yARN: Can the sexy booth babe save Mortal Kombat?

Gaming might not be a business concern for many enterprises, but it accounts for a significant amount of the consumer electronics spend. It’s an important market, and I wonder how many of our readers don’t own consoles of some form?

Synnex, for instance, should be very happy with how the Xbox is performing, given that it distributes the console. Likewise, the Harvey Normans and JB Hi-Fis of the Australian market can attribute much of their respective success to console and game sales.

But that said, the market is tough right now – just look at the demise of Red Ant as an example. To be sure, publishers are struggling, and there are reports that industry veteran, Midway, is hurting so badly it is looking to sell off its Mortal Kombat IP – which, to put it in perspective, is the equivalent of pawning your wedding ring and expecting to stay married.

This is why E3 – which begins on the June 2 in Los Angeles – is so important. As the biggest event in gaming for the year, it is packed with keynote speeches from the big boys, major game announcements, and, of course, the booth babes – an institution that now has its own website.

The captive audience that walks into E3 – equal parts journalist and general public – is buried under a mass of titles while gaming websites enjoy their yearly peak traffic as Australians (and other non-Americans) unlucky enough to not have ready access to Los Angeles trawl the Internet for a news fix.

By the end of it, we know the exact product roadmap for just about every major player in the industry for the next 12 months.

As I mentioned in a previous blog – exhibitions like these are important in attracting a consumer audience. Consumers who are more passive with buying habits than a typical IT professional need to be wowed to part with their cash.

And in a nutshell, that’s what E3 is all about – sex, games and a dash of business smarts – a recipe fit for Jamie Oliver. Hopefully, the sexy booth babes will also sell some copies of Mortal Kombat and save Midway.

By all accounts this year’s E3 is set to have an incredible vibe and energy. It’s exactly what the games industry needs right now.

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