Yesterday evening I received the following press release from Relentless Software, the makers of hit music quiz game, Buzz:
"Relentless Software has proven that originality still sells. Their innovative trivia quiz title - 'Buzz!: The Music Quiz'-not only took a coveted spot (no.4) in the Full Price PlayStation 2 Christmas top 5 and no. 15 in the Full Price All Formats charts but was the ONLY original i.e. non-sequel, non-licensed game in the entire Top 20!"
Of course, Relentless had Sony behind them, providing a decent advertising budget and helping with the research and manufacture of the game's big button peripheral. But it makes you think, doesn't it? Pummelled by experience, we all now accept as fact the proposition that sequels and tie-ins are the easiest products to sell because they have built in brand awareness - which is half the battle in getting Joe Gamer to put his hand in his pocket. But the theory behind Buzz - that a simple, highly inclusive multiplayer quiz title is going to fly off the shelves over Christmas whether it has a brand or not - seems so mind-numbingly obvious now you wonder why the market isn't flooded with them every year.
I mean, are publishers really, really giving original ideas a chance these days, or are they just happy to trot out the received mantra that new brands are more expensive and riskier to market? I wonder, in reality, how much more expensive it is to put a team on an offbeat new title for 15 months, than it is to buy the rights to a blockbuster movie? Obviously, the latter makes some kind of financial sense or companies wouldn't be doing it. But is this the only financial sense? It would seem there is another...
