Can Digital TV Games Make It In The States?

Thanks to GameZone for their interview with Colin Anderson of developers Denki, as they discuss "if interactive TV can succeed in the gaming world", following Denki's continued UK releases of games played on set-top TV-receiving boxes, with titles including Denki Blocks and an updated Super Breakout. Denki's Anderson suggests: "It's not that digital TV games haven't been successful in North America, it's simply that they haven't been available up until recently... the US [is] around 12-18 months behind Europe", and also points out the different target audience for the format: "The interactive television audience tends to be 50-55% female with the most popular age ranges being under 12 and over 30. It's a real challenge from a designer's point of view to build a product that appeals equally across such a wide demographic." Would you play games on your digital TV box?

Comments

Pah

[DigitalBubblebath]

As the article mentions, we've had digital interactive tv for some time now in the UK. I've played a few of the games myself, but they really appear as nothing more than a passing gimmick.

A few of the quiz games are interesting and sometimes the programme tie-ins are fun but as for playing proper games; the "platform" just doesn't allow for reliable real-time interaction. There's like a 1/2 second delay on button presses for gawd's sake.

Anyway, the picture quality in Digital televsion doesn't match a good analogue signal (though maybe your HDTVs over there will allow something better?)

Only a small non-gaming market

[Randar the Lava Liza]

These sorts of set-top games are really only useful in homes that do not already have a gaming console. I don't really care if my cable box will let me play tetris, I have a gamecube for games on my TV. The demographics seem correct, this sort of device would only be used by people who don't have a traditional console.

It seems a bit like the N-gage. Games on cellphones are handy only if you don't have a gameboy sp. If my cell phone has a bundled game, I might play it once in a while if I forget my gameboy, but I wouldn't buy something like the N-gage just to play games. Similar with this. If my cable box had games and I didn't have a console I might waste some time on those games, but with a dedicated console, who needs it.

Idle N-gage point - when I was flying Delta this week coming back from Florida they announced that all cellphones and all cellphone games had to remain off for the entire flight. Another nail in the N-gage coffin...