Operators are reviewing their strategy games

Video games, like audiovisual content, are salivate telecoms operators. Easy to understand, when you know that this industry should weigh approximately $ 50 billion this year, sales of consoles included, according to the Institute of audiovisual and telecommunications in Europe (Idate).

Present in many homes as they sell access to the Internet via their ADSL infrastructure, operators would have their share of a cake today chewed by large publishers such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft or manufacturers Sony and Nintendo. Even more than the Wii and the PlayStation to divert customers to offer video on demand of the operators.

The game to demand is seen as a way to increase the average invoice Subscriber and reduce the costs of customer loyalty. Operators are reviewing their strategy games. Goa, the video games of the division contained Orange, Department offering free games and pay services, is in full restructuring. The editor of the famous "dark Age of Camelot" and "warhammer online" massively multiplayer games, them has already arrested the two this year. The latest versions have not met with the accession of the public and suffered from bugs. The principle of reality therefore prevailed in games, just as what may happen in audiovisual content in Orange. Internal games development could be abandoned, just as the purchases of exclusive audiovisual rights such as rights of dissemination of the Ligue 1 football championship. Clearly, Orange is becoming a distributor of content, whether audio-visual or video games.

Map to play on the connected TV

Operators in General and Orange in particular changing thoughts. "It may be that the operators are refocusing on more natural strategies, such as the creation of platforms for distribution of video games." "They can become a real interface between clients and publishers," said LaurentMichaud, analyst in charge of digital entertainment at Idate. The France may be the country pioneer games to the application via the box, said Sevan Kessissian, who is working at G-Cluster, a subsidiary of Softbank, at the opening of such platforms in several European operators. "Today, the technology is finally mature." We can bring quality games console on any screen, Tablet, mobile or TV, as computing power is managed by the servers of the operator.

Operators remain discrete, but SFR announced have launched a test platform for games on demand, available on a television via the access to hundreds of subscribers about. "We have a card to play in video games on television," says Julien wine-Ramarony, Director of content at SFR. "Our role is to aggregate and distribute content with intelligence." "We control the network, and therefore the quality of service, which is a very important parameter in video games", he says. Online games are stored remotely on the server of the operator: it is the "cloud gaming", which operates the memory and several computers networked computing capabilities.

"The customer is therefore not need specific equipment." We offer a simple way to play and we we address to households which have no consoles. "We are not yet in the level of technical sophistication of games such as 'Final fantasy xiii'", said Julien wine-Ramarony. "Economically, we are experimenting different models, subscription, the payment to the Act...". ", said the pattern of the activities contained.

Sevan Kessissian, consumers are willing to pay between 1 and 10 euros per month for this type of service. "On the connected televisions, the operator can certainly exploit this platform and invoice customers." "But if the platforms become open, then clients could circumvent operators", exposes LaurentMichaud. Beautiful battle into perspective.