The game industry is doing “okay” in this bad economic time compared to other industries. Primarily, Nintendo is rocking the house with their games, hand-held’s and consoles while mobile developers are showing some great successes in the industry. Many success stories in our industry are based on small titles, downloadable games of the more “casual” style while a few larger titles are experiencing slower than expected sales trends.
We’ve mentioned this in the past, but the tough economy gives many smaller developers great opportunities for success. While big publishers struggle to look good in the eyes of the investor, tiny developers can produce quality titles for minimal cash investment and time to market. Ten years ago, smaller developers tried to compete with the big boys making larger titles, cloning successful titles or simply asking investors to put it on the line for their game. Today, developers can create a small iphone app, a cute WiiWare title or exploit the XNA efforts of Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade and actually have a chance.
There are still challenges with these smaller developers when working in the WiiWare and XBLA publishing channels, your game marketing and promotion becomes highly reliant on Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony for PSN. Tom Prata, senior director of Nintendo of America talked to Gamespot about this issue:
“Finally, there’s the problem of promotion. It’s not enough to make a great game if nobody notices it. Prata specifically said Nintendo will be devoting more resources to support the promotion and development of WiiWare games in the future.” (gamespot)
Of course, in the world of smaller game titles and downloadable casual games, you’re going to be at risk of finding a lot of “shovelware” — products that are only released to make a quick dime, often based on some license or popular theme/character. The great game titles will, hopefully, rise to the top and show themselves off amongst all the wanna-be money makers.
Those smaller developers putting a huge passion into their titles actually have a chance in this new industry trend. Game makers, internationally, now have a chance to grasp a small piece of the industry and make their dreams come true. The core audience may see this as a trend of noisly low quality titles, but I believe the industry needs this change to grow a new generation of developers based on niche interests.
While many can wait for their next release of Madden the rest of us will continue to spend a little money to see what the future innovators are going to be bringing to the table.
@Gabe Newell teases something for E3 2012 with a “3” in it:
“DOTA 2 launches on E3” ? It has a 3 in it … Or how about Portal 3? I mean people do hope for HL3 or at least HL2 – episode 3.
How about Team Fortress 3 🙂
@Microsoft includes “do not class action sue us”:
So it seems that bad practices tend to replace good practices. I mean while “do not class action sue us” will protect the company (cover it’s ass), it also allows it to be evil and get away with it.
Are they that sloppy that they feel that they need this kind of a clause? Or even worse, do they plan to do nasty stuff with your personal data?
About light bulbs: I heard that the ones built for the 220V will work just as well on 110V, but last much longer. Hint hint, if you have a trip to Europe 🙂
@Bizarre circumstances surround GSC Game World:
They sold quite a good number of the STALKER games, enough to keep the studio afloat. I think that these kind of news are just advertising, like the ARG for Valve.
I’m a big STALKER fan, by the way. Their earlier games were also pretty good (loved “Codename: Outbreak”).
As for 25 years, it’s still a small amount of time. I mean files remain classified as top secret for 50 years, unless their status is renewed for another 50.
Good segway there Paul!
@QOTW: the only handheld game system we had was one that could play snake and tetris. So big surprise, my favourite game was tetris, on a nameless handheld (’cause “17 in 1” is not a name) made in China 🙂
Just so you know, I took the time and left you an iTunes comment.
@Gabe Newell teases something for E3 2012 with a “3” in it: I look forward to seeing whatever game Valve releases next, but these kind of teasers for a teaser in kind of tiring to me. I won’t get excited until I see an actual gameplay trailer. Possible new releases other than Half-Life ending with 3: Team Fortress 3, Portal 3 and Left 4 Dead 3.
@QOTW: Sorry, I have never owned a handheld gaming system. This is because I have never found any reason to buy one (it’s better value to spend the money on a home console) and anyway I would only be able to play it at home because it takes less than an hour to get from one side of my country to the other, and there aren’t a lot of games that interest me on a handheld.