As the battle continues to the highly lucrative European distribution of the
XBox, playing video games will be seen with a new meaning.
As an update to last week's
story where Bartle Bogle Hegarty were reviewing the Sega Dreamcast account,
Media Guardian has reported that Bartle Bogle Hegarty have indeed resigned its £60m Sega account simply to gain access to the pitch - a testament to how fiercely the battle will be fought.
At the moment, four companies (Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Lowe Lintas, 180 and Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO) have all been shortlisted to compete for the global launch of Microsoft's Xbox games console. The winner will launch the console across Europe with the backing of a reported £350m media spend.
This is an incredible spend and will definitely change the way people play video games. As it is being reported and seen in the game development houses, Microsoft is targeting good software publishers and buying them outright, together with signing up many developers.
The successful agency will position the Xbox as a direct competitor to Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's forthcoming Dolphin console and Sega's Dreamcast with Microsoft claiming that Xbox will be two to three times more powerful than Sony's PlayStation 2. It also predicts that in three years' time it will draw 85% of the revenue to its home and retail division from the games sector.
Microsoft is also looking closely at arcade use of its XBox system.
