"BBC - Games industry enters a new level" Article

[useless]

link : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6523565.stm

It may not be original, but no video games executive has yet been sacked for commissioning the annual upgrade to popular franchises like Fifa Soccer or Madden NFL.

Ed Barton, games analyst at Screen Digest, calls it "a common syndrome in the video games industry".

"Wonderful innovative titles are sometimes ignored [by consumers], while some repetitive titles with minor improvements in game play and graphics provide much better returns to the games publishers," he says.

He compares it to music publishers, who have Madonna or Elvis Presley "to keep the home fires burning," but also invest to freshen up the catalogue.

If you look at the forecast chart in the bottom of the article I find it strange at how they predict a downward trend for the PS3 and a steady albeit increasing one for the X360. How?

 

[doobiwan]

I don't follow where you see that. I read it as a typical analyst graph - extrapolate cyclic trends over past gen results.

What I do notice though is as typical they knock PC gaming as dying, when there's a number of great articles to the contrary. PC Game sales have just moved away from typical boxed retail sales, which is what the measure. Steam, GameTap, Direct2Drive are aoll thriving, and then there's the beast of Wow and the other MMo's that are pulling annuity income.

 

[brevity]

Doobiwan, did you catch the March issue of Edge Magazine. If anyone doubts the far-reaching gaming dominance of the PC, try finding this issue. The issue looks at the PC's reach - extending from Minesweeper, to Wow, to online java games, to emulators of many early systems, to the fact there are over 100 times more computers out there than there are all other consoles. Also, they cleverly put this cute little box on the cover that looks very consolish (no screen or keyboard or mouse to give you clues) and in big letters say - the greatest gaming system ever... or something like that.

 

[doobiwan]

Oh yeah thanks, I completely forgot the on-line casual stuff as well, like Popcap and Pogo.