Who's Got Game?

[Crosseyed Bunny]

If you want to know where game world is going you simply have to think like a cop tracking a bank robber and Follow the money. Game Execs make it their business to do just that.



First thing that's blindingly obvious is that Gaming isn't a labor of love for gaming execs. They aren't gamers, simply the guys in charge of the bottom line. Money.

Game world is changing faster than I can type. This time last year we were talking about World of Warcraft and how no other game has made more money and it continues to roll in. The writing on the wall was that soon Game Execs would be trying to make more of their games follow WoW's game plan and become MMOs.

To game execs MMORPG stands for Making Money On Real Popular Games. It's easy, cost effective and they think we will pay to play games we've already bought. Some of us probably will.

That was last year. This year we have the iPad and Smart Phones. The app revolution has LOTS of guys are making apps in a corner of their basement and coming out with a quick, easy, one or two layered game and making a fortune.

The result of the "App Trend" is that more people are gaming than ever before. When I'm at lunch or waiting in a line, people have their phones out and most people think they are texting. The truth is a lot of them are gaming. Angry Birds and Modern Combat: Sandstorm are big hits right now. Angry Birds sold half a million units in less than a month. Millions of people are now gaming on Smart Devices. That's where the money's at and it doesn't cost an arm and leg to make.

The game industry will be following that money. Why spend big dollars for the game developers big studios, expensive game trailers and staff when as much money can be with chump change. Have you seen an Angry Bird Trailer yet? No, but your probably own the game on you phone.

In order to get REAL gamers to even think of playing on an iPad they need to find a game that has real substance, game play that's not 2 dimensional and some hardware you can sink you teeth into. Believe it or not some guy is making it in his basement right now.

Can it be done? What about a controller? I need a controller. Do you? Do you know that if you put a PC gamer on line playing a gamer with a console and controller, the PC gamer with his keyboard and mouse beats the console gamer every time?

Microsoft was considering letting Xbox live gamers play on line with PC gamers. They conducted a study to see if it was doable and the results according to VoodooPC founder and HP CTO Rahul Sood.

"There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment," he adds "I've heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game... and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their 'console' controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse."
The results shouldn't be too surprising.
"The console players got destroyed every time," Sood added. "So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative."

The reason I added this is to point out that given some practice, You Don't Need A Controller. The non console idea of gaming is cheaper for the gaming execs and they don't have to listen to Console Lip. It would be their world not the Consoles.

That's where the money is and that's how we'll game in the future.