LOVEFiLM sees games business expand
Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six Vegas partnerships spur rental and sales - with more to come
Following last year's link-up with Ubisoft on Assassin's Creed, LOVEFiLM has announced a similar partnership with the publisher on Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - a move which it is hoped will continue the momentum for the company's game division.
"Assassin's Creed was a fantastic title to work on as our first major games promotional activity as it was such a highly anticipated next generation title," LOVEFiLM's advertising sales manager, Dionne Georgiou, told GamesIndustry.biz.
"During its launch, over 250,000 promotional LOVEFiLM-branded envelopes were distributed and the online content provided a welcome boost for our gaming audience. As a result, our activity provided saliency for the title in the first week of release, which helped the game debut at number one in both our rental and sales charts on its release.
"Games rental demand continues to grow monthly, and is really reaping the rewards of the success of the Wii - which has appealed to all ages and sexes - and the PS3 as a Blu-ray player, especially given the latest win in the hi-def industry. We've also recently increased our choice by adding DS titles to our offering, and have launched a new beta homepage for games on the site this month which we're improving all the time."
On the latest partnership, Georgiou was confident that Rainbow Six Vegas 2 would prove to be another success.
"Firstly, it's a fantastic title and part of a very successful franchise. Secondly, we know that the theatrical design, story and exciting gameplay will appeal and draw in fans of action and adventure titles - the Tom Clancy synergy with films is definitely something that we can build upon."
But the company has no plans to stop there, and is expecting more partnerships in the future.
"Games are a very important part of our business and an important offering to our users. We intend on continuing this development and evolving our games offering and content further," said Georgiou.
"We are in conversation with many publishers on the exciting titles that are launching this year and look forward to executing more engaging games campaigns to our audience. Watch this space."
The Rainbow Six Vegas 2 link increases the activity over the Assassin's Creed deal by adding a themed micro-site, linked from the LOVEFiLM website, as well as a Las Vegas competition which users can enter.