A Bruised Purple Moon Shuts Its Doors
Limited sales and bruising competition forced Purple Moon, a pioneer of the girls’ games genre, to close its doors last week and lay off all its employees.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based creator of CD-ROM titles for 8-to-12-year-olds said in a statement that increased consolidation in the video game industry was a primary reason for its decision. Ironically, this consolidation is being driven largely by a broadening of the video game market to include categories such as girls’ games.
The start-up, which had financial backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was negotiating a TV show based on one of its characters and had also signed a deal with Scholastic to publish books based on its characters.
“Had either one of those gotten going, it would have been a good booster for the CD-ROMs,” said Seema Williams, an analyst for Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm Forrester Research. “One of the things they never did was get really great reviews. They have never been known for having great product; they were always known for having a great idea.”
Purple Moon--along with Girl Games, Her Interactive and Girl Tech--took the video game market by storm three years ago by creating games that didn’t focus on the action adventures so popular with teenage boys.
Instead, the company offered titles such as “Rockett’s New School” and “Secret Paths in the Forest,” which featured “real life” settings that allowed girls to explore relationships.
Williams said Purple Moon’s demise exemplifies the uphill battle for shelf space and name recognition faced by remaining girls’-game start-ups.
Purple Moon’s titles combined sold about 250,000 units, said David Cole, an interactive entertainment analyst at DFC Intelligence in San Diego. With well over 1 million copies sold, Mattel’s “Barbie Fashion Designer” game alone outsold all of Purple Moon’s titles, Cole said.
“I always had my doubts about the market for girls’ games. I think that especially trying to target them exclusively can be really tough,” Cole said. “I do believe it will grow in usage, but the real question is whether a small publisher can be the one who helps create and establish that market.”
