Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 31, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
US film studio Paramount intends to move more strongly into the video games business in future. As industry publication Variety reports in its online edition, the studio has already expanded its entertainment department team for this purpose and drawn up a list of proposals for its own game titles. These are then to be financed and developed at least partly, or even entirely, by Paramount. The studio is particularly interested in games for mobile entertainment; according to Paramount, corresponding titles for handheld platforms and mobile devices are already being planned. There are also to be releases for next-generation consoles such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, however. The company’s aim is to establish as broad a presence as possible in the video games market and build several lines of business.
“We are currently entering negotiations so that we can publish games this year,” explains Sandi Isaacs, Senior Vice President of Entertainment and Mobile at Paramount. The company is currently in a phase of examining all viable possibilities and collecting proposals. “It is important for us to find a flexible model. For example, it is conceivable that in some cases we will publish games ourselves and in others act as a co-publisher. But it would also be possible to finance game development and leave publication of the finished product to an external publisher,” Isaacs says. In general, Paramount’s main concern is to establish a firm foothold in the video games market on the broadest possible basis.
Although there are no specific details of the planned Paramount games at this point, the first in-house titles are to be released this year. While the film studio is fundamentally interested in every form of video game, the main focus is to be on handheld and mobile games suitable for casual play. According to Isaacs, at a few million dollars these are significantly cheaper to produce than games for next-generation consoles, for example, whose development would consume 20 million dollars or more. Despite its own plans, Paramount also intends to continue selling its own licensed products to other video game publishers in future.
Paramount’s increased involvement in the video games market also means greater financial expenditure for the company. To raise these additional funds, the studio intends, according to Isaacs, to tap external sources of finance increasingly in the near future. In his opinion, a certain financial risk is unavoidable in such a large-scale move into a new business field.
