets. The advances are continuing and fueling the sales increases.
The software is keeping pace with the hardware. The end of 2011 will see the total number of apps downloaded hit 25 billion between Android and iOS. Mostly Angry Birds, perhaps, but there are some other apps in there too. That's an exaggeration, but not as much of one as you might think, since Angry Birds has hit over 500 million downloads across all platforms. Major game publishers now see mobile as a platform that they have to support, simply because it's everywhere and people who play games on other platforms are also playing games on their mobile devices.
As the quality of the graphics increases on mobile platforms, the games are looking better.Infinity Blade II looks like a console title, yet you can get it on a smartphone. Nvidia has shown some impressive software running on its Tegra 3 chip set, and developers are realizing that graphics-wise, smartphones and tablets are powerful enough to run good-looking games. New titles are adding social connections, location awareness, augmented reality, and other features to games that we just can't get on our home consoles.
The mobile category had a great year in 2011 for both hardware and software, and 2012 looks to be just as good. Or better.
#2 Call of Duty
It should come as no surprise that when a game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 takes in $1 billion in revenue in just 16 days it should find its way onto the Winners list. That's an amazing number, and Activision is quick to point out that they beat the hit movie Avatar'srecord of $1 billion in revenue of 17 days to become, as Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick put it, “the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium, and we achieved this record with sales from only two territories.” It's also worth mentioning that Activision shipped 6.5 million copies on launch day, the largest release in their history.
We gave the award to the entire Call of Duty franchise rather than just the latest installment, because, well, it's been an amazing franchise.Call of Duty has been around since 2003, and every year it just seems to get bigger. This year's installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3arrived just a few weeks after Electronic Arts had launched its long-awaited Battlefield 3 competition and shipped out 12 million copies, and sold 8 million of them so far. Great numbers, but outclassed by the estimated 16 million copies that Activision has sold. Despite the strongest competition in years, Call of Duty still set records.
The franchise last year looked a bit doubtful as key Activision developer Infinity Ward lost its founders and many employees, but Activision rebounded brilliantly. (The court cases over that are still slowly making their way through the system.)
The Call of Duty Elite service launched with some initial hiccups but quickly signed up over 4 million subscribers for gameplay stats, video sharing, and clan support features. Over 1 million of those have paid $50 a year for extra elite content, and combined there are now more than 80,000 clans and 100,000 user videos online. There was even a Call of Dutyconvention that attracted more than 6,000 fans who just couldn't resist a chance to blast away others in a face-to-face setting. Let's not forget all the Call of Duty merchandise, too, like branded controllers and action figures.
Activision may have pared back franchises like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, and they may not have leaped into mobile and social gaming. But you have to give them credit for taking their core game and making it perform better than ever, even during a down sales year for the industry, with strong competition and even the International Red Cross suggesting that the game should force participants to obey the Geneva Conventions. The franchise overcame all that and set sales records yet again. That's a clear Winner. For 2012, they'll probably set a new record again.
#1 Gamers
The #1 Winner of 2011 shouldn't be a surprise... it's you, the Gamer. The array of gaming choices has never been greater. There were more games than ever available in 2011, on more platforms. We were deluged with sequels to hit games and some brand new titles. Even people who don't play games started playing games and enjoying themselves, even though they didn't think of themselves as Gamers with a capital G.
Gaming found its way into every nook and cranny of our lives. You're at work, so you don't think you can game? Take a few minutes on your social game during your coffee break in the morning, and maybe again in the afternoon when that crop is ready to harvest. Riding the train on the way home? Pull out your smartphone and have some fun. When you get home, download some new games from Steam on your computer, or fire up the console and get someUncharted 3 or Gears of War 3 action.
The choices in gaming hardware have expanded for Gamers. Gaming hardware ranges from consoles that are showing off some of their best graphics as they reach the end of their lifespan, to new smartphones and tablets with graphics horsepower that's beginning to overtake the Wii and gunning for the 360 and the PS3, to firebreathing PCs with an SSD and the latest graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia. Even laptops can turn in some decent graphics performance, and the prices continue to drop.
Every platform has seen some terrific games, featuring innovations in game play and sheer graphics muscle.
The games... here's just a few of the stellar games we've seen this year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, Batman: Arkham City, Uncharted 3, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Minecraft, Portal 2, Infinity Blade II, Dead Space HD, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Little Big Planet 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land. The downside is there have been so many good titles you can't possibly play them all.
There's a lot of great games that are free to play, too; most MMOs have moved to this business model, which means it's possible to play a huge number of games for free. You can access games via streaming through OnLive on a variety of platforms, so if you have a fast Internet connection you don't need the latest computer hardware to get high-end graphics. If you want to try games out before you buy, game rentals are even more widely available through Redbox, Blockbuster, or Gamefly. If you don't mind the angry stares of publishers, used games are more widely available than ever, and you can get some value out of your old titles by selling them or exchanging them.
It all adds up to more ways to play, more ways to pay, more great games than ever before, and more free or inexpensive games than you could possibly find time to experience. Gamers are the big Winner for 2011. Congratulations! Take a break and try out that new game you've been meaning to play; you deserve a reward.
Honorable Mentions
It was tough getting the list down to only 5 Winners. A few other things stood out, and they are worthy of noting.
Skyrim: Everybody's playing it, though PS3 owners may be enjoying it less than others...
Social: Zynga kept over 225 million players happy every month. The social games category had more entrants, The Sims Social had a great debut, and now it's going mobile. Plus more free games to choose from!
Electronic Arts:The turnaround is taking hold, and EA's acquisitions and transformations looks to be paying off. Plus Battlefield 3 did well despite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3doing amazingly well.
Minecraft: Finally shipped, and in its journey redefined expectations for indie games, graphics, business models, and how games are played. Bonus points for having a convention and battling Bethesda over trademarks.
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