Professional Practice: Console Gaming :: essays research papers fc

Understanding Media -Professional Practice In The Media painsAs one of the fastest growing sectors in the media today, console gambling has come a long carriage since the days of the very introductory home console the Atari 2600. Console gaming is big business, with profit margins higher(prenominal) than some of the biggest Hollywood film studios. Because of this, the outpution size of separately stamp outorse and quantity of employees within each company has grown accordingly. As with other(a) sections of the media industry such as print, television and film, console gaming has a structured system in use in regard to owners, employees and finance. If we ar to fully understand the console gaming industry we need to withstand the four key areas within it publishing, development, distribution and the manufacturers of the hardware on which the games are used (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony). In some cases these four areas work exclusively as separate entities to create a pr oduct, or, as with some major Hollywood studios, are vertically integrated in their production processes. As with the jumbo Five studios of the golden era of Hollywood cinema, we submit a correspondent situation in the console gaming industry with the four of import console manufacturers. These four companies all own and have complete control of various development houses, publishers and distributors. In the case of these in house productions the sources of finance vary but are main(prenominal)ly internal. When internal finance is not possible, there are other various means for the companies involved to contract the money needed to complete the production process. The most common way for a company to get financial assistance is the use of sponsors. For font a racing game could use billboards featuring the sponsors logos placed on board each race track. I have already mentioned the methods used by vertically integrated companies to create and distribute games, but there are ma ny occasions when a separate company is used for each stage. Publishers are the most powerful, and, perhaps the most important of the four main areas in console gaming. They are responsible for(p) for commissioning, funding and publishing, and usually have a great deal of control over the end product. formerly the development process is completed, a publisher would also be responsible for the marketing, PR and manufacturing the finished product. They will decide on the type of product they want to deliver to the market, set targets that need to be met by the developers in order for the initial finance to become available and publish the end product, hopefully making a profit on the sales of utter product.