I tip my hat to this industry's eclectic cadre of market analysts – their role as a wellspring of humor is certainly a welcome one.
News Blips:
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter thinks the PlayStation Portable 2 will be “dead on arrival.” During his Pach Attack! show on GameTrailers.com, Pachter responded to a question about the future of the handheld market, saying, “We're way approaching saturation on the handheld market. We're starting to see DS hardware sales crack. I think the ubiquity of the iPod Touch is cutting into the handheld market. I think the PSP is dead on arrival and I think the PSP2 is going to be dead on arrival.” Pachter went on to forecast a gloomy prognosis for the 3DS as well, but he gave it a little more credit than its fellow handhelds. “The 3DS will prolong the handheld market for the game manufacturers, but ultimately, I think handhelds are in trouble,” he said. “I really think as the iPod Touch gets more and more powerful, you're going to see a lot of free games over there.” A Nintendo handheld faring poorly? An Apple device cornering the handheld market? Madness!
Emeka Onono, a director on the British current-events television show Panorama, stresses the need to address the issue of video-game addiction. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Onono spoke about his recently completed project on gaming addiction for the show and the “very defensive” nature of the industry. “[Gaming addiction] is something that the industry's always doggedly denied,” Onono said. But he also claimed that the documentary wasn't strictly anti-gaming. “What we do know and we have made clear is that for the vast majority of people, games are good,” he said. “It's a positive thing. But we need to keep an eye on them: What can be good for you can also be bad for you.” What a great idea! Let's completely forget about the inherent addictiveness of any hobby and continue to cry fowl about video games!
Zynga (FarmVille) Beijing General Manager Andy Tian claims the gaming industry is “not art, it's a craft.” Speaking at the Game Developers Conference China last weekend, Tian believes that researching trends and adhering to metrics trump creative design. “We are not developing 'cool' features – we know we're developing relevant features,” Tian said. “We want to make sure that a lot of people think something is fun, but we also want to achieve commercial success, not something the development team thinks is cool.” He continued: “The game industry is not art, it's a craft. So we need the user support. We need to know what the users really like and we have to know what is the root cause for declines in performance. A good designer asks metrics good questions.” It would seem that the profit-minded Activision Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick has a long-lost twin brother. [Gamasutra]
A library of downloadable NeoGeo games for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable will launch on December 21 with 10 titles. Named the “NeoGeo Station,” the service will provide straight ports of popular NeoGeo titles – such as The King of Fighters '94, Fatal Fury, and Magician Lord – priced at $8.99 and $6.99 for the PS3 and PSP, respectively. The games will also be furnished with additional updates such as online and ad-hoc wireless play support, the ability for players to save at any point, and music and demo replays. Looks like SNK Playmore finally acknowledged the legions of rabid NeoGeo fans here in the U.S. (Myself included.)
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