SAN JOSE, Calif. – Four years ago, when Gary Church purchased “Reader Rabbit” software for his then-3-year-old, Connor, the boy spent at most an hour using it. Instead, he hankered after something he had already become adept at: playing video games on the computer and the Xbox game console.
Now that learning-to-read CD is collecting dust with a handful of other educational software, outnumbered 10-to-1 by Connor’s expanding video game collection.
Like most parents, Church wants to help his son get ahead in school, but the San Jose father, a college math teacher, says he hasn’t found any educational software worthy of even $20 despite repeated searches online and in stores.
“I’m not too happy with the choices. None of them seem to capture the kids’ attention as much as the non-educational games,” Church said while looking for a “Mario Kart” racing game for his son’s new Nintendo DS handheld at a Best Buy store.
But ambitious new products are in the pipeline, aiming to better reach a highly connected, multitasking, gadget-laden, mobile-oriented, Internet-reliant set of youngsters. Some programs will adopt more intricate 3D graphics or other game-like elements. Others will add more Web-based features or include versions for portable gizmos.
Reinvigorating sales won’t be easy, analysts say.
Retail sales of educational software in the U.S. peaked in 1999, hitting $605 million, and have been declining each year since, according to The NPD Group market research firm. Sales sank to $128 million in 2005.
The gritty battle for shriveling retail attention proved fatal for some, but surviving vendors -Microsoft and smaller rivals – also blame the industry’s own slow pace of innovation.
“In the 1990s, there was a one-size-fits-all mentality, and ‘Reader Rabbit’ and ‘Carmen Sandiego’ were big hits. They fit the customers’ needs at that time,” said Jessica Lindl, vice president of marketing for Riverdeep Inc., which now owns both those classic titles after a string of acquisitions. “But the customer has changed dramatically over the last five years, and we were not meeting our customers needs.”
Adding to the challenge was the proliferation of free information available over the Internet.
But the desires of families to find ways to help their children with homework or to get a leg up in school have not changed, especially as students today are subjected to more standardized tests.
“If you give parents a reason to purchase a title for their kids, they will,” said Chris Swenson, a software industry analyst at NPD.
He cited how Microsoft was able to capture 14 percent of the educational software market within a year of releasing “Student 2006” – a comprehensive program for middle and high school students that combines the Encarta encyclopedia with other homework tools.
The software is based on real school curricula, weaves in quick access to Internet searches, and provides multiple solutions to how the student could solve, say, a math problem.
“You could find the answer to what’s five times three on Google, but you can’t solve quadratic equations there,” Bartholomew said.
“Consumers are very used to the next, next thing now, and they’re not seeing the next new thing in educational software,” said Leslie House, Knowledge Adventure’s senior vice president of product development.
The subsidiary of Knowledge Holdings Inc. hopes a new draw will be its forthcoming “JumpStart World” – the company’s most ambitious project ever, based on extensive scientific research and consumer market studies.
The program, due for release in the first quarter of 2007, is a major rework of the company’s well-known “JumpStart” products and will even be the first to be sold directly online to consumers rather than solely via retail stores, House said.
Unlike its predecessors, “JumpStart World” will not be a static product that stays the same once installed on a computer. It will be able to send e-mailed updates to parents to let them know what level little Johnny is on and what subject areas he excelled in or needed more help.
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