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MCV INTERVIEW KEITH RAMSDALE & HARVEY ELLIOT, UK VP & GM CASUAL, EA try to appeal to too many people too quickly, you’re just not effective.
lot of machines waiting for this range to be put into them.
What does this tell us about EA’s hope to avoid ‘me too’ product on DS and Wii? KR: Where any publisher goes ‘me too’, they’re always going to struggle. Unless you’ve got a compelling point of difference, it’s going to be an uphill battle. If you look where EA’s successes so far in the Nintendo space have been – Littlest Pet Shop, EA Sports Active and more – whenever we’re first to market with an innovation, we perform really well. That’s why we’ve got high
KR: Also, retail is where the volume’s at right now, so that’s where we need to be.
“ What are your marketing plans? KR: This won’t be a heavy media campaign. We’re actually going to follow the book model from the experts. There’ll be lots of PR, where women’s magazines will be very important to target parents. This is very much a
retail-driven opportunity. The packaging echoes the front of the books. Each book contains six or eight titles. As you can imagine, that ranged together at retail is quite a powerful story. If Flips is a success, would you introduce a more teenage range? HE: Clearly this is a new area for us, and there are lots of opportunities it could open up. But the focus for us is to get this [initial line-up] to be a success. KR: The challenge for any video games publisher when launching something brand new is to keep it simple. If you
KR: We did talk about having multiple offerings, but we decided to go with this
The industry is tough - some major games aren’t performing. But Flips is a real innovation – it has its own market. Keith Ramsdale, EA
hopes for Flips. 100 Classic Book Collection was already out there, and that may have produced a thought in Harvey’s head, but to all intents and purposes we’re the first to market with this idea. Egmont and Penguin. We researched with these guys pretty early on and found that we could do something different with this software. In the future, who knows, but this is what’s working for us so far. We’ve talked to a lot of people, but we’ve not gone into any progressed conversations.
Why did you choose DS over iPhone? HE: We wanted to choose the right platform for the audience we were going after and that’s what we’ve done. If a platform fits what we’re trying to do we’ll look at it. That’s part of EA and our scale. Kids are playing DS right now.
HE: The Play label is encouraged to find opportunities like this exactly for the reason that Keith describes. A big part of our business is to find new things now. One great thing about being part of EA is trying new opportunities and going all guns blazing. Why did you decide on a retail release rather than digital? HE: The audience we want to go after put a lot of resonance on personal attachments. There are 9.6 million DS consoles in the UK; about half of those are in the hands of under-14s. There’s a
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market, test the concept, and take it from there. Do you have any concerns that you won’t get the exposure at retail you’re after during the congested Christmas period? KR: Are we going to get front of store and window promotion? No, but we’re not looking for that. We’re looking at calling out the right space and the right section and, touch wood, we’ll get that. The market is tough this year. We’re seeing polarisation, where FIFA sells extraordinary numbers, while major titles from other publishers that you would expect to do well – that are good quality – haven’t performed. In that space, there’s going to be a battle. What’s really interesting with Flips is that it’s a brand new innovation with a target [market] of its own.
FLIP-ING OUT EA’s Play label has teamed up with book publishers Penguin and Egmont for its Flips range, taking titles from authors ncluding Enid Blyton, Eoin Colfer and Cathy Cassidy to DS. Each Flips SKU features multiple books from each writer: Enid Blyton (Egmont): The Enchanted Wood; The Magic Faraway Tree; The Folk Of The Faraway Tree; Enchanted World – Petal And The Eternal Bloom; Enchanted World – Melody And The Enchanted Harp; Enchanted World – Silky And The Rainbow Feather
Cathy Cassidy (Penguin): Scarlett; Angel Cake; Sunday Girl; Shine On Daizy Star, GingerSnaps; Driftwood
Eoin Colfer (Penguin): Artemis Fowl; Artemis Fowl And The Arctic Incident; Artemis Fowl And The Eternity Code; Artemis Fowl And The Opal Deception; Artemis Fowl And The Lost Colony; Artemis Fowl And The Time Paradox
Too Ghoul For School (Egmont): Silent But Deadly; The In-Spectress Call; Ghoul Dinners; The Bubonic Builders; Attack Of The Zombie Nits; School Spooks Day; French Fright; Terror In Cubicle Four