Quo vadis, game industry?

In early February in California was a meeting
between some key figures in the video game industry.
Representatives from Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft
discussion on the future of video games. Gamespot.com,
under the title
"Industry icons get connected", a
recording of the speeches published. This has centered
mainly on networking of players and the further
development of the forms of distribution of the games.
There was agreement that single-player games with the
rise of broadband Internet connections around the world
rapidly lose their importance and soon thing of the past.


Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer of Sony Online
Entertainment, is clearly expressed on the subject of online
games: "The entire video game industry's history thus far has
been an aberration. It has been a mutant monster only made
possible by unconnected computers. People always play games
together. All of you learned to play games with each other.
When you were kids, you played tag, tea parties, cops and
robbers, what have you. The single game is a strange mutant
monster which has only existed for 21 years and is about to go
away because it is unnatural and abnormal. "

Mr. Koster, I also play video games with other people rather
than alone, but only if these people are my friends and I sit
in the same room. Playing on an Internet line I miss the
emotional closeness to my teammates / opponent, I can have its
physical reaction to a game situation not see, hear maximum.
Robbers policeman and they say? Sure, I have this as a small
child and played with other children. I wonder how such a thing
after its concept should be implemented on a data line, alone
in a room ... it is my belief that when this game was out
earlier and in so doing made the clothes dirty, it was an
experience in itself. If they want people to play with each
other, then they give us ten Gamepads and games, the man with
so many people before a single screen can play in the same
place. Sony has with games such as
Buzz! Yes finally put before (of
course, there are still a lot of older games of this
type), a genius.

The second major issue was the distribution of video games in
the future. Microsoft's Peter Moore spoke about the end of the
era in which games to data sources such as CDs or DVDs burned
or crushed and sold in a store, and of a new era, one in which
the games only on the Internet. hätte vertrieben werden sollen.
First steps in this direction had already Valve with the
publication of Halflife2 undertaken, the ursprünlich only
through the online platform Steam would be distributed. It was
concluded, however, that so many potential buyers would lose,
and so the decision was taken to the game on disks for sale.


The problem with the digital distribution is, however, more
complex than you think. Valve noticed the fairly soon, as the
Steam-server whether the demand for Halflife2 for weeks and
were unlikely to reach it took months before the operation
could be stabilized. Furthermore, the Druchdringung of
households with high-speed Internet connections worldwide still
to be desired. But all to be able to download games, we need
more than just an analog modem and a phone, if you are not
months for such a download will invest, ultimately, it is not
necessarily so that the Games are less and less space would be
needed. A third aspect is the inhibition of many people,
shopping on the Internet, especially if they have no credit
cards. All these hurdles are logically gradually fall, but it
is certainly still a few decades, until the good old data
carriers have outlived.