The Long Tail

March 09, 2007

Big red buttons!

Another piece of evidence for my case that the innovation in gaming these days isn't on the screen, but rather in the input peripherals. From Nabeel Hyatt's Blinking blog:

Sony hired Relentless to make a music quiz show game. Based on the success of games like Singstar [which shipped with a microphone], they convinced Sony to ship Buzz!: The Music Quiz with four custom controllers with a big red button. After an early collective yawn from the games industry, word of mouth took off and the title has sold over 4 million units. The franchise was the top selling UK title two years in a row, and has stayed in the top 20 over two years later.

The controllers with the big red buttons weren't necessary--any button on the standard PS2 controller would have worked as well--but they were fun and helped the game stand out on the shelf. Do you want yet another identical game box, or that bigger package with the four bright red button controllers? Buyers went for the differentiated product that showed its simple and easy-to-understand gameplay at a glance.

Meanwhile, here's Alex Rigopulos, co-founder and CEO of Harmonix, which makes Guitar Hero, explaining at the recent DICE conference how they weighed the pros and cons of releasing a game in a huge box with a plastic guitar controller:

Posted at 06:36 PM | Permalink

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Comments

Rock on! That's what marketing is really about. Screw the legalistic nays and tug on my heart (guitar?) strings!

Posted by: Brett Duncan | March 09, 2007 at 11:26 PM

hi
what is that, big red button ???
its a new mouse :o) ???

chears

Posted by: christina | March 10, 2007 at 05:57 PM

Long tail Microcapitalism...
Just wrote a little piece about Long Tail capitalism in my little blog. Might be an interesting read, as I haven't seen Anderson talk about this yet, though I might have missed it.
Actually, the pertinent example (to this musioc post) is one example I cite, www.sellaband.com, the other is kiva.org. Check 'em out and if anyone has found anything similar, let me know. Or if Anderson wants to take a stab at the subject, I'd be interested to see the results.

Posted by: Em | March 11, 2007 at 01:26 PM

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I'm Vietnamese. Did you toured whatever times? If not already please visit our country with Vietnam travel, Vietnam tours or Vietnam hotels.

Posted by: Vietnam travel agency | March 11, 2007 at 08:30 PM

Hi, credit world is cool !

Posted by: Willie | March 13, 2007 at 06:01 AM

Chris, great post.

However one key point that the Relentless made about Buzz! was that the big red buttons were NOT just a marketing benefit.

Sure it helped to have four big red buttons on the box to help is stand out. Especially since it still sold for the typical console retail price.

However more importantly their contention is that it helped immerse the players in the game. What is the best moment of being in a game show? Knowing the answer and slamming your whole palm onto that big red button. If you are just using your thumb to tap the X key, the drama is completely lost.

- Nabeel

Posted by: Nabeel Hyatt | March 16, 2007 at 08:12 AM