EEDAR: Publishers could profit from Welcome Back model

Market research firm EEDAR has today suggested that publishers could benefit from following the example of Sony's Welcome Back programme, and stimulate sales of sequels by making previous games in the series available for free.

In its research, EEDAR found that Sony's offering of Infamous, LittleBigPlanet and Dead Nation for free for a limited time drove higher sales of and interest in Infamous 2 and LittleBigPlanet 2, and saw an increase in search traffic for Dead Nation 2, despite there being no sequel to Housemarque's top-down, cooperative zombie shooter.

All four PS3 titles on offer in the Welcome Back Programme - the three named above, plus WipeOut HD - were among the top 25 new game purchases in June, according to user metrics supplied by gaming site IGN. This resulted in an increase in users downloading PSN titles to 17 per cent compared to 13 per cent in March, the month before PlayStation Network was taken offline. It also saw PlayStation 3's overall share of current-generation console game purchases increase, from 40 per cent in March to 44 per cent. Infamous was the most-acquired game across all home consoles in June - a month that also saw the release of its sequel.

As a result, EEDAR suggests two ways in which publishers could follow Sony's lead and increase awareness of and interest in sequels by giving away previous games in the series for a limited time. The first option is to do so in advance of a game's release: EEDAR estimates that a game that has previously sold two million units generates revenue of around $500,000 a month, and that a sequel would need to sell just 8,500 additional units for the publisher to be better off.

However, EEDAR acknowledges that approach is not without its drawbacks. Chief among those would be a risk of damage to relationships with retailers, as offering a game as a free download would naturally reduce physical sales of the game to virtually zero. It also notes that some series where the narrative flows from one game to another, such as Mass Effect, normally see strong sales of original games during the month before and after a sequel's release.

EEDAR suggests as an alternative that publishers consider giving originals away for free between two and four months after a sequel's release. This would not only eliminate the risk of upsetting retail but would go some way to reducing the rate at which sales of new games tail off in the months after launch, and would increase awareness in a sequel not merely in advance of its release but when it is already prominently displayed on store shelves and being sold at full price.

The Welcome Back Programme was Sony's recompense to users for the attack on PSN that resulted in the theft of the personal information of more than 100 million users, and kept the service offline for six weeks in the west and almost double that in Japan. EEDAR's research, however, shows that it may prove to be much more than that.

While it appears to have been successful in its attempt to encourage users back online - 90 per cent have returned already - in time Welcome Back may be viewed as having helped solved the problem of how publishers can ensure their games have a long tail at retail, putting an end to the need for aggressive discounting in the weeks after release to ensure games maintain prominence on shelves and in the charts. And, business considerations aside, there can barely be a gamer on the planet who would balk at the prospect of more free games.