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MCV 21/05/10 11
MCV INTERVIEW SCOTT GUTHRIE, GM & EXEC VP, MTV GAMES
MTV’s Euro Vision Rock Band may be the market leading music game in the US, but in Europe it lags firmly behind the Guitar Hero series. Christopher Dring speaks to MTV Games boss Scott Guthrie to discuss the firm’s new European office, its plans to unseat Activision and the appointment of industry veteran Roy Campbell… How have MTV Games and Rock Band performed in Europe so far? The positive is that we see Europe as the biggest opportunity for growth. The reality is we have underperformed in this market, certainly versus our competitor. We had decent growth with The Beatles: Rock Band, but we absolutely believe there is much more to come from us for the European territories.
TOP OF THE POPS: MTV Games’ Scott Guthrie is confident the company can be the market leader in all forms of music gaming
How does the company plan to turn things around? It is a fairly straightforward game plan – we need to have more feet on the ground so that we’ve got dedicated resources that will be able to collaborate and work with our EA and Mad Catz partners. One of the new people you’ve hired is Roy Campbell. What can he bring to the business? As you know this is a very competitive market place, particularly here in the UK. I’d say the UK is the toughest territory for anyone in the gaming business. There is a lot of price compression. So somebody with Roy’s experience is key. He allows us to be nimble, he will hopefully team up quickly with our partners, and then be able to go out to the marketplace and achieve the required growth. Is the long-term plan to stick with EA or will MTV look to go it alone? We have a partnership that is not longterritories for a music-based business, and term, but we have been together a long we expect to participate in the 16 to 17 time. These things are contractually per cent sizing that the music/rhythm bound, but in terms of how we space has in these markets. Our goal is approach the partnership, it is longto be the number one player in music term. Electronic Arts is I’d say the UK is the toughest fully supportive of what we are trying to do and territory for anyone in the they’re really the key gaming business. There is a drivers in helping us lot of price compression. achieve our objectives.
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How much market share are you looking for in Europe and the UK? It varies from territory to territory. The UK and Nordic countries are good
Scott Guthrie, MTV Games
games. We have a long way to go, and we are playing catch-up – we were not the first people in the market and we’re
up against not just a formidable opponent in Activision, but also Sony with the SingStar franchise. There are several things in play here – but we absolutely believe we can be the market leader. In the UK Guitar Hero is No.1. How can you unseat this franchise? Guitar Hero absolutely is the market leader in Europe, but that’s not the case back in the US, so we have been able to do this before. We think we have better gameplay, better song selection and a better online presence. When you
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access Rock Band’s DLC we have over 1,000 songs, whereas they have a third of that. We really believe that with the launch of Rock Band 3 – which is a significant upgrade to what we had before – we believe we can take market share aware from them. At the end of the day, what we are trying to do is isolate what our consumer is looking for, and hopefully grow his or her participation in our games. Gaining market share is our secondary objective. We want to please our consumers and expand our consumer base. Music is one of those things where there may be some songs on Guitar