Game Maker’s Holiday Plan: Sell Old as New

The push for holiday game titles has already started, and Virgin Interactive hopes to grab customers by tweaking its marketing approach.

First, the Irvine-based company announced its plans to target younger audiences for its Sony PlayStation titles. (The home-console platform primarily targets males ages 18 to 34.)

With the release of “Disney’s Hercules Action Game,” Virgin and Sony Computer Entertainment America hope to grab the prepubescent and young teen crowd.

Then, the game firm announced plans to launch the White Label, a separate brand that repackages and re-releases some of Virgin’s most popular titles at a fraction of the cost. All the games will be at least a year or two old, said Simon Jeffery, vice president of marketing for Virgin.

Later this month, the White line will ship “The 7th Guest,” “Dune II,” “Screamer,” “Z,” “Cyberia 2” and “Hyper 3-D Pinball.” The games, many of which originally retailed for $50 or more, will sell at $9.99 to $14.99 at retailers nationwide.

“We’re not accepting the market is just this finite number of gamers,” Jeffery said. “We’re trying to extend the life of our products and attract a whole new level of consumer.” Analysts say this value-pricing strategy is fairly common in the game industry, particularly if a company hopes to survive in the increasingly competitive drive to dominate retail shelf space.

Sierra Publishing combined the “King’s Quest” series, and Origin Systems bundled the “Wing Commander” series together.

“These companies grouped several games together under a cheaper price-point,” said Dan Lavin, a multimedia analyst with the San Jose-based research firm Dataquest. “The real question for Virgin will be whether people will want to play a single, old game that uses very old technology--even if it only costs 10 bucks.”

P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com