An expensive product in an unproven market

New peripherals always have an uphill battle in the market; those on both the PC and the gaming consoles that have managed to take off always have strong games attached. Dance mats are inseparable from Dance Dance Revolution, the guitars and drums for Rock Band had one of the most hyped rhythm games and a proven track record to bank on, while expensive flight sticks bring the promise of a more realistic experience with a variety of different flight simulations. So what do you do when your main product is a $190+ haptic device? The first step is getting people to try it, and the second step is making enough great games available for it to get people to bite. The best peripheral is worthless without a solid software library.





Tom Anderson, CEO of Novint

Novint was aware that this was the challenge with the Falcon; as we pointed out in our review of the product, the hardware and effects were amazing, but outside of one or two games, there just wasn't much worth your time to play on the hardware. We spoke to Tom Anderson, the CEO of Novint, and he was blunt about this issue. "When you look at reviews, and you guys did a really great, really fair [job], I thought it was [a] really well done review of the Falcon," Anderson told me. "We get that type of review a lot; we get a lot of really positive reviews, but towards the end of the review, typically it says 'But how is Novint going to do without game support?'"

He also points out that he reads the comments on various message boards, where consumers are interested in the product, but simply don't see the game support being worth the investment.

When you kill the whale, the fish look easy

The company's response? Sign up EA for Falcon support. Novint will soon be selling some of the EA's largest franchises through its online store, complete with the high-end haptics effects that Falcon integration brings. Games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08, Madden '08, NBA Live '08, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Need For Street ProStreet will be coming to the NVeNT front end. This is a huge step up from the somewhat generic golf and racing games available for the hardware now, and it shows the caliber of support Falcon owners can expect in the future. So how does a small company like Novint convince one of the biggest publishers to give its PC peripheral so much support? The answer lies in an innovative business idea called 3D Touch Rights.





A variety of EA titles will be coming to the Falcon; a huge boost to the software support of the peripheral

"Typically what we do is we license from a publisher or developer the rights to a game, and we license it in a field of use, meaning we can only use it in a specific area," Anderson explained. "The area we work out with them is the 3D Touch field of use. So when we see we have the tough right, we saying we're licensing the 3D Touch field of use. What that means is we're licensing the ability to use touch in an existing game."

This is why Novint may become one of the most powerful players in the field of gaming haptics. The company has created a brand-new way for developers and publishers to monetize their franchises, and it costs the companies nothing to give it a try. Novint is offering publishers like EA a brand new way to promote their products, a new audience in Falcon users that may be hungry for triple-A content, and porting the games to the Falcon as a platform will cost them nothing.

Imagine someone offering you a nice check for something you didn't know you could sell, and you start to see how intriguing this idea had to have seemed for EA. "We're buying the sleeves off their vests," Tom tells me, and I laugh, but it's an apt image. Novint will sell the games through its web site for $29.95, but if you already own the title, you can pay $9.95 for the haptics update.

"We go to a company that owns a game, and we say we want to acquire the 3D touch rights to the game. Sometimes the first reaction we get is 'You want to buy what now?' We're buying something from people they didn't even know they had," Anderson said. "We say we'll pay an upfront fee for the touch rights, so Novint is the one taking all the risk, and we tell them that we'll do the integration with the touch; there is no cost for [them]."

Novint also does the work right after the game is released, so the process doesn't even affect the development schedule of the game. "We're putting together a deal where it's incremental revenue for the publisher, and so publishers have been really excited about this concept."





Madden will now feature full-on haptic feedback with the Falcon

Anderson concedes that we're not talking about huge piles of money, but that the deal was worth it for EA because of the number of titles that will be coming to the Falcon. "Going back about three months, we didn't know if this model would work with the big publishers. The amount that we pay for one title might not move the needle for them, but when you multiply that by six, seven, eight or nine titles, and you're talking about amounts that are almost all profit to them, this is money they might not otherwise be making—without any risk, without any cost, and then maybe we make their quarter. Even with the big publishers, we've found that they really love this model."

Who wouldn't? Publishers like EA are always looking for quick ways to pad their profits for the next earnings announcements, and 3D touch rights are one of the rare times in business where everyone gets what they wants. EA and publishers who sign deals with Novint will get income from something they had no plans on using themselves. Novint gets the cache of having EA's roster of games on their platform, being sold directly through their store. In the eyes of consumers gun-shy about spending on new hardware, EA's involvement must look like a seal of approval. And where EA goes, others follow.