Digital distribution is great for publishers since they don't have to worry about physical copies, and now GamersGate is looking to offer publishers more freedom in controlling their own properties online with GameNerve.
Digital distribution is certainly a hot topic in the gaming industry, on consoles and PC, so when GamersGate said that they had a "revolutionary" new digital publishing suite, we just had to know more about the Swedish company.
"It started as a project under the publishing house Paradox Interactive as a way of reaching customers worldwide," Theo Bergquist, CEO of GamersGate, told GameDaily BIZ. "It was called 'Paradox on Demand' and was designed for countries we would never reach with a boxed product. We launched in 2005 and soon other partners wanted to be in on it, so we launched GamersGate as a separate entity. Things have been going well for us; some months we've had over 100 percent growth and we now have over 500 titles online from both minor and major publishers. We describe GamersGate as the 'iTunes for games,' since you download a play center to centralize all your games."
Not satisfied with what the company has already accomplished, GamersGate will be launching a new product called GameNerve, GameDaily BIZ can exclusively reveal. This product, which is now live and available for free to publishing partners, allows digital publishers to upload demos and assets, change the price and have access to sales data, which is an almost unprecedented level of control. It potentially could allows publishers to monetize their entire back catalogues online.
"The steps between developers, publishers, distributors and retail are getting closer together," commented Bergquist. "To make a game and put it online... that's the big thing nowadays. The opportunity to use this powerful tool as a price management system, put up demos and trailers in real-time, that's going to be huge. When you distribute games to retail, it takes a few weeks to SKU up or SKU down, but we can do that instantly, and we think that's incredibly valuable. There's also the logistic numbers, seeing how your pricing affects the sales, so publishers can manage content with the price and based upon the statistics. Generally, we've been the only ones to have access to those materials, but now we can hand it over to the publisher and they can see the benefits in real time themselves."
We had to wonder if GameNerve was part of a major expansion for the company into the North American market. Bergquist responded, "Many people think digital distribution is the way of the future, and many things are moving online. The U.S. is certainly a major part of the market and GameNerve will make us grow. Publishers like GameNerve, because they can access the 'backbone' without us, so all feedback has been incredibly positive. I think that publishers are better suited to connecting with their products than we are."
"Another step towards world domination for us! It's the first real-publisher driven digital distribution suite, and we're excited for the future," concluded Bergquist, before clattering off to drink beers during a Swedish national holiday during the solstice. via gamedaily
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