A few years back, World of Warcraft debuted on the store shelves of Walmart. At that time, nobody knew that WoW was going to be anything more than another early MMORPG product with a few hundred thousand users, in the tradition of Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, Asheron’s Call and the like. I think that tapping into more “maintstram” distribution channels–not just the game-store preorders–is part of what helped propel WoW to the top of the charts.
This year, I’ve observed another shift that speaks to the trend toward games becoming a mainstraem product that you can pick up along with your breakfast cereal, coffee, and…Slurpee.
That’s right. Slurpees. Early this year, I mentioned how Seven Eleven had done a special promotion around the Guitar Hero: Aersosmith release. At the time, it looked like more a brand tie-in to me: an attempt by Seven Eleven to become more associated with games, and therefore bring people into the store to buy Slurpees. That’s a big part of it, but it seems there’s a bigger trend underway. Just as Blizzard blazed a (relatively) new trail with the original release of WoW in Walmart, they’re continuing to innovate on the distribution of Wrath of the Lich King, and this time it is at 7-Eleven. You’ll be able to pick up a copy of WotlK at midnight on release day.
Kotaku talked about Seven Eleven’s game pre-orders a few weeks back. Seven Eleven has a great built-in advantage over other retailers: they’re already open on midnight. And the people who go to Seven Eleven are the young crowd that’s likely to want to buy games anyway (see also, the Pew Research indicating that 97% of teens are playing games).
As games become more mainstream, and a basic component of our culture–expect to see games available for sale in more places outside of the traditional retail channel.
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