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.
Erm, it’s a … different … intro 🙂
I guess this is due to Mass Effect?
In the hospital?! Diabetes?! Man … Jonah, I think you’re now avoiding the doctor just so that you don’t get diagnosed with God knows what.
@Microsoft: Xbox Live Arcade will be phased out eventually
Erm, dunno. I don’t think that an established digital distribution channel will be removed on a whim. You don’t back out from a market unless it generates losses, and I doubt this is the case for XBLA.
Ok, change the name, don’t care. But I think Microsoft will keep providing the service.
@Leaked images “nothing to do with” Doom 4
Doom 2 was set on Earth however. Dunno. From my point of view, anything goes.
The engine is idTech 5, that powered the Rage game.
@SimCity 5 coming in 2013:
never played, never cared.
@GAME drops 5% in shares after Mass Effect 3 no-show
Tough times for retailers. A lot of publishers either use Steam, or have developed their own digital distribution channels. So now they can afford to place heavier conditions to the retailers.
Now if you also add bad management in the mix, well, that’s a recipe for bankruptcy.
@Rumor: PlayStation 4 ditches Cell processor tech
To be honest, as long as you manage to create a nice API for the game developer, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a cell processor or 2-4 80×86 compatible cores.
I still can’t forget what they said at one point, that the cell processor was intentionally made hard to work with, so that the PS3 has a longer life.
Who thinks like that?!
Thanks Paul for sending my PD, my lil 5 yo bro will love this game (i’m 21 btw)
jordan, watch out for that C6H12O6!!! they are evil! deliciously evil!
paul, bronkitis sucks, i have it too.
jonah, go get a check up ASAP!
i hope you know that i am very glad all 3 of you are fine =]
@xbla no more eventually
it is a money maker, they will not give that away, its a name change for sure.
@sim city 5 comming 2013
meh… never liked the sims series very much (all sims, not only THE sims). i like destruction games more.
@ps4 changes processor
as long as it works with quality, I mean, as long as sony doesn’t screw up more stuff ¬¬
get well guys (be careful jonah, u might be next)
mwa hahahahaha (evil laugh if u dont get it)
take care
Can you guys make it a bit shorter? Some guys like me don’t have internet at home so we download it thru a phone. I can’t download it when its over 50M. I hope you take it to your attention, Cheers!
My god, that was the best intro ever! I’m pretty busy right now with my pre-GCSE exams, so don’t expect any long comments for now. You should be honored that you’re one of the things I will still be doing between studying.
Oh and Paul, I never got to hear your thoughts on Skyward Sword. Have you finished it, and if so, what did you think?
Hey guys, first time listener. I enjoyed the show, but I cringed at the narration of the news headlines. I’m by no means a good public reader, so I know how hard it is to vocally string together a poorly written sentence. Slow it down a little and you should be just fine.
Keep up the good work, and thanks for the listen!