"Several times a week, someone tells me, 'You can't understand how much TiVo has changed my life' in total earnestness."
--Tom Rogers, TiVo Inc.
"How do we get people who don't have us on their list at all to think about us?"
--Liz Vanzura, Cadillac
Detoc, 39, is betting that the award-winning French video-game company's next big hit will come from an exclusive game not with Sony or Microsoft, but with also-ran Nintendo.
"You have to have a certain kind of stomach to survive this business. You're spending at least $20 million to make a game. We're the No. 5 game maker in the United States, so we can't be afraid to go where nobody else goes. This year, we'll be the only publisher besides Nintendo that'll have an exclusive title--Red Steel, a first-person shooter game--released for the new Revolution console when it debuts [in November]. People think this is crazy. Nobody is paying attention to Nintendo. Everyone has been obsessed with the Xbox 360 and Sony's [upcoming] PlayStation 3.
But a year ago, we decided that the Revolution could be a huge product. Nintendo invented video games and consoles as we know them today. People look at Nintendo, they think of the GameCube [which didn't succeed], or they think of a bunch of Japanese guys who don't understand the U.S. market. The partnership with Nintendo didn't come easy, but we stuck with it, because Nintendo offers something different. The two other consoles compete for the same customer, and they're heavy on processing capacity. Nintendo is saying, 'I'll let these two big guys fight this battle while I focus on good old-fashioned game-play fun.' Its portable business has been very healthy lately: Nintendogs for the DS handheld has sold 6 million units so far. And the Revolution's new cordless hand controller means a whole new way of playing games. It seemed like a good place to put our money. For my competition, it's too late to have a game out for the Revolution by Christmas. They can't do it. But we did it. We will be there. Maybe the Revolution will fail, and I'll look like an idiot. But if it succeeds, then we will have a new brand on our hands that could be worth up to $100 million."
Last fall, after just four months as TiVo's CEO, Rogers, 51, weathered an Internet firestorm over chatter that the service is tilting toward advertisers. Rogers discusses his controversial bid to woo advertisers while leaving viewers in charge.
"I think we have four TiVos in our house. And that's on the low side. I've come across people who have 9, 10. I had been in television for a long time, launching and running CNBC and MSNBC, then running NBC as executive vice president. People find great TV experiences there. But I have never gotten the kind of feedback that comes from TiVo users. Several times a week, someone tells me, 'You can't understand how much TiVo has changed my life' in total earnestness. It's gratifying how deeply people connect to our product. From the advertising community, however, it's been all negative vibes. TiVo's a pariah. They say, 'TiVo's eroding our business' and 'You guys are making our lives really difficult.'
We're trying to go from pariah to partner. Advertising has to come to terms with the fact that we're living in an era of more viewer control. Skipping commercials is a given. The future, then, is not to disrupt the viewer experience. We figure TiVo can give people a new way to watch television and also give advertisers a way to reach those people. We asked ourselves, Why shouldn't viewers be able to find ads through TiVo in the same way they search for programs? The result is ad search, a feature that's being described as Google for TV.
Partnering with advertisers isn't a contradiction for TiVo. It would be if we force-fed ads to our users, if we took away our users' sense of control over what, when, and how they watch TV. Last fall, there was some discussion about more-prominent logos from advertisers popping up during a fast-forward. People heard 'pop-up' and assumed it would be as disruptive as it is on the Internet. When people realized that it didn't interfere with their ability to skip commercials, the issue went away. As long as we create more options for viewers while maintaining their control and don't cross that line, TiVo will remain the best way to watch television."
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Recent Comments | 2 Total
November 21, 2009 at 3:52pm by jennifer park
Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are still helpful
people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful
for other's. thanx and good job.
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Writing
November 21, 2009 at 3:53pm by jennifer park
Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are still helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.
Masters Dissertation Writing