{"id":462,"date":"2011-03-14T15:16:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T22:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.net\/wordpress\/?p=462"},"modified":"2013-04-29T10:19:17","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T17:19:17","slug":"my-own-market-direction-speculation-from-gdc-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=462","title":{"rendered":"My own market direction speculation from GDC 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s are my guesses\/market trends based just on what I&#8217;ve been seeing\/hearing\/guessing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mobile computing (i.e. smartphones) is a powerful new force that is here to stay and is really pushing computing and gaming in new directions.\u00a0 Since mobile is now entering into its &#8216;teenage&#8217; years, there is still a lot of rushing around and &#8216;land-grabbing&#8217; going on trying to align markets, business models, programming models, distribution, and revenue streams.\u00a0 There is very good money to be made for the savvy, but it&#8217;s also more risky.\u00a0 Those software companies that enter and establish a good name\/brand will likely do  very well, but almost certainly will be smaller, more nimble companies.\u00a0 Nobody is making a killing on phone apps and very few can quit their day jobs and live off what they make solely from that revenue stream until things settle more.<\/li>\n<li>Consoles will continue to be developers&#8217; target platform because  they have a stable user base, known revenue stream\/model &#8211; but are in  severe danger of being rendered impotent.\u00a0 They need to solve:\n<ul>\n<li>Aging graphics.\u00a0 With no new consoles in the works for a few years, things are already looking dated and it will only get worse.\u00a0 There was absolutely no talk of any new consoles &#8211; which means it&#8217;s at least 2+ years away.\u00a0 Microsoft appears to be trying to figure out it&#8217;s own strategy as there was no info for a new version of DirectX and a lot of effort clearly trying to get Winphone 7 adoption\/features\/devs going.<\/li>\n<li>Terrible loading times, frequent updates, etc are all a terrible  experience and hindrance to keeping people using their consoles.\u00a0 I  already know several people to whom their XBox 360 is really just a  Netflix box.\u00a0 And with the advent of all those features in smart TV&#8217;s  coming &#8211; that selling point will soon disappear.<\/li>\n<li>There were a number of rants about 40+ hour games and how people simply don&#8217;t finish them or want to play one game that long anymore (except for AAA titles like Call of Duty\/etc).<\/li>\n<li>Not as solid of a digital distribution of whole games like on PC\/Mac where you can get whole games online (Steam\/etc)<\/li>\n<li>Higher entry bar for indie developers to develop for vs PC\/Mac<\/li>\n<li>No instant on\/off features like every laptop and phone has.\u00a0 Waiting  5 minutes to boot your console and scan past splashes\/intro crap\/etc is  intolerable in an age they will be competing against smartphone games.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Smaller, faster casual games will grow like wildfire but generating a  sustainable (and livable) revenue stream from them will still be getting hammered out for the next few years.\u00a0 Studios that develop them will stay  smaller and live leaner &#8211; but likely deliver a lot of the innovative new gameplay for casual markets.\u00a0 We&#8217;re in the exuberant pre-teen days of this  movement, so it&#8217;s direction is still very malleable.\u00a0 Yet, there will be  a point at time at which the limitations are felt out and they get their stride.\u00a0 It&#8217;s already happening and the signs are very positive.<\/li>\n<li>The indie developers will continue to come out with buckets of  games.\u00a0 Following the 80\/20 rule, 80% of them will be garbage, but 20%  will do well.\u00a0 The top 1-5% will be phenomenons (i.e. Minecraft) and  those 1-5% will really move gaming in a newer direction. That direction  being:\n<ul>\n<li>Game developers will develop with off-the-shelf engines and middleware, not programming stuff themselves.<\/li>\n<li>Games will focus on simpler and more creative elements.<\/li>\n<li>It will keep the industry from going into stagnation and death, but  take it in a new direction very different than the old guard.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Big houses will become fewer, but get more powerful and likely be  lonelier at the top (ala movie studios).\u00a0 As the cost of AAA games rises each year,  consolidation and shake-out will happen.\u00a0 Which means they&#8217;ll likely be  more and more conservative and get more entrenched in their franchises &#8211;  which probably means less innovation on the IP front, but they will be cutting-edge beautiful.<\/li>\n<li>PSP&#8217;s and handheld gaming will just about disappear in the next 5  years as smart-phones will become so ubiquitous and be just as powerful  with many more options.\u00a0 Nobody will pay for two wireless plans to  connect their PSP&#8217;s\/DS&#8217;s.\u00a0 This is bad news for Nintendo, and somewhat  Sony, who have a large portion of their revenue stream from their  handheld gaming devices.\u00a0 It&#8217;s unclear whether they see this threat &#8211;  but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonyericsson.com\/cws\/corporate\/press\/pressreleases\/pressreleasedetails\/xperiaplaypressreleasefinal-20110213\" target=\"_blank\">Sony appears to be seeing this threat<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonyericsson.com\/cws\/corporate\/press\/pressreleases\/pressreleasedetails\/xperiaplaypressreleasefinal-20110213\" target=\"_blank\"> with a &#8216;certification&#8217; program<\/a> for mobile devices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s are my guesses\/market trends based just on what I&#8217;ve been seeing\/hearing\/guessing: Mobile computing (i.e. smartphones) is a powerful new force that is here to stay and is really pushing computing and gaming in new directions.\u00a0 Since mobile is now entering into its &#8216;teenage&#8217; years, there is still a lot of rushing around and &#8216;land-grabbing&#8217; going on trying to align markets, business models, programming models, distribution, and revenue streams.\u00a0 There is very good money to be made for the savvy,&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=462\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-7s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}