Em post CS này lên và mong các anh chị cho em ý kiến, cùng thảo luận xoanh quanh 3 Unit , topic là CS này mà em sẽ thi vào tháng 6 tới. Business Studies
Advanced Subsidiary June 2004
Advance Notice of Case Study for
Unit 1: Business Structures, Objectives and External Influences
Unit 2: Marketing and Production
Unit 3: Financial Management
Context
The Games Console Market in 2002
In 1999 Britain’s computer games developers and publishers were the toast of the leisure sector, having a reputation as the world’s best. At their peak the seven British companies, including Eidos the inventor of Tomb Raider, were collectively worth £1.8 billion. However, 18 months later more than £1.4 billion had been wiped off their value, taking the size of the sector to just £335 million. Shareholders may have held back from selling their shares because a range of new consoles were due to be launched in 2000, including Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox. Sony’s PlayStation2 had already been launched. Customers had been holding off from buying existing consoles and this contributed to the sector’s poor performance.
Nick Gibson, games analyst, said that consoles are launched every five years so the fall in demand and the “year of profit warnings” follow a predictable trend. He said “…Cyclical growth has been a characteristic of the games industry since its inception. … Periods of strong growth have tended to last four to five years, followed by flat or falling sales during a two-year transition period as new games platforms are introduced. … The last two growth periods occurred between 1989 and 1993, and between 1995 and 1999”. In 2001 the industry was described as being in the later stages of a two-year transition – moving out of the downward part of one console cycle and onto the incline of the next. It was predicted that strong year-on-year growth would not occur before the end of 2002, with a 15% to 25% annual boost from then until 2005.
As the cycle begins again with a new set of games platforms, only time will tell whether the sector will bounce back. The market is expanding as the average age of game users increases, upgrading their consoles with each cycle. “ The increasing sophistication of game graphics is attracting new players,” says Gibson.
The current market leader in 2002, Sony’s PlayStation2, had enjoyed just over a year at the top but faced challenges from two very contrasting companies: Nintendo (which had provided stiff competition to Sony in the past) and a newcomer to the console market, Microsoft with its Xbox.
Although Sony has dominated the console market since 1995, Microsoft’s Xbox could represent a real threat despite its launch price of £299 being £100 more than the PlayStation2. In May 2002 worldwide sales of PlayStation2 were 30 millions units, including 8.8 million units in Europe.
Nintendo has a proven track record in the games console market. Until Sony’s intervention, Nintendo was undisputed king of the console market. However, Sony dominates the market in almost every area it releases products, most recently gaining a sizeable chunk of the mobile phone market. Microsoft, primarily a software company with little hardware manufacturing experience, is seeking to challenge the dominance of both firms with its Xbox console. The problem Microsoft is likely to encounter is surviving in a market that, traditionally, cannot support more than two machines at any one time. In addition, Sony and Nintendo both enjoy considerable brand loyalty.
Nintendo has a reputation for ‘cutesy’ titles and, at one stage, would not allow developers to portray blood in any of its games. Sony’s PlayStation2, on the other hand, does not have as much censorship and its consoles are home to some particularly gory series. However, Microsoft claims that its new console will aim to cater for both extremes of the market.
All three consoles have good and bad features but in the market, opinion seems to favour the Xbox and PlayStation2 over the GameCube. The GameCube’s £150 price tag is competitive, but its small number of game developers and lack of DVD playback may make it slightly less attractive than either of the alternative consoles. Despite these disadvantages, its initial sales in the USA ran at twice those of the Xbox on its launch in the same market.