14 DAY TRIAL // Vivendi Universal Games Director for Eastern Europe, Guenter Cohnen, visited Romania last week, for the first time as a member of the Vivendi Universal Games management team. The company is world famous for publishing games such as World of Warcraft, the Warcraft strategy series, the Diablo series, Counter-Strike etc. Softpedia now features the complete interview, to offer you fresh information on what 2006 means, in terms of line-up and perspective, to one of the largest game publishers in the world.
Carmen Ivanov: Please introduce yourself to our readers. Guenter Cohnen - VUG: OK. My name is Guenter Cohnen, I am the Director for Eastern Europe from Vivendi Universal Games, based in Germany. I'm responsible for the eastern territories (you can call it the emergent market - means Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia etc.).
Carmen Ivanov: What are Vivendi's plans for Eastern Europe in 2006? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: For Vivendi it is absolutely clear that the eastern territories, like the names said - emergent markets, are really important for the future. It's the fastest growing market in the world, so we will pay attention to it within the next couple of years, to grow the market, and hopefully we will bring it to the same level as mainland Europe.
Carmen Ivanov: What can you tell us about the Vivendi 2006 line-up? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: We will have a huge line-up with a lot of products based on film license. We will start with Ice Age [2] really soon, followed by other products in October, meaning Scarface, based on the film with Al Pacino, followed by Eragon, which is based on the film and the books of Eragon. We will have Caesar IV, we will have the addition to World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, we will come up with some PSP games like Miami Vice, which is exclusively designed for PSP. We will also have two tactical-strategy products. One of them is Joint Task Force, really famous, developed by the Hungarian developer team, and we will have another one, called World in Conflict, which is supposed to be more online gaming than single player gaming. That's all.
Carmen Ivanov: Since you have mentioned the World of Warcraft expansion, I am sure our readers would like to know more about it - such as when it will launch and what is the name of the new race in the game. Guenter Cohnen - VUG: [laughing] I can't disclose the name of the new race. World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade will hit the market in October this year. These are the plans so far, but no guarantee, of course. It will expand the world of World of Warcraft with a new race, of course you've heard that already, but I can't disclose the name. You'll have to wait for E3 in Los Angeles, in May. There will also be new territories and new level design, something like that, but that's all that I can tell you, because I am not Blizzard and the information is yet to be disclosed. I am really sorry for that.
Carmen Ivanov: Leaving that aside, when is the Ice Age game set for hitting the shelves? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: In one week from now - the first week in April.
Carmen Ivanov: As far as Caesar IV is concerned, when does Vivendi intend to launch the title and what are its new features - as compared to the previous titles in the series? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: Caesar IV will hit the market in October 2006 and what we have completely redesigned is the gameplay itself, we've fixed all the issues, let's say, from Caesar III, which is now almost five years old. So, it's new graphics, high-end graphics, automatically moving characters in the game, helping you, so it will be as the original town building strategy game, but with new features, new graphics and with, I think, a really, really big world where you can move and build your towns.
Carmen Ivanov: The piracy rate in Romania is impressive (over 90%). Given this, what does Vivendi intend to do so that its own products be less affected by this phenomenon, especially in Romania? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: First of all, piracy is a problem for us, because, in the end, the pirates steal the money that we need to develop new games. So, to make it all nicer and follow the technique, we work really close with our local attorney to speak to the local government, to the police, to the border control, in order to avoid any grey imports of pirated products, from the Internet, on the streets. That's all that we can do. So, we do everything together with the BSA, the Business Software Alliance. We'll work together to just hunt the pirates and take them down. Our strategy for the next five years is to localize games as much as possible, as much as necessary to make it mass market. But to have it, we have to reach certain numbers and units, because we have to invest a lot of money to do the localizations in our studios in Dublin, in America, wherever. So, to give you an idea, we have localization costs between 10.000 and 50.000 EURO per title, to make a game localized for a territory. So how can we do that if we are not selling, on the other side, enough products to divide the money by product? If we are still selling 2.000 products in Romania, we will never be able to do that, because it is a minus: for Vivendi it's a minus, for the distributor it's a minus, for the developer... So, it's a Catch 22 situation: you have to get rid of the pirates, to grow the numbers, and with the growing numbers we can invest on the other side, into the localization, to make the product full Romanian, let's say. So, it's our strategy to stop the piracy thing, and on the other side, to make the product more comfortable to the Romanian players.
Carmen Ivanov: Mr. Cohnen, here is a special question, regarding a topic very dear to me... namely Diablo III. When is this project set to cross the finish line and if it does, will it be online only? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: So far, about Diablo III there is no information at all that I'm aware of, honestly. Even if I were aware of such information, I couldn't disclose it. No, really, I don't know anything about Diablo III, when it will come to the market, how will it look like, I have no idea. I'm so sorry.
Carmen Ivanov: Still, can you at least confirm that Diablo III is undergoing production? Guenter Cohnen - VUG: No, so far I know there is no production going on. I really have no idea about that, because this is disclosed within Blizzard. It's Blizzard's own decision and I don't know, really, I have no idea. It's not like I wouldn't love to tell you, because I'm a fan of Diablo, I would like to play it. It's like there is no information available about that.
Carmen Ivanov: One last request: please send a message to all Softpedia.com readers. Guenter Cohnen - VUG: Hello, Softpedia readers, this is Guenter Cohnen from Vivendi Universal Games. We do our best to provide you in the future with the best games you can expect. We do a lot of effort to serve you with extremely good games, so stay with Vivendi and you will have a lot of fun.
