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Electronic Arts on the Future of Gaming
GameDaily.biz has up a discussion they had earlier in the week with Frank Gibeau, EA's Senior Vice President of Marketing, North America. Mr. Gibeau holds forth on where EA is going (and therefore, where the industry is going) as regards next-generation platforms, the prices of future game titles, and the cost of making games. He also comments on Nintendo's position in the market right now. From the article: "I think the Nintendo customer is so entrenched and loyal that the company knows that they have a base of customers that they are building off of. Is it the same size that it was on 8-bit? Certainly not. They definitely have seen their market position erode in the face of market introductions by Sony and Microsoft."
"We will burn out wave after wave of our own programmers, until we ship the product!"
Yeah, right.
EA peers into the crystal ball...
Trolling is a art,
We won't need to rely on EA to determine the future of video games. If Nintendo really does plan to attract indy developers with its Revolution console, I look forward to new, innovative titles instead of EA's well-polished, but derivative, hollywood games.
I can tell you things that weren't in the article...
"We will continue to screw over our employees"
"We will continue to try to monopolize the sports games market by getting exclusive rights to every sports video game on the planet."
"We will continue to ship the same game that we made in 2000 with only minor improvements."
"We will continue to buyout good companies like Origin, Maxis, and Bullfrog and convince them to make crappy games like we do now."
Not sure if you got the point of this post, but I hate EA. Ever since the original NHL hockey they've gone downhill (but Shaq-fu was pretty awesome)
Interviewer: Where do you think the future of gaming is going?
EA: We feel that we'll dominate the market and the competition will fall to the way side. So all in all, we're happy.
God spoke to me.
"Hey EA, Don't forget to use the same music that we always use for the next EA Trax. I hear everyone likes that 'fshizzle ma nizzle' crap"
Thankfully there's the option of using your own soundtracks in most of the games, otherwise I'd be less inclined to spend my money on EA games.
Stupid people hurt my head.
That Shaq-Fu line was awesome.
I don't want to hear about the future of games from the bloody Senior Vice President of Marketing. I'd much rather hear from the developers, engineers and content creators directly, not some corporate mouthpiece.
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
http://johndiesattheend.com/ningraph.gift o.html
which i got from this : http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifes
God Curse America.
Wow, I didn't realise it was all that bad. I'd be interested to see game sales and handheld charts as well, but now i'm getting cheeky :)
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
I'm shocked every time I see that piece of uglyness that is the NTSC SNES...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The future of gaming? That should be pretty easy for EA to predict. In 2006 they will rerelease all of this year's games by changing the title from (title) 2005 to (title) 2006. In 2007 they will rerelease all of the 2006 games by changing the title from (title) 2006 to (title) 2007...
Has anyone ever seen this guy in person? http://img-nex.theonering.net/images/scrapbook/ori g/9263_orig.jpg
"Death and poverty like me so much, they brought friends!" - Vash the Stampede, Trigun
MS 360 releases for X-Mas. Has a decent but not a huge launch. This X-Mas is ruled by SquareEnix, between Dragon Quest VIII and Kingdom Hearts II. Copies of both titles are in Tickle-Me Elmo territory. (KHII in particular)
The PS3 is delayed until X-Mas 2006. The Revolution launches in Spring of 2006, and actually has a massive launch. The main selling point is actually the classic game service that Nintendo is putting out. Lot's of people go for it for that reason alone.
X-Mas 2006, the PS3 is finally released, but the X-Box 360 finally gets its killer apps (Halo 3 anybody?) and the 360 sells the most systems over the holiday period, with Nintendo solidly in second. In regards to total numbers of systems sold, the Rev. and 360 are neck and neck, with the PS3 way behind. PS3 only projects are retooled to go on the 360...but more often than not the Revolution.
Companies start to realize that development costs are much lower on the Revolution, so they start making games for that. E3 2007, the Revolution has everything, and the other two consoles have relativly little (think where the GameCube is right now)
Anyway. That's my prediction for the next gen.
Come on.
There's not a lot of stuff from that time period that we all look fondly back on. Mullets? Clothes? You name it, most of it was bad.
Karnal
So you're saying that they're great because they've got enough control over the market to be able to release 6 games for XBox 360's launch. I'd like to hear support of your "market dominance can be good for the consumer" idea.
And what "great games" are you talking about? Certainly not Madden, their NHL series, Fifa, NBA, or MLB games. Cause last I heard, they weren't even tops in the market for those. Sega came out with better, cheaper sports games in the past few years and real soccer fans have been playing Winning Eleven forever.
Remember, at the core of every game company are developers, artists, qa, production members, etc... who love making games. It's very competitive within the industry and some people are willing to devote their lives to their work. When they set the working standard, there are bound to be people who can't or don't want to keep up.
Three words create a very fine line...Employment At Will.
1st Guy: "You know that game, umm Red something, where you like are in an alternate realility a bit like the cold war with the soviets vs the allied."
2nd Guy: "Oh, Red Alert?"
1st Guy: "Yeah thats the one, about time we made a sequel for that. Oh and while your at it, make a new Tiberian Sun and Sim City 5. Oh don't forget we need it done in 6 months, so crack out those whips we got off ebay, 10,000 lines of code a day or a lash for every 100 lines short."
