Creating a Secondary Market for Video Games

Challenge

Most people would be surprised to know that the video gaming market generates more annual revenue than the motion picture industry.

Unfortunately, as past video game hardware platforms like Sony PlayStation, Atari, and Nintendo became obsolete…the popular games played on these consoles often disappear as well.

Armed with critical insights indicating adults love and miss the titles of their youth the Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting unit saw an opportunity to resurrect the most popular video game titles of all time. To answer the need the company created GameTap – the largest online repository of video games anywhere.

With the GameTap service consumers access via their home/office PC’s thousands of the most popular video game titles of all time including Zelda, Centipede, and even the original Pong. GameTap created a lucrative new secondary market for once retired video game software re-emulated for today’s high speed enabled PCs.

Solution

Ascension was asked to join the Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting strategy to help commercialize GameTap. Ascension led efforts to negotiate valuable new licenses with video game publishers (Ubisoft, Lucas Arts, and Electronic Arts) and participated in the strategic positioning and brand development of the GameTap service.

Further, Ascension helped design the national launch of GameTap – a first subscription-based service video game service in the USA.

Impact

The service offered the market an unmatched collection of on demand video game titles for only $9.95/month.