The nation's first video game tour is switching to one-player mode.
GameRiot, which started last year as part of the Lollapalooza music tour, is beginning its own 30-city spring tour this month, featuring dozens of recently released and pre-release games along with a DJ and dancing. Organizers hope to attract 75,000 gamers through May and if it's a success, to continue with more concert dates later in the year.
Event is run by Games Media Properties, a vidgame marketing company founded by the William Morris Agency, its majority shareholder, in 2002. GameRiot is the venture's only major creation thus far and represents an effort to boost the sagging concert business some believe has been hurt by young men's growing interest in video games.
"The concert business has been challenged, but we had a lot of success last year and had promoters saying we could succeed on our own," stated Games Media Properties prexy Matthew Ringel.
GameRiot's major impediment may come from its sponsorship by Microsoft, which is leading it to offer games only on the company's Xbox console and on PCs. While most titles are available on at least one of those platforms, several popular titles made only for Playstation 2 or GameCube won't be included as a result.
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