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
"It's because instead of giving gamers what they want, Nintendo tells them what they should want."
Certainly, they could give video game players exactly what they want just like EA does; and then we can have no real developments in the industry. EA represents all that is wrong with the industry today; they essentially re-release the exact same game year in year out without ever considering taking a new direction with anything.
Nintendo shows more creativity, and produces a game that is far more fun, in Mario Tenis than the entire EA sports line-up; the same can be said about Metroid Prime compared to all of EA's Bond and Metal of Honor games.
Whether or not people realize what they really want. Hardware or Software.
I feel sorry for Sony fans. They have nothing to really be fans of except bad laser assemblies and a bad controller that's been around so long we're so used to it that it doesn't matter how bad it is anymore. Certainly not games, because outside of a few titles(notably Gran Turismo), Sony doesn't make games, they make platforms. The games have only been coming because most people buy the platform to get the games that haven't come out yet. You could just as easily substitute a 360, or a Revolution for that PS3 and the exact same thing would happen. PS3 projects would be retooled to go to whichever system has the marketshare.
The games are also why Nintendo is always a safe bet, if you like their stuff that is. Because you know over the course of the hardware's life you're going to get a certain set of titles, as well as some new ones, and if you enjoy those titles you've justified your cost of admission. Third party titles are a bonus.
That's also why Microsoft is a safe bet if you love Live and Halo enough. If you like console ports of PC properties. Any third party titles from the old boys are a bonus.
Imagine the best piece of computing hardware on the planet coming out, but there's no software for it, and it's released by a company that isn't known for their software. Would you buy it? I wouldn't, it's a sucker's purchase.
Anyway, here's what I see happening, and it's all because of the PSP. Everyone who wanted a PSP probably has one by now, but not enough people bought them to overturn the DS's 2:1 lead(which in turn is wayyy behind the GBA). In turn, we aren't seeing many exciting games coming out for the PSP, nor have we heard much about new in-development games of any magnitude. We are seeing some cool toys hitting the DS. So the wait and see people will likely gravitate over there if they go anywahere. If this cements itself, and continues up until the PS3 launch(I'd say this is a safe bet), all of the early adopter, "Sony's totally gonna get all those great 3rd party games," people are gonna be a bit gun-shy about the PS3, on the tail of the relative failure of the PSP.
Toss in Sony muscling devs to make PSP games if they want to make PS2/PS3 games, and boom, the game is Microsoft's and Nintendo's to lose. And that's a SEGA v. Nintendo style battle right there. It's gonna all come down to marketshare, development difficulty, and licensing cost. It's wayyy too early to call it, but if I'm not overestimating my fellow gamers, Sony's gonna wind up the loser.
If I'm wrong, and if Sony wins round three mainly because Square wanted more space for FMV 10 years ago, I'm going to be a sad sad panda.
Oh and as to EA. Who cares what they have to say? So they're the #1 publisher? Nintendo's #2(sometimes even surpassing EA by hitting the #1 slot) and no one seems to listen to them because of that.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
So long as the games industry remains what it is (aside from hardware and technological improvements, or even the money going into the industry) EA will not be the top of the gaming industry, now or in the future. They can swallow up as many companies as they want, and they can aquire as many liscenses as they feel like. At the end of the day though, a company of a couple hundred dedicated people with an original idea will always, ALWAYS, beat out a giant corporation. Especially one like EA. EA is like the Wal-Mart of the videogame industry, and I'm getting sick of it.
Society never gets more or less violent, the definition of violent just keeps changing.
Nintendo are all about buy-in and as they article says "fanboys" or at least people with some investment in the brand. Rather like Apple really. All I can say is I've been playing computer games for 23 or 24 years now (with the odd toilet break obviously) and I've never "got" Nintendo. The artificial creation of cuddly 'icons' by Japanese companies has never appealed to me. That said I've owned Nintendo hardware, bought their games -- Mario cart was fun and clearly in their time Zelda64 and Mario64 were great -- but their continued success puzzles the hell out of me to be honest. They bring a few good games to the table each time but then so did quite a lot of now disappeared and forgotten software houses. What I mean to say is, their stuff isn't that good . Its not worth the price of the titles and the hardware for the honour of playing when you can get a PSX, PS2 or even Sega Mastersysem(Genesis) and have more choice over all. But then I live in Europe, I do understand that in America "Nintendo" is a more respected brand. Perhaps that has something to do with it.
You just cited pointlesswasteoftime.com as a source for some console sales data.
THEY PROVIDED NO SOURCE. THEY MAKE SHIT UP.
Don't get me wrong. I love PWOT.com, I've been reading it since college, like, back in '99 when its web design sucked and nobody read it. It's hilarious and the articles are often well-done. But IT'S NOT A NEWS SOURCE.
Unless, of course, you refer to their tagline "The only news source you'll never need."
My stupid web site
The host site is "johndiesattheend.com". "John Dies at the End" is the title of a popular serial horror story feature on pointlesswasteoftime.com. Thus, the URL, which has no site yet, is probably owned by the same guys.
the graph is hosted on some other site (which im not going to bother looking for now, because this right here is a complete waste of my time.. )
In other words, you gladly repeat information without wasting any time critical thinking or confirming a source.
My stupid web site