Digitization in games industry

In general, digitalization is seen as the road of moving towards digital business and digital transformation, as well as the creation of new — digital — revenue streams and offerings while doing so. And that requires change. This is why many people interchangeably use digitalization and digital transformation so do we often. A third meaning of digitalization goes beyond business and refers to the ongoing adoption of digital technologies across all possible societal and human activities.

Think about, for instance, the increasingly digital customer, the rise of digital healthcare , the growing digitalization of government, of marketing, of customer service, etc. In other words: more digital in various possible areas. We know; confusing. If digitalization is also about changing business operations, business models and even revenue streams and new business opportunities, then what is the difference between digital transformation and digitalization?

Digital transformation, as we use it today , is broader than digitalization as a way to move to digital business. It requires far more bridges to be built in an encompassing digital transformation strategy. You see where the confusions come from. Today, some people, mainly active in the document and scanning business, still use the term digital transformation while they mean the digitization of documents AND of processes.

However, the vast majority, defines digital transformation as an enterprise-wide phenomenon. It is long and if you read further there is even more. Anyway, that definition, which is continued on our digital transformation page, builds upon the work of the MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting. Digital transformation encompasses all aspects of business, regardless of whether it concerns a digital business or not, in times when the acceleration of technology adoption and of change leads to entirely new market, customer and business people, capabilities, processes, models,… realities, opportunities and challenges, ultimately leading to a new economy what IDC calls the DX economy.

Still with us? If you interchangeably talk about digitalization, digital business and digital transformation we understand. We do to. Digitization in one sentence? Digitization is the transformation from analog to digital or digital representation of a physical item with the goal to digitize and automate processes or workflows. Top image: Shutterstock — C opyright: Rawpixel. Digital transformation Industry 4. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Home What is digital business transformation?

The essential guide to DX Digitization, digitalization, digital and transformation: the differences. Digitization, digitalization, digital and transformation: the differences.

Digitization, digitalization and digital transformation are three terms we use since many years but often in the wrong sense. I hold a Master's degree in Economic and Financial Engineering. Executive Summary 2. Market assessment and forecasts 3. Dematerialisation of the video game industry 3. The global market 3. The market by segment 4. Strategy and organisation 4. Distribution and game services on desktop computers, pioneers of dematerialisation 4.

Consoles in the cloud era 4. The emergence of the mobile games segment 4. On-demand or cloud gaming, the future of gaming 5. Revenue changes and forecasts along the value chain 5. Market forecast 5. Video games in the cloud: A disintermediated video game industry 3 4. Dematerialisation of the video game industry A disintermediated video game industry 5. The video game market has risen from Revenues from digital sales have experienced an average annual growth of Strategy and organisation A disintermediated video game industry 8.

Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony. The themes are recurring and the games, although different from one site to another, continue the same themes and gameplay. Only the developers differ. Kongregate is a perfect illustration of this, along with the Humble Indie Bundles. With its flagship title, even Blizzard has switched to this method of distribution.

Seven of the Top 10 games come from Chinese and South Korean companies. As a result, the Chinese Web giant Tencent has become the world leader in the industry. This can be explained by three common elements which, when combined, produce a viral effect not seen in other market segments in this sector: - Platform virality: app stores are as viral as Facebook. Although Nintendo is still lagging behind on this front, Sony and Microsoft allow customers to download their catalogue of AAA titles from their respective app stores, as well as indie titles.

Console manufacturers learned what their gaming community wanted by looking at the success of social networks and games publishers such as Zynga, King, Pretty Simple and EA.

Their consoles are now equipped with sharing, trading and linking features. The 8th console generation made the shift to dematerialisation by turning to the cloud for data storage and processing. A developer is now able to directly access the market without going through a publisher. Pre-release marketing, including a high-profile demonstration on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , showed off many features that indicated the game would be revolutionary. Excited, gamers flocked to pre-order the title which is yet another way that publishers take advantage of gamers to ensure they could begin playing immediately upon release as well as get the bonus content that comes with pre-orders.

Things began to unravel for Hello Games just over a month before release, when the Reddit page dedicated to the game found leaked information that the release would be pushed back from late June to early August [8]. Players especially those who preordered were upset, but willing to wait to ensure the game was as good as it could be. The Reddit page was suspended due to the vitriolic messages being posted and websites such as onemanslie.

The below figure shows the rapid decrease in peak concurrent players on Steam, which shows how quickly players were turned off from the product that was initially released [11]. The United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority is investigating the promotion of the game, although many in the industry are not confident it will bring about any changes or action against Hello Games [12].

Additionally, The Game Awards announced that it will focus more on actual in-game footage to promote upcoming games to avoid misleading marketing [13]. Though misleading gamers seems to be a minor consequence of the effects of internet access in gaming, it sheds light on the fact that consumers in other industries can be similarly taken advantage of.

April 21, March 7, Accessed 17, November, January 28, Accessed November 17, Hello Games. August 15, September 29, November 16, As a gamer I was delighted to read this post.

I vividly remember the original bug-riddled Halo 2 gameplay on Xbox that spurred the developer to release a downloadable software patch shortly after the game came out. My view of the software patch was positive since the original gameplay was sufficiently good to keep me from quitting the game. When used appropriately, I think software updates can add value to both players and developers. As developers test games before release they are limited by the relatively small samples of gameplay generated by alpha and beta tests.

What better way to flush out the last remaining bugs than releasing the game to the public? I think your example illustrates what happens when developers push the limits of what is acceptable to the consumer.

I wonder if there are controls to prevent releases like this from becoming the norm. For instance, is it reasonable to expect that consumers will punish Hello Games in the future by buying fewer copies of their new titles?