New ‘Amigo’ Disc Packaging Offers Green Benefits, Clear-Vu Says

The Amigo case reduces the carbon footprint of a packaged disc 77 percent compared with standard Amaray cases, and 64 percent compared with the lightweight version of Amaray cases, Lax said. He said that makes Amigo the greenest storage case in the industry. Packaging accounts for more than 33 percent of the recording and publishing industries’ carbon emissions and at least 10 percent of the total emissions from the entertainment market, he said. Standard Amaray cases weigh 83 grams and lightweight Amaray cases 53 grams, both all plastic, Lax said, but Amigo cases weigh 45 grams, only 2 grams of which are plastic.

The Amigo case is also “100 percent paper recyclable,” Lax said. It features a patent-pending plastic hub and its disc lock secures digital media during transportation. It can be used for Blu-ray discs, DVDs and CDs. But Clear-Vu said it’s also “adaptable to other digital media formats, including flash and SD."

Amigo is also “security-ready,” Lax said, telling the conference that benefit denial technology “integrates seamlessly” into the case. Current Amaray cases can also be “easily and cost effectively” converted to handle the technology, Lax said. The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), which co-produced the conference, backs benefit-denial technology. Discs that use it would be inoperable if not activated by a store employee at the cash register at the time of purchase, so thieves wouldn’t be able to play them. The technology is seen by EMA retail members as a better solution than keeping discs behind glass, under lock and key. Retail shrink was cited by various speakers at the conference as a significant problem for the game industry, and theft is the most common reason for shortfalls. Shrink is “becoming a huge issue,” said Bob Geistman, EMA’s chairman and the senior vice president of sales and marketing for distributor Ingram Entertainment.

"Challenges” from the economic crisis are making it more important than ever for more industry standards to be set for such things as street dates and product packaging, Geistman said. It’s also important to improve management of inventory risk, he said, complaining that there “seems to be no shared risk” now. Navarre Operations Vice President David Ginsberg said manufacturers should do a better job of shipping new products promptly to cut freight costs. “It’s very costly to us” to make products available to consumers quickly, and products often arrive “very late” before a product launch, he said. Another issue is the way products are shipped, said Ron Novotny, executive vice president of global sales and business development at Cinram. Manufacturers are often “shipping a lot of air,” he said, noting that many boxes are opened and there are few units inside. The EMA Operations Committee recently published a set of best practices for console software pack-out from manufacturers to retailers, suggesting that videogames be shipped in cartons of 30 units, organized in one row, spine up in cartons with no inner packs. The committee is looking to make similar recommendations for PC and handheld videogame software.

A recent poll of about 3,000 gamers by research company OTX found that out-of-stock positions on games could be even more costly to retailers than previously believed. Half the gamers polled had run up against an out-of-stock situation in the previous 12 months, said Nick Williams, director of OTX gaming insights. One in three of the gamers who couldn’t find what they were looking for didn’t buy anything at the store, one in four went to a competing store, 9 percent rented the game instead of buying it and 17 percent bought a different game, he said. OTX estimated that sales of about 19 million units were lost last year because they were out of stock, about $260 million given up by publishers and about $275 million by retailers. New products account for a higher proportion of out-of-stock games than catalog titles, said Cheryl Wiebe, a consulting partner at data-warehousing company Teradata.

GameSupply Conference Notebook …

, Owen Roberts, the general manager of North American operations for Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, said at the conference. That’s about 3 million more than Microsoft said it had about a month ago, at CES, he said (CED Jan 8 p4). The company, meanwhile, is gaining strong support from game developers for its coming Project Natal motion-control technology, he said. The company is “shipping development kits out the door every day,” he said. Microsoft is “working much more closely” with its supply channel partners than it did when it first entered the videogame business, Roberts said. He predicted that the company’s recent entry into retailing will make it an even better supply-chain partner. Microsoft opened its first retail stores in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Mission Viejo, Calif., in October.

Xbox Live has about 23 million active members globally

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Digital distribution won’t replace traditional brick-and-mortar retail any time soon, said Thomas Moran, senior director of media and entertainment markets at information technology company Savvis. He predicted the two business models will co-exist. Later, Spencer Mott, Electronic Arts’ chief information-security officer, said “nothing’s predictable anymore” in the game business with the growth of digital distribution. Cybercrime and the increased presence of sophisticated malware have become problems for game publishers, and the need to go direct to consumers through e-commerce creates new security risks, he said.