Mattel Will Squeeze Onto Multimedia Bandwagon
Plunging into an already-crowded market, the world’s largest toy company will announce Monday its entry into the multimedia business with a series of computer games based on such popular toy brands as Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price.
Mattel Inc. said it has established a multimedia subsidiary in El Segundo called Mattel Media that will use the toy giant’s strength in developing and distributing toys to crack the rapidly growing but increasingly competitive CD-ROM and video game market.
“With 5,000 to 6,000 [game] titles sold in 1996 and just 250 to 300 slots at retailers, it would be a poor time to get into this business without an unfair advantage,” said Doug Glen, president of the new venture. “Our unfair advantage is that we can put our software on shelves near the toy products. We understand how kids play extremely well.”
Mattel Media plans to launch 12 consumer CD-ROM titles and six coin-operated arcade games by this fall. Most of the games will be aimed at girls, a market segment that is largely undeveloped but which the company says it understands best from its experience selling millions of Barbie dolls worldwide.
While girls’ products account for about half of all toy revenue, they account for only 20% of video game and CD-ROM sales. Glen argues that’s because computer games emerged in the 1970s from university computer labs where computer hackers, typically male, dreamed up wizard fantasies, sports simulations and fighting games that matched their interests. “The basic design play of the mid-1970s has become the core of the industry,” said Glen, who previously worked with Japanese video game maker Sega.
Girls prefer play in which there are no threats and no adversaries, Glen added. In Mattel’s games, he said, a child might have to figure out how to get a kitty out of a tree or how to rescue a puppy, but there are no dire consequences of failure.
Analysts said it is far from clear whether Mattel and other toy companies will succeed in an interactive multimedia world that few Hollywood studios have managed to crack. Luring girls to the PC may be a particularly tough challenge since computers are still no match for the human imagination when it comes to the kind of role-playing many girls enjoy.
But the toy companies may have little choice but to try. “It is almost essential for toy companies to do it,” said John Taylor, toy and computer game analyst at Portland, Ore.-based investment banker Arcadia Investments. “Time spent on a computer by a kid is time not spent with a Barbie. They [toy companies] have to have some interactive strategy.”
To develop its games, Mattel Media is working with such established multimedia studios as Digital Domain (which did the visual effects for the movie “True Lies”), R/GA Studios and Viacom New Media. Viacom will develop multimedia extensions of Mattel’s Nickelodeon product line.
Mattel has taken a different tack from those of studios and traditional computer software developers by playing on its strengths in toy design to develop hybrids of traditional toys and computer games.
“In the past, you took recognizable characters and put them into a game,” Glen said. “We’re doing the opposite; we are putting the computer into the toy world.”
Barbie Fashion Designer, for example, is a CD-ROM game that will let girls design clothes on a computer using various tops and bottoms, and customize by adding pleats or changing the color or pattern. The designs can then be printed on special fabric, which can be colored, put together with special tape and used to dress Barbie dolls.
“The computer won’t let you do anything that isn’t beautiful,” Glen said. Another program allows children to experiment with makeup, hairstyling and accessories.
Mattel is also designing peripherals that are part game and part computer. One Barbie game, for example, substitutes a wireless “wand” for the mouse to cast spells at various points in an adventure. For the game Hot Wheels Crash & Smash, Mattel will offer an optional Hot Wheels F/X Racing Mouse that has working lights, a horn and a vibrating motor, and controls the speed and direction of the car on the computer screen. Both the wand and racing mouse can be used like a standard mouse.
While the market for multimedia software is crowded today and many analysts are predicting a shakeout, Mattel said it believes sales are poised to take off.
“In 1996, for the first time, there will be as many multimedia PCs as there are video game machines,” Glen said. “We wanted to come into the market where it moves from a hobbyist market to a true mass market.”
