Newspapers to push games giveaways

Company behind games covermount in last week’s Times says deal will herald new media trend

PC software retailers, look away now: Full video games giveaways will soon become as commonplace on the cover of national newspapers as CDs and DVDs.

That’s according to the company that organised a ‘covermount’ offer with The Times newspaper last week, which saw five full PC titles, such as Ubisoft’s Scrabble, given away gratis.
Similar national newspaper giveaways have been blamed for devaluing the DVD and CD markets by trade bodies and leading retailers.

Hasbro’s Monopoly was included with Saturday’s Times, followed by Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Countdown and more in subsequent issues.

The Times flouted usual games ‘covermount’ protocol by including a CD version of Monopoly and Scrabble over the weekend – rather than giving away retail tokens.

Media firm The Practice sold the idea to The Times and arranged licensing details with the likes of Ubisoft and Hasbro. Account manager at the firm John Bassett told MCV:

“This is the first time we’ve seen interactive giveaways, and The Times has run a lot of advertising. If they see an uplift in sales like we have with CD and DVD giveaways, they’ll want to repeat it.