The DeanBeat: Casual Connect reveals a scary and hopeful gaming business

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
August 2, 2013
Updated June 18, 2025
6 min

This week’s Casual Connect gave us a window into the state of the game industry. It looks both hopeful and scary.

The highlight of the San Francisco event was a fireside chat between journalist Jon Gaudiosi and John Riccitiello, the former chief executive of Electronic Arts. In that talk, Riccitiello made a number of sharp observations. He noted that it is hard for the mobile game companies to come up with two hits in a row or sequels that sell better than the original game. That leads him to believe that they need to build brands.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.