Despite the company’s reputation for successfully exploiting film licenses, recently merged Ocean Software Ltd doubts the prospects for game-movies in a 64-bit future. The Manchester, UK-based company, which was acquired by French firm Infogrames Entertainment SA in a share exchange in April, now stands as the world’s largest interactive games company outside Japan and the US. Its history of bringing games out alongside major movie releases includes Jurassic Park and Rambo, as well as the top-selling Worms which rolled into 250,000 homes. But the lead times for games software development are getting so long, said Ocean at the ECTS trade show in London last week, that it seems unlikely we will see the simultaneous releases of games and blockbuster movies that looked so promising last year. In the 16-bit days we had six months to develop, it says. But the 32-bit lead time is now 18 months because the games are so tricky to build. And the 64-bit game, already in the offing from Nintendo Co Ltd, bodes no better, leading to a division of marketing muscle which many games companies had been hoping would bring them further into the mainstream. And interactive movies have little future, also. I don’t believe in [them], said the source at Ocean. The future, for Ocean at least, seems heavily geared towards the on-line markets. Ocean’s involvement with Info-grames was, on the face of it, one of financial need. We needed the finance to sustain our competitive position wi th US groups, said David Ward, chairman at Ocean, but his company also saw a significant resource in the shape of Info-grames’ on-line capability (it has some 20 on-line games running). Ocean’s principle competitors are US public companies, Ward explained and since Info-grames went public three years ago, it gives Ocean access to that public quotation. Ocean has had licensing and cross-distribution relations with Info-grames for 10 years.
