JUNE 5, 2010 • In 2009, DFC Intelligence issued two major reports that compared major products in two completely different genres, music games and soccer titles.  This analysis allowed us to look at Crossplay among major games in a specific genre and also measure brand loyalty to a specific franchise in a given genre.

In the long run, Crossplay and brand loyalty analysis is crucial to both 1) measure the directional success of a specific game relative to its competition and 2) as a tool to measure the overall direction for an entire genre of games.  In other words, is an overall genre slowing down or picking up to the point where it will impact future year sales.

Crossplay is a measure of play overlap between two games.  Using gamerDNA data as a sample, we can gauge the percentage of users who played one game who also played another.  This is a very powerful tool for more accurately understanding audience overlap compared to using gamer surveys which are prone to inaccuracy and often prohibitively expensive.

In July 2009 we analyzed the fall 2008 releases from the two major soccer franchises on Xbox 360: Pro Evolution Soccer 09 from Konami (released 11/11/08) and FIFA Soccer 09 from Electronic  Arts (released 10/13/2008).  If you would like to see the full 30-page report please contact DFC Intelligence.

In looking at gamerDNA users from all countries that played either game on at least one or more days, we found the following thru June 26, 2009:

•  PES 09 player base is 20.5% of FIFA 09
•  54.7% of PES 09 players have played FIFA 09
•  11.2% of FIFA 09 players have played PES 09

In other words, the Crossplay of PES 09 to FIFA 09 was high while the Crossplay of FIFA 09 to PES 09 was low.

One note is that FIFA 09 tends to be stronger in English speaking countries while the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise has done well in continental Europe and Japan.  Thus the gamerDNA is not a full sample of the two franchises.

Nevertheless, in doing further analysis it was clear that FIFA 09 not only had a much larger user base, but more importantly its users tended to play the game more frequently.

• Among FIFA 09 owners, 39% played the game for 21 or more days versus only 22% of PES 09 users.

• Both products had a fairly high number of consumers that used the game for five days or less.  However, the number of users in the short term user tiers was significantly higher for PES 09.  52% of PES 09 users only played the game for 5 days or less, versus 34% of FIFA 09 users.

• Even when comparing only consumers that started using the games in the first month of availability, FIFA 09 comes out ahead.  For PES 09, about 33% of players that started using the game in its month of release (November 2008) played for 5 days or less, compared with only 18% of first month users of FIFA 09 (October 2008).  Among those first month users, 59% of FIFA users played for more than 20 days versus only 39% of PES 09 users.

This was a clear indication that the FIFA franchise was on a trend to increase while Pro Evolution Soccer may be on the decline.  This seemed to be borne out by actual sales results from the 2010 version of both soccer games in October 2009.  Electronic Arts announced that FIFA 10 was its fastest selling sports game ever and its biggest product launch in Europe ever.

Meanwhile, for fiscal 2010, Konami announced that unit sales for its soccer games fell over 11% from 8.48 million units in fiscal 2009 to 7.49 million units in fiscal 2010.  In looking at the usage data from the previous year this directional trend was clear months before the actual product launch.

The soccer example is a clear indication of the importance of looking for directional trends in competing franchises.  One way to look at trends is to analysis both Crossplay and overall usage as a way to measure general product satisfaction.  However, we can also extend the idea of Crossplay by comparing competing games released in the same window to look at the actual loyalty of fans of competing brands.

In October 2009 DFC used GamerDNA data to analyze the launches of The Beatles: Rock Band from Electronic Arts (released September 9, 2009) and Guitar Hero 5 from Activision (released September 1, 2009).  Additionally, we also looked at both franchise’s previous installments, Rock Band 2 (released Sep 14, 2008) and Guitar Hero World Tour (released Oct 26, 2008).  Once again contact DFC Intelligence if you would like a copy of the full report.

By focusing on just these four titles we were able to explore three dozen permutations of Crossplay.  Some key highlights:

• 24% of users who played Guitar Hero World Tour also played Guitar Hero 5
• 21% of users who played Guitar Hero World Tour also played Beatles: Rock Band
• 19% of users who played Rock Band 2 also played Guitar Hero 5
• 26% of users who played Rock Band 2  also played Beatles: Rock Band

Considering that this was only the first month of release for the products this is a surprisingly high overlap.  Furthermore, this high Crossplay figure indicates significant interest in music games in general among a large portion of the user base. Much has been written about the overall decline in the music genre.  However, from usage data it is clear that a large core base of users are very serious about the music game genre.

In terms of individual franchises, the above metrics suggests Rock Band users were a bit more loyal than Guitar Hero users.  But these metrics also don’t consider exclusive users.  For example:

• 10% of Guitar Hero World Tour users who did not play Rock Band 2 played Guitar Hero 5 and not Beatles: Rock Band

• 17% of Rock Band 2 users who did not play Guitar Hero World Tour played Beatles: Rock Band and not Guitar Hero 5

Once again, this is further evidence that from a brand perspective through Oct 2009, Rock Band exclusive fans were more loyal than Guitar Hero exclusive fans.

Of course, it is also important to look at how many users leave a brand.  We can also look at rates of disloyalty:

• 4% of Guitar Hero World Tour users who did not play Rock Band 2 played Beatles: Rock Band and not Guitar Hero 5

• 3% of RB2 users who did not play Guitar Hero World Tour played Guitar Hero 5 and not Beatles: Rock Band

This implies that up through the beginning of October 2009, brand “disloyalty” rates were relatively low, however exclusive Guitar Hero World Tour users were slightly more likely to switch to the Rock Band brand than Rock Band 2 users were to switch to the Guitar Hero brand.

The September 2009 U.S. sales data showed The Beatles: Rock Band outselling Guitar Hero 5 on the Xbox 360 platform by 20%.  Meanwhile the gamerDNA data showed that Rock Band gamers were more loyal going from Rock Band 2 to The Beatles: Rock Band compared to Guitar Hero World Tour gamers going to Guitar Hero 5.  The Beatles: Rock Band also captured more Guitar Hero World Tour exclusive gamers than Guitar Hero 5 captured Rock Band 2 gamers.  Finally, the data suggests The Beatles: Rock Band attracted more lapsed or non-guitar gamers into the genre than Guitar Hero 5.

In the long term this analysis shows that music genre, and the Rock Band franchise in particular may have more legs than the industry has given them credit for.  This type of brand loyalty analysis also applies to any genre with multiple brands releasing successive iterations in similar time windows such as sports or shooter genres.