October 22, 2004

Emerging Trend: The DVD-based Game Sector

I've seen an ad for the game "Sceneit?" somewhere before , but this is the first article I've seen about Screenlife, a Seattle-based company that has pioneered the DVD-based gaming industry. Basically, their biggest title, Sceneit? is a trivia game that utilizes movie clips on specially-formatted DVDs.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer notes the quick emergence of the DVD-based gaming category:

When Screenlife launched its first DVD-style game in 2002, chief operating officer Dan Black said the market was worth about $1.5 million. Now, DVD-based games are expected to top $200 million this year, with Black estimating that SceneIt? will capture half of the market. To keep up with demand, the company's staff has tripled in the past year and plans to more than double in the next 12 months.

With 90 million DVD players in the US, this is a great opportunity to develop a "new use" paradigm, and it looks like an opportunity ripe for the pickin' by all of the rights holders out there. Now granted, when compared to the aggregate DVD market right now, $200 million dollars doesn't seem like much. But think about the recent meteoric rise of the TV-on-DVD niche. That sector has gone from a negligible figure in 2001 to probably in the neighborhood of 15-20% of DVD revenue today.

With a little marketing creativity, DVD-based games can become as popular as Trivial Pursuit was in the 1980s.

Popularity of DVD games spells success for Screenlife