he next 20 years, look for a company that can produce content-specific (meaning game or movie-themed) pinball tables to be a niche market catering to affluent, aging gamers. They will run in the thousands, and the person who figures out this market will make more money than Coach makes on ridiculous purses. What motorcycles are to baby boomers, pinball tables are to Gen Xers.
Baby Boomers (the majority of them, at least) didn’t really enjoy motorcycles as a youth, but they’ll spend a ridiculous amount of monies on them because they are, ultimately, really cool and a symbol of their lost youth. While I believe there is a market for vintage arcade cabinets, the ready accessibility of those same games to be played on a multimedia box is here (also on a vastly superior screen) and will not go away. Truly digital mediums transfer easier and carry less niche appeal (examples: even your grandma has an iPod.) An experience you cannot transfer digitally to another medium carries both a fashion cache, as well as a market that likes niche products and is unafraid of spending money. A similar market admittedly exists for record players, but there are fewer opportunities for licensing and promotion.
I feel that this pinball company would have to make them better than Midway ever did, but if that's the greatest challenge then I'd hope I'm not the only one excited by it. A business like this can also act promotional vendor: why win a Batman 4 t shirt when you can play a Batman themed pinball game?
The market for gamers is wide open, and I don't think that's even partially understood by any company outside of Nintendo.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment