In this week’s episode of FBS, we invite Aggregame.com’s Josh (aka JD_2020) back onto the cast.
First order of business is to find out how he ended up being in the center of one of the hottest Internet memes going: The Ocean Marketing story.
After we deal with that tidbit, we go on to talk about the Spike TV VGA’s. Are they really all that important to gaming? The technological superior and critically acclaimed shooter Battlefield was shutout this year…so what is the true criteria for winning?
We then move on to discuss the PC platform, how will it do in 2012? After all, BF3’s loss at the VGA’s is not a good thing for PC gaming, at least on the AAA level. Does the MW3 win change the momentum PC platform gaming has had lately? Do you agree that the PC platform even had “momentum”? Some folks apparently think that PC gaming is doing really well. According to nVidia, for example (see reference) by 2014 PC sales will supplant console sales. PC games have been doing really well. League of Legends is one good example. With a reported 15 million gamers worldwide, there are more people playing it than World of Warcraft!
What are the major threats to the PC gaming platform going forward? We know that console games take a front seat now, will mobile gaming platforms leapfrog everyone? Ben Cousins, who left EA’s Easy Studio and now GM at ngmoco Sweden recently tweeted this graph showing what he thinks the trend forward for performance (with performance should come popularity): http://yfrog.com/oc4itp
Social gaming is definitely one threat. Mobile platform games in Japan are taking off. Publishers like GREE and DeNA (they own ngmoco) are multi-billion dollar companies with 40%+ profit margins. In the states, start ups are trying to realize that success… e.g. U4ia games, headed by Dusty Welch and Chris Archer in Bellevue Wash.
And finally, we talk about F2P. Wasn’t it only yesterday we were talking subscription models? Now it’s F2P. Is this a short or long term industry trend?
Again, we’d like to thank JD_2020 for taking the time to talk gaming with us! Remember to check out Aggregame.com and add JD_2020 on your Twitter.
On a personal note, if you like what we are doing here please help us spread the word about this cast to your friends/colleagues. We’re now on iTunes (link), so you can load the cast up on your iPod and listen whenever you want. If you’d like to write a review on FBS in iTunes, please do so, we’d appreciate it. The more people listen to the cast, the more influential our community can be in getting the PC platform point across to developers and publishers. Again, thank you so much for listening.
The comments about PC gaming “flat-lining”, well it is not but maybe in FPS, for instance SC2 has been massive and you require a mouse and keyboard, it really could not be played on a console with current technologies.
I agree with Josh about piracy, well I stopped many many years back when it boring but it was easy, so platforms like Steam & Origin making it easier to purchase a game is the way to go, it is sad as my local independent game store had to close due to it.
Good cast
I also would love for COD4/UO/WAW/2/1 to go F2P and have updates like battlefield P4F, or TF2. It would give the games so much more life, they would be played by alot of people again. Look at TF2 it was dying out and now its at the top of the Steam most played games every day.
I’am one of the people who is sick of COD copy and paste every year and would love them to just expand COD4 or any other COD. But i don’t think COD will ever do a F2P of a previous COD, because it would lose them alot of PC sales because people would just stick with what they like, they would still be getting lots of patches and new content so why move? Activision would have to change its whole business strategy (for the PC at least) and i don’t see them doing that.