Top Ten Video Game PR Moments of 2009

Lists
It’s December, and ’tis the season to sit back with friends and family, have some eggnog, and organize an entire year’s worth of events into convenient, easily understandable list form – preferably condensing it to no more than 10 events, otherwise you’ll be… hey what’s that over there? That’s right! It’s a list of the ten most defining PR moments in the video game industry in 2009. What better way to get into the season of unabashed navel-gazing than to summarize the most successful, and failed, attempts at bolstering one’s public image.

#10 – OnLive Streams GDC 2009 – Cloud computing was all the rage this past March when OnLive announced that it had been in stealth mode for seven years and was close to achieving the un-achievable – streaming intensely complex video games to any television or PC. With a major funding announcement combined with a near-fully operational playable prototype, OnLive stole the show with little effort. A perfect PR storm, hardly anything else came close to generating the amout of buzz OnLive did at GDC 2009. Since then, however, we’ve heard hardly a peep, and GDC 2010 is just around the corner. Will it be another seven years until we hear from OnLive again?

#9 – 2K fouls EA at the line – A good thing to keep in mind when promoting your own game is that you should focus on promoting your own game. Never talk badly about a competitor, keep them close for they are your enemy. Such logic was not in mind when 2K Sports community manager Ronnie Singh accused EA of developing a patch for NBA Live 10 before the game was released, saying that their incorporation of community feedback was an exageration. Flame war! These two companies battled it out for days in blogs and on Twitter. Sadly, no one came out on top, and both groups ended up looking silly. What happened to being the bigger person?

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The OnLive Game Service and OnLive MicroConsole™ Revealed at GDC

OnLive LogoOnLive Inc. announced their on demand video game platform at GDC this week. The OnLive service and console streams advanced video game instantly to any TV using their inexpensive MicroConsole.

The new platform is supported by many of the top names in the video games industry including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ Inc., Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters. According to the press release, “it typically only takes a few weeks to extend an existing version of a game to work on the OnLive service, so there is little cost incurred by developers and publishers to support the OnLive platform.”

Speaking to Edge Online, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter commented, “We don’t expect an immediate impact [on console sales] (the service likely will be rolled out in early 2010), but think that if priced right, OnLive could favorably compete for 1-2 percent of the overall games market.”