Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
you guys are not gamers, that's for sure. smartphone/tablet games are even more laughably entry-level and simplistic than nintendo games... no gaming blockbusters to be expected...
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Well, now...
Granting that the current meme is that *real* gamers use $2000 PC rigs, some of us do "dabble" in console gaming when not reading ebooks.
But the laughably entry-level and simplistic smartphone and tablet games are generating lots of sales and revenue; $5B in 2011, projected to go to $12B by 2014. "There's gold in them that hills." Penty of reason for Amazon (and Apple and Google and Ouya and everybody and their uncle) to look into getting a piece of that growing pie instead of letting the living room portion go to Microsoft.
The appeal of these games may seem a bit odd to folks weaned on Metal Gear, Witcher, and Call of Duty, but it may help if you think of them as "digital passtimes" closer kin to crossword and word search puzzles than the immersive narrative experiences of modern gaming. (Or the "pale imitation" on consoles.)
The goal is mostly to allow people to relax, de-stress, focus on something simple but challenging and, for a while, forget for a few minutes about the all-too-real challenges of the real world. Because, frankly, to a lot of people, a few minutes at a time is all they can spare from their hectic schedule. And those folks, they are *legion*.
This doesn't mean the end of either console gaming or classic, hard core PC gaming but rather the spread of digital gaming into new domains and new businesses. Most of the people indulging in the odd round of Bejeweled or Fruit Ninja would never venture into the likes of BORDERLANDS or DISHONORED, much less the ELDER SCROLLS or the shooter realms. (At lleast, not yet. Give them time.)
It is a new and separate business very well suited for the already-amortised, still fully functional, current gen console designs. (Or for top of the line dirt-cheap android boxes.) Instead of slowly fading like the PS1, PS2, and Original Xbox, the 360 and (maybe) PS3 will find a second life as entry-level gamer/streamer boxes, bridging both worlds and leading some of thee casual gamers into the world of the modern narrative "core" gaming.
There's room for both in the overall market and even on (some of) the same hardware. It's a good thing for the gaming community, really; a fair amount of fruit slicers will eventually move on to the higherend games, maybe even Fallout 4.
Now me, I'm going to dabble a bit more on Pandora, whacking loaders before getting on with the rest of my dreary day.
