Corx - the adventure begins

Corx is an adventure into the unknown world of the toy and game industry.

The toy and games industry is a huge market.

With an average PlayStation game costing upwards of £2 million for research and development, it is plainly obvious that the rewards can be high. The world's toy and game market is worth over $71095 million per annum of which $15441 million accounts for video games. The latest final fantasy game is reputed to have cost over $40 million to develop.

However, sales in the video game market are slowing whilst so-called traditional board games are enjoying a resurgence. It is a potentially lucrative market and a successful board game will just keep on selling...

Othello, launched in 1971 has sold 30 million copies; the ever-popular estate agents' game, Monopoly, first sold to the public in 1935 has since sold over 200 million copies and Scrabble, the ever-popular word-forming game invented and launched in 1948 has so far sold more than 100 million copies. In line with the current resurgence in board games (currently up 25% year) Scrabble sold two million copies last year in the US alone.

Currently, the best selling traditional board game is "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" which has sold one million copies in the United Kingdom so far and is licensed to over 60 countries worldwide.
Understandably, the big toy companies, such as Hasbro and Mattel are always on the hunt for the next big game.

Rob and I don't have a toy and game industry background, which made our task even harder.
The task was daunting - design and market a game that we knew could have universal world wide appeal.
Aesthetically we wanted to give the game an East meets West Flavour. Although Corx is thought of as a traditional game we wanted it to be thoroughly modern in design and so much of our opinions about what is cool in games comes from the East with computer games: Sony, Nintendo and Tamagochi.

Here was Corx with a return to basics of hand to eye co-ordination, but we didn't want to be classed as a 'traditional' style game.

A design that would appeal to adults and kids alike.

One of our target markets was Japan. We had to design with that in mind.

Jon Unsworth