At South by Southwest, Peter Vesterbacka, CEO of Angry Birds developer Rovio, informed a panel about his interesting view regarding the console gaming industry: He claims it’s dying. You know, only a few days after the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops was named the best-selling console game of all time. He claims one reason behind the (not actually) dying console industry is because mobile developers are more nimble and able to provide updates for their games more quickly than the console industry, and people paying $40 or $50 for a game that is difficult to provide updates for is turning gamers off.
Yeah, I don’t know what he’s thinking either. Updates are nice, but we gamers don’t buy games solely based on the quantity of updates a game may receive down the line. Another point he didn’t seem to mention was that Angry Birds, which recently reached the 100 million downloads mark, is indeed wildly popular, but is also available in free and $0.99 versions, and has an installed platform base of basically anyone who has a phone, an object that wasn’t bought with the specific intent of playing games.
Vesterbacka also said he’s tired of the phrase “casual games,” and no one refers to particular movies as “casual movies,” which is true, but not exactly the best comparison to make regarding “casual” and “hardcore” gaming: No one stands in line and plays three-and-a-half minutes of a movie while waiting for their burger, and “hardcore” gamers don’t spend the money their much more in-depth games cost to play them for three-and-a-half minutes at a time.
There’s a place in the industry for both casual and hardcore games, but Vesterbacka doesn’t seem to understand much about that.
(VentureBeat via Eurogamer)
