Tournament.com co-founder Marcus Pearcey has told Next-Gen that the competitive gaming site has been “postponed” but not officially shut down. He admitted to misjudging the market but hopes to revive the service as soon as possible.
‘The Tournament.com servers are temporarily offline’, reads the homepage of competitive gaming website Tournamnet.com. Having spoken to co-founder Marcus Pearcey Wednesday, Next-Gen can reveal that those running the privately funded venture are currently in discussions to revive the online service, albeit in an adapted format.
“Tournament.com has not officially shut down but it has been postponed. We’re looking at our options and once we’ve made a decision we can tell the player base what we’re doing.”
The site, which launched in May following 18 months of development, secured the exclusive rights to host competitive matches using Valve’s Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2, and aimed to get gamers playing “for relatively small amounts of money on a regular basis, win some, lose some and have fun doing so,” says Pearcey.
During Tournament.com’s beta phase Pearcey told Next-Gen that he believed there were a number of factors that suggested the business would be a success, from the proliferation of high-speed broadband connections to an increased focus on multiplayer gaming, although he acknowledged that predictions of success were effectively based on a hunch as there wasn’t really a case study or any hard data to back them up.
Six months later, Pearcey says that a costly infrastructure which drained resources, coupled with players' resistance to deposit their own funds once they had used up free credits, has ultimately led the company to rethink its business model.
“Our aim was always to create a first class infrastructure so that players could play games at a fast pace without issues such as bandwidth problems. If you could take away the infrastructure costs that made that possible then the business was very vibrant, but we were basically locked into very expensive infrastructure costs and we needed to take stock of what we could do about those.
“You’ve got to say that [we misjudged the market] because our conception was that there were enough players that wanted to play for money in this environment. The reality is, once they’d played with the bonus money that we provided, not enough people were prepared to deposit more money.
“Given seriously deep pockets we probably could have turned it around, but it was a case of whether we wanted to sink £X million more into the business, or whether we wanted to re-jig it and change the format in order to reduce some of our fixed costs.”
Pearcey says Tournament.com’s current troubles won’t affect its licensing deal with Valve.
“Valve are on board with us and we’re discussing with them how we want to take the business forward. They know it’s in our interest to make money for ourselves and in turn get a revenue stream going for them.
“Our key aims have been to make sure that players and deposits are safe, which they are, and that the key team is ok, which it is. That gives us some breathing space to look at our options, which we’re keeping under wraps for the moment.”
Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two has expanded its credit facility from USD 100 million to USD 140 million, with USD 25 million available for the UK business.
The credit will be used to get the publisher through the coming Christmas season and into the new year, and lenders once again include Wells Fargo Foothill and Citigroup.
"Our credit facility will support our periodic working capital needs during the busy holiday season and beyond," commented Ben Feder, CEO of Take-Two.
"We look forward to further strengthening our financial position with the release of our solid 2008 product slate, including Grand Theft Auto IV in our fiscal 2008 second quarter," he added.
Take-Two's UK outfits include Grand Theft Auto IV developer Rockstar North, Rockstar Leeds, the studio responsible for GTA games on the PSP, and the European headquarters at Rockstar London.
Microsoft is upping its assault on the casual market by offering free Xbox Live Arcade games to prospective 360 owners and the friends that persuade them to buy a console.
Microsoft is hoping to take advantage of Wii shortages this holiday by reaching out to those looking for a casual gaming fix. European gamers who persuade a friend to purchase an Xbox 360, and the person who actually parts with the cash, will each receive ten free XBLA games for their troubles, assuming they don’t forget to fill out and send off a form.
The ten titles in question are Every Extend Extra Extreme, Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Bomberman Live, Marble Blast Ultra (pictured), Spyglass Boardgames, 3D Mini Golf Adventures, Small Arms, Assault Heroes and Zuma Deluxe.
