We Control The Supply Chain, We Control The Customer
by Ewan Spence
Nokia’s Go:Play launch continues to intrigue me, because even through the delightfully Finnish presentations, there’s a number of concepts and changes going on that, while having the potential to trip up Nokia, are more likely to be picked up as brave moves once we look back on this period.
The one I want to talk about today is their next move in the gaming market, and specifically the electronic distribution of the game titles. Nokia’s last foray into the gaming world with the N-gage and N-Gage QD gaming decks was for some a strange diversion with an ill-defined product that was both a phone and a games console, yet neither, at the same time. While it gained main supporters, critical acclaim was less noticeable.
At the key turning point of any console life cycle, about 18 months in, is when the games become well suited to the platform, the developers know what it can do, and the N-Gage was no exception. Yet getting a hold of titles such as Pathway to Glory, Ghost Recon or Warhammer 40,000 proved to be frustrating for the end-users. Major retailers no longer had the titles on the shelves, leaving the online retailers to pick up the slack. Not the sort of thing that impulse based purchase can cope with.
So Nokia have lifted the system out of everyone else’s hands and will be delivering all the N-Gage games through their ‘Ovi’ service. With a launch in two months time, users can expect to not only be able to purchase games over the air and download direct to their phone (or to a backup / game manger application on their PC) but to be able to download free trial version, extra levels or episodic content, or
All very Web 2.0, all very flexible, all leveraging the lack of a retail chain. Plus dropping the price to levels much more suited to impulse buying (full games are going to be between $6-$10, so expect the other options to be drastically less). About the only people not happy with this are the died-in-the-wool collectors now denied the chance to collect boxes, merchandising materials, and elusive beta/gold pressings of the titles.
If this all looks remarkably like X-Box Live, then you could well be right; just remember the 700,00 member strong Nokia Arena - which piloted many of these concepts, but not under one button on the phone - launched with the original gaming smartphones back in October 2003.
Military leaders have always known that the quickest way to loose a war is too loose control over supply lines. The comfy triumvirate of Manufacturer / Network / Customer has been a mainstay of the mobile business for a long time. From everything on show at the Go:Play event, Nokia have decided that they want full control over the entire customer path. Which is great for their business… but will they be able to wrest those customers out of the networks, while still keeping the networks on side to sell the phones?
