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Video-Game Planet

http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/05/18 13:37 英语文摘

　　译者点评：全球最大的独立视频游戏出版商电子艺界公司2003年8 月13日新推出的视频游戏“劲爆橄榄球 2004 ” 迅速在美国火爆起来，搜索量激增 34% ，在全球卖出了 400 万套。该公司总裁劳伦斯·普洛斯特十分乐观地表示，在不久的将来，电子艺界将成为全球最大的娱乐公司。据调查，平均每个美国人每年花在视频游戏上的时间长达 75 个小时，是 1997 年的两倍，大大超过了看 DVD 和录像带的时间。据此，索尼、微软和诺基亚等科技公司都在视频游戏上下了大赌注。他们称，在不久的将来，新一代控制台将使视频游戏的视听效果不亚于电影和电视。我们已进入一个全新的视频游戏时代。

　　Music? Sales down. Hollywood? *Hit or miss1. Tech? Flat. No wonder everyone wants to be in videogames. 音乐？销量下降。好莱坞？风险太大。科技？平淡无奇。难怪人人都想把宝押在视频游戏上。

　　Let’s play a little numbers game: On Aug. 14, Madden NFL 2004, a video game, pitting reallife NFL2 teams against one another, appeared on retailers’ shelves. Within three weeks, the game grossed $100 million— two million copies sold at $50 a pop. In roughly the same period, the summer hit movie Seabiscuit3 returned $78 million. Madden doesn’t just have better numbers, but better legs4: By the time the next version comes out a year from now, gamemaker Electronic Arts5 will have shipped6 four million copies of Madden 2004, raking in $200 million. By comparison, last year’s Oscarwinning Best Picture, Chicago7, has taken nine months to bring in $171 million at the box office.

　　If you’ve got kids, or hang around with them, you knew videogames were big8. But you may be shocked by how big they are, and not just in terms of the multibilliondollar revenues and profit margins that are the envy of major entertainment companies. Games are becoming culturally pervasive, stealing time and dollars from other consumer entertainment options like movies, television, and magazines. On average an American will spend 75 hours this year playing videogames, more than double the amount of time spent gaming in 1997 and eclipsing that of DVD or tape rentals today, according to market research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Of the other forms of entertainment, only Internet usage is expected to grow faster than videogames—a fact that the videogame makers plan to use to their advantage.

　　And with time comes money. Though the global videogame market was just $28 billion in 2002, some people think it’s on track to rival the movie, music, or television industries, perhaps by the end of this decade. The games business has been racking up doubledigit growth rates for the past decade, even through the recent tech slump.

　　Long considered to be the toy department of the entertainment business, the videogame industry is now starting to flex its muscle. In Hollywood, movie studios and music producers increasingly make sure they have the support of game companies before starting projects. And execs9 are jumping ship to go work in what is now called interactive entertainment. The tech world, too, is taking notice. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nokia are placing huge bets that videogames will open lucrative new revenue streams worldwide.

　　According to a recently released study by the Pew Internet && American Life Project, 70% of last year’s college students played videogames at least occasionally. Asked whether they have ever played videogames, the student response scored 100%. “Computer, video, and online games are woven into the fabric of everyday life for college students,” the report concluded. One computer game, The Sims, has sold close to 20 million copies, counting sequels and spinoffs, and its main audience is teenage girls. At any given time, 30,000 people are playing pool online at Yahoo Games. Thousands more are playing card games on AOL Games, MSN Games, or Gamespot. According to Nielsen/NetRatings10, more than 35 million people visited Internet game parlors last month.

　　“Lots of people are astonished; they don’t really understand the pervasiveness of computerbased gaming,” says Tom Melcher, CEO of There, an online gaming and communications service launching next month with backing from major cable and telecom companies. “It wasn’t something they grew up with. Now, I’m 40, and I can remember a time when there weren’t any electronic game devices at all. But for kids who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, they can’t remember a time when there were not game machines all around them.”

