The recently released game GTA V sold over USD 1 billion in product over the first 3 days of its release. This interesting statistic brings to light the fact that the gaming industry plays an important part in the overall entertainment industry rather than just playing a part of an always forgotten younger brother. It also emphasizes the importance of the entertainment industry in the human ecosystem and its ability to compete with critical industries like the Food and Electronics industries in terms of revenues generated. Finally it shows the success of a product that ‘innovates’ incrementally and is well-aligned to the needs of the consumer.

The overwhelming success of GTA V is not a total surprise as the GTA franchise has always been popular since its first version. The two key factors of this franchise that related to the gamers and ensured their engagement are (i) the open game environment which allowed the users to interact with the game world in many different ways and (ii) the linkage with the real world in terms of a recognizable city setting, usual human activity and forms.  There have been forms of these two factors from the first version with a top down view and very basic graphics. But they have been including incremental innovations or enhancements that leverage the technological developments available at the time of a particular version.

GTA V has taken these key factors of the franchise to a whole new level. They have used the current advances in graphics and animation technology to create high quality and realistic maps and they have drastically increased the area of the maps. This scale of game environment when combined with the open environment factor creates a high level of gamer engagement and a potential for multiple scenarios. Also, unlike earlier versions, they have three key characters or ‘protagonists’ in GTA V and allow the gamer to approach the story in either of the three characters and what is more amazing is that the gamer can control the three characters simultaneously. They have taken the open environment approach to the next level by allowing the players to include non-playing characters (NPCs) in their plans for heists or tasks thus adding to the endless possibilities of scenarios that are possible in the game.

These key features of the GTA franchise in general and GTA V in particular address the key need for any game – player engagement – the player feels engaged while playing the game and is interested in continuing the game. And GTA V takes player engagement to the next level by providing many hours of unique game play and giving the opportunity to affect the course of the game based on how the player interacts with the game environment.

Finally, I would also like to bring up the point about innovations and the impact of incremental innovations. We can use the example of GTA V and its success to observe the high impact that can be got out of incremental innovations by ensuring these innovations are highly aligned to the needs of the ecosystem – in the case of GTA V these incremental innovations improved player engagement. Thus it is not compulsory that your product or service should be based on breakthrough innovations only – you can get a high leverage from incremental innovations also as long as you align them to the needs of your customers.