There as soon as was a time during which, if you happen to have been a fan of a videogame, you would possibly get requested which of mentioned video games within the sequence you had performed. Now, I’m not saying we have to convey this period again—it was an obnoxious interval filled with gatekeepers—however Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi’s latest phrases on the topic are a shocking signal of the instances.
Speaking to Nikkei Gaming (thanks, IGN), Utsumi explains that (by way of machine translation): “For example, the ‘Yakuza’ series has been doing exceptionally well in merchandising, with 60-70% of its buyers being women. They’ve become fans of the ‘Yakuza’ world, story, and characters after watching our YouTube channel and popular YouTubers’ streams. And among them are many people who have never actually played the game.”
I’m assuming that Utsumi has stats to again that up, quite than simply assuming that ladies do not play videogames (they do, I work with a number of of them), but it surely’s certainly true that videogames have been having fun with a wider secondary viewers because of let’s gamers and streamers.
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“Even people who have never played games are considered fans and ‘gamers’ by us,” he provides, “transmedia’s strength lies in increasing the entry points and contact points for people to become interested in IP. In some cases, their engagement is even higher than that of fans who actually play the games.”
That buzzword—transmedia—basically simply means merchandise, films, comics, and so forth. Videogames is likely to be a cornerstone for Sega, but it surely’s utilizing that as a basis to construct up a heap of different factors of sale and promoting alternatives: “For example, if there are overseas users who are interested in the scene where a character eats a beef bowl in Yakuza, even a beef bowl can become merchandise. I think that’s what merchandising is all about these days.”
You heard it right here first, people—we’re merchandising beef bowls, now. Maybe if it’d come out six years later, we would be getting Ichiban-branded bread. It did look good for jail meals.