According to Stephen McGill, head of Gaming and Entertainment, Microsoft UK, the offer “…enforces the fact we’ve got an exceptional online service in Xbox Live, which truly does bring everyone together.”
Last month Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 Arcade pack in place of the prior entry-level unit, the Xbox 360 Core system, in a bid to target the family-friendly market being bossed by Nintendo. The Arcade pack comes with a wireless controller, five full pick-up-and-play arcade titles, high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) support and a 256MB memory card.
Two new special-edition DS bundles will go on sale in North America this Friday.
Each bundle will pair a custom-color Nintendo DS system with one of the platform's top titles. The new Gold edition will come bundled with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (pictured), and will be emblazoned with the series' signature Triforce logo, while the Metallic Rose DS, which will come with Nintendogs: Best Friends, will be accented with a distinctive pink puppy paw print.
"Nintendo DS remains the portable system of choice for gamers," said George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Our new bundles will be collector's items for current gamers while offering an attractive way for people new to video games to play with style."
Nintendo also used the press release to throw some NPD sales statistics into the mix.
The DS has sold in excess of 13.6 million units in North America since the system launched three years ago on November 21, 2004. The system sold more than 458k units in October, lifting year to date sales to almost 4.5 million. It also boasts 14 different million-unit selling titles in North America.
After months of submitting, waiting, revealing, more waiting, playing and some final waiting the Doritos sponsored Unlock Xbox contest has officially come to an end. And we survived. The winning submission ended up being Mike Borland's dinosaur delivery game called DORITOS Dash of Destruction which will be fully developed and placed onto the Xbox Live Arcade sometime early next year for all to enjoy. You can preview what Dash of Destruction has to offer by trying out the demo over at the Unlock Xbox website. We aren't sure how (for the lack of a better word) cheesy the game will end up being, but it'll be free and will be used to market a product. So really ... how bad could it be? ::cough:: Yaris ::cough::
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, has belittled Sony’s PlayStation Network, insisting that Microsoft’s online gaming service Xbox Live has no rivals.
Bach told the LA Times that the platform holder was years ahead of its rivals when it came to online gaming and media services.
“It's fair to say that Xbox Live is clearly head and shoulders above anything anyone else has tried to do,” he said.
“We don't have competition. Sony has done some things online, but nothing that can be called a service. We have a big advantage and we're going to keep pressing that advantage.”
Xbox Live, which recently celebrated its fifth birthday, has eight million subscribors. It has managed to broaden iits appeal beyond the traditional male game playing audience by targeting casual gamers and delivering other forms of media content.
“Demographically, when we started, you would say that it was a place for serious gamers. That has changed a lot in the last five years,” Bach continued. “It's now become a great place for casual gamers. When one of your leading games is Uno, you realize you've reached a new type of customer.
“Secondly, it's expanded from being a gaming service to an entertainment service with a social network. We have now expanded into the world of movies and TV shows. It's become a much broader place for people to experience entertainment.
“We have a broad long-term vision for connected entertainment across all platforms. That includes music, video, television and gaming. You're going to see pieces of that roll out over time. We're not ready to talk about the specifics.”
In comparison, Sony’s relatively young, free of-charge PlayStation Network service has 3 million subscribors, a number it hopes to boost dramatically when it launches online social networking space Home next year.
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“Tournament.com has not officially shut down but it has been postponed. We’re looking at our options and once we’ve made a decision we can tell the player base what we’re doing.”
The credit will be used to get the publisher through the coming Christmas season and into the new year, and lenders once again include Wells Fargo Foothill and Citigroup.
The ten titles in question are Every Extend Extra Extreme, Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Bomberman Live, Marble Blast Ultra (pictured), Spyglass Boardgames, 3D Mini Golf Adventures, Small Arms, Assault Heroes and Zuma Deluxe.
"Nintendo DS remains the portable system of choice for gamers," said George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Our new bundles will be collector's items for current gamers while offering an attractive way for people new to video games to play with style."
