Trilobyte, the company responsible for the CD-ROM hits The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, is refocusing its development strategy from CD-ROMs to online networked gaming.
"The CD-ROM industry is getting riddled with mediocre product, and we think it's time to look at the Internet," says Trilobyte COO David Luehmann.
Instead of creating brain-teaser titles, the company announced this week that it will develop a Quake-style combat game called Assault! that allows players to compete over an online client-server network. Trilobyte plans to mix a retail distribution system with online networking - selling the server software to publishing companies like mPath, and the client software to the gameplayers via retail distribution channels.
Despite the success of The 7th Guest (which has sold more than 1.5 million copies since 1993), Trilobyte has been hurting, and laid off 15 percent of its staff in October. It isn't alone: The CD-ROM industry as a whole is suffering due to distribution difficulties from a glut of titles.
"For quite some time, CD-ROM developers have been seeing a lot of red ink," says Patrick Keane, an analyst at Jupiter. "People are accessing the Web more for their entertainment experiences."
Trilobyte won't be the first CD-ROM company to move its strategy Web-ward: After the failure of its CD-ROM technology hardware, 3D0 also moved toward Internet gaming with the September launch of Meridian59. With recent Jupiter reports predicting that online gaming will bring in US$1.6 billion in revenue and a potential 9.7 million users by 2000, the lure of online gaming is undeniable.
But despite the popularity of networked games like Quake or Diablo, the profitability of online gaming has yet to be proven. Even Trilobyte is dubious about the market.
"A lot of money is going in, but not a whole lot is coming out," says Luehmann.