　　That’s not hyperbole. More than half of American households have some sort of game machine, like a Sony PlayStation, a Microsoft Xbox, or a portable Nintendo Game Boy Advance. As new and better machines roll out, consoles will become a fixture in more and more living rooms. -

视频游戏时代

　　让我们来玩一把数字游戏吧：8月14日(指2003年8月14日——译者)，一种名为《劲爆橄榄球2004》(一种模仿全国橄榄球联盟球队真实比赛场景)的视频游戏出现在零售商的货架上。3周内，该游戏共获毛利1亿美元——售出200万套，每套50美元。在大约同一时期之内，夏季当红影片《奔腾年代》获利7800万美元。《劲爆》不仅有较大的发行量，而且有后劲：从现在算起一年以后下一个版本推出时，这款由电玩出版商电子艺界公司制作的《劲爆橄榄球2004》将售出400万套，获利2亿美元。相比之下，去年的奥斯卡最佳影片奖获奖影片《芝加哥》9个月的票房收入才1.71亿美元。

　　如果你有小孩，或者常与他们打交道的话，你会发现视频游戏真是太受欢迎了。但倘若你知道它们是如何地受欢迎，而且还不仅限于让那些大娱乐公司忌妒的高达数十亿美元的收入和利润幅度时，你可能会感到震惊。游戏正在进行着文化渗透，从其它消费娱乐形式如电影、电视、还有杂志那里抢走大量的时间和金钱。据维罗尼斯·苏勒·史蒂文森市场研究公司的调查，平均每个美国人今年花在玩视频游戏上的时间将长达75个小时，是1997年的两倍多，更使时下的 DVD 和录像带出租业黯然失色。在其它娱乐形式中，只有互联网的使用有可能将快于视频游戏的增长—— 游戏出版商们计划利用这一事实谋取利益。

　　时间会赢得金钱。虽然全球视频游戏市场规模在2002年仅为280亿美元，但一些人认为，也许不出10年，视频游戏将正式与电影、音乐或电视等行业抗衡。在过去10年里，游戏业一直在以两位数的速度急增，甚至在最近的科技业萧条时期也是如此。

　　游戏业曾长期被视为娱乐业的一个玩具分支，但它现在正开始大展拳脚。在好莱坞，电影制片商和音乐制作人在启动项目之前越来越多地要先确保其获得游戏出版商的支持。不仅如此，经理们正跳槽到现在所谓的互动娱乐业去工作。就连科技界也在关注此事。像索尼、微软和诺基亚公司等正准备大赌一把，期望视频游戏会开辟出在全球范围内赚钱的新途径。

　　皮尤互联网和美国生活设计公司最近发布的一项研究报告显示，去年70%的大学生至少偶尔玩过视频游戏。当被问及他们是否曾经玩过视频游戏时，学生的回答是100%。该报告总结道：“计算机、视频和在线游戏已成为大学生们日常生活中不可或缺的组成部分。”一种名为“模拟人生”的电脑游戏包括续集和附带产品已售出了近2000万套，其主要观众为不到20岁的少女。在任何给定的时间，都有3万人在雅虎游戏频道玩在线赌博游戏；另有数千人在美国在线和微软MSN游戏频道及Gamespot站点玩各类纸牌游戏。据尼尔森网络评估公司统计，上个月有3500多万人逗留于因特网游戏厅。

　　汤姆·梅尔彻是将于下个月开业的一家名为“那里”的在线游戏及电信服务商的首席执行官，得到一些大的有线和电信公司支持。他说：“许多人感到震惊；他们并不真正了解电脑游戏的渗透力，因为这些人不是伴随着电脑游戏长大的。嗯，我40岁了，我还能记起那个根本没有任何电子游戏设备的年代。但对上个世纪八、九十年代出生的孩子来说，他们并不记得周围没有游戏机的时光。”

　　这并不是夸张。超过半数的美国家庭拥有某种游戏机，如索尼的PlayStation, 微软的 Xbox, 或者便携式的任天堂Game Boy Advance等。随着新一代更好的游戏机的大量推出，控制台将会成为愈来愈多家庭起居室中的一个固定装置。

　　(秦毅忠摘译自 Fortune Sep. 2, 2003)

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