Portable consoles need reinvention says Alan Wake dev
Nintendo and Sony must change approach claims Remedy boss in new interview
Nintendo and Sony need to "reinvent" the concept of the portable console, according to new comments made by Remedy Entertainment executive vice president Aki "AJ" Järvilehto.
"Many smartphones and tablets offer mind blowing value to gamers. Right now you can buy tons and tons of fun on iOS with the price of a single handheld console game. Heck, you can get tons of fun for free with advertising based concepts," said Järvilehto in an interview with website IndustryGamers.
"So I do think the traditional handheld consoles will need to reinvent themselves if they want to compete." The Alan Wake developer's most recent title is mobile app Death Rally, which has already been received positively. Järvilehto confirms in the interview that the company has been evaluating the 3DS and NGP platforms, but no decision has been made to support them.
"I think the market is changing in a radical fashion," said Järvilehto. "Barriers of entry are literally being blown away. New business models are booming and this is not about devaluation. Facebook is doing tremendous things to gaming and attracting completely new people to enjoy different more casual and social games.
"I can't see how the fact that mainstream consumers are finally embracing our industry could be negative. After all isn't that what we've been hoping for since forever?"
Järvilehto did not confirm that the company was involved in Facebook development, but instead stated, "We absolutely still love the console business model though; that's where the big stuff gets done and shines."
I'm not much of a mobile gamer, but I've still spent about $300 on consoles and $400-$500 in games over the past five years. How many iPhone customers does it take to add up to $150/year in game-related revenue?
If the console manufacturers switch focus from the core gamer to the casual gamer, I don't see how they can compete with platforms like the iPhone, especially now that those platforms are cranking up the CPU and graphics power. The casual gamer's not going to find it worth paying an extra couple of hundred dollars for a better game platform when he's already got an adequate device in a phone that he owns anyway, and he's probably not very interested in the longer, more detailed and more complex games even if they were $5 instead for $25 or $50. Such a move would seem to be to be abandoning a good, if not huge core gaming market to compete with goods that are considerably cheaper in another market.
Casual gaming works because it's a very cheap extra for people without a huge interest in games. It's a good market to be in only if you can produce things at low enough cost.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Curt Sampson on 24th May 2011 9:43am
Posted:2 years ago