Dead Island.

[LargoWinch]

Happy vacation all...

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Dead Island.

Fantastic cinematic trailer.....

I'm not much of a gamer.....but I understand that the latest Call of Duty game generated almost $500 million in just the 1st 72 hours of release.

BIG industry....and big budget games.....I recall the original Atari console games having the photo of THE guy who programmed it...now it's a cast of hundreds to thousands.

I wonder how Gaming will fair during the coming period in comparison to say Hollywood in the 30's?

Hollywood didn't fair too badly.....

Maybe radio sales might be a better analogy?

As I understand it average price of radios crashed by about 2/3rds after the Depression kicked in, but household ownership of radios roughly doubled.

[don]

Re: Dead Island.

Zombies appear to be giving vampires a run for their bonars.

[davidstvz]

Re: Dead Island.

The game industry is huge and multifaceted, especially if you include smartphone gamers, Zynga and casual PC games like Minecraft. The pool of "casual consumers" is broad and shallow and seems to grow in spurts as consumer electronics become more ubiquitous and one company or another figures out how to tap into a larger portion of it. That demographic overlaps more with casual movie goers I'm sure. As the original gaming demographic ages, the "hardcore" gamer is splitting into a variety of sub-groups but still tends to spend a lot more time and money per person and a lot more money in total. $500 million worth of Call of Duty represents only 8 million copies at $60 each (in one weekend). However, development costs are surely higher for hardcore games. I'm not sure how profits compare.

Nintendo broke away from the pure hardcore market in 2005 for inability to compete with the deep pockets of Sony and Microsoft and they made some pretty jarring changes to their strategy that paid off in a big way. They banked on their hardcore fans continuing to support them (we did) while they created a new console that was barely any more powerful than the one fans already owned (albeit with the addition of a new motion controller). The world wide adoption rate of the Wii was as much as the 360 and PS3 combined. They were so successful in appealing to the untapped casual market with the motion controller that they practically gave up on their hardcore fan base (you can tell by the kinds of games they stopped making; lack of HD support hurt big).

Unfortunately, the casual market is fickle and now Nintendo is in the position of having to win consumers from scratch (as are Microsoft and Sony). So they are trying to develop the more reliable casual consumers into more dedicated gamers, retain some of the casual market and win back some of the departed hardcore gamers. They'll do alright with regaining fans since gamer dads will pick up the Wii U as a secondary console for the wife and/or kids, and to play those classic franchises exclusive to Nintendo. However, Nintendo has no chance of seriously competing for Call of Duty gamers because their hardware is not on a 5 year lag. The Wii U will be about as powerful as the XBox 360 we've all owned for the last 6 years. Extra broke gamers will appreciate the Wii U's lower cost (of games and hardware) and there will be plenty of games to play if you count ports from the 360 and PS3. Overall, I think their success in the next cycle will be much more modest than the last cycle because the casual market won't respond like it did in 2006. They can still easily lead the pack in total units sold and especially in profits, however. Nintendo has always paid careful attention to profitability because they only sell games.

Microsoft and Sony are going to package their new machines in different bundles ranging from $300 to $500. The hardware will be 20x as powerful as the ones we are replacing. They may take a loss on the first several production runs, but not as much as they have in the past. Since the first run is always limited (full production capacity isn't online yet), it's likely that every single new console will sell out if they make a Holiday 2012 release. However, they might try a Spring 2013 release so they can have an excuse in case of poor sales and point to holiday 2013 as the point at which sales will really ramp up. So to see how the new batch of consoles is really doing, you'll have to check back some time in 2013 or 2014 when the new consoles are in full swing. Leading up to that point, you can expect sales of the current console games to slow a little as fewer games are released and gamers start saving for an expensive new console purchase (or two). Fun times ahead

[flintlock]

Re: Dead Island.

As a one time gamer in my youth, I must say while today's game have more sizzle, they don't always end up being that fun to play. Technically awesome, but the few I've played are lacking something. Tried one of the Call of Duty series on the Playstation3 once. How the heck do you aim using that stupid controller with 50 buttons on it!? Like shooting drunk.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Dead Island.

As a one time gamer in my youth, I must say while today's game have more sizzle, they don't always end up being that fun to play. Technically awesome, but the few I've played are lacking something. Tried one of the Call of Duty series on the Playstation3 once. How the heck do you aim using that stupid controller with 50 buttons on it!? Like shooting drunk.

Same Same......

I recall how much in AWE we were with Atari 2600 games as a kid.....back when the game packaging listed THE game developer/writer(or at least the main guy)...now a premier game title is a cast of possibly thousands.

We have a Wii where we play the odd game as a family on occasion when there's not better things to be done outside.

We also have a PS3 I was given as a gift...and my wife bought me a couple shoot em up games I've tried a few times......fun....but pales in comparison to the real thing

And the complexity of some of the games is quite high....requiring a high level of proficiency and the ability to multitask well....it will be interesting to see if it's possible to map brain activity with video gaming compared to other activities to see if there are any differences.

I find REAL activities such as scuba diving and sky diving a lot of fun....and they demand considerable focus and concentration to ensure they are done safely....and I can say I'm typically more physically and mentally tired at the end of the day after doing such activities(as you'd expect), but content......but after playing a bit of video games.....I compare it to a feeling of nausea....like eating a lot of junk food and left with an uncomfortable feeling.

I think I'd have great difficulty sitting in front of a large screen TV playing video games all day.....

It's still a very interesting space to be in.......I'm guessing Microsoft and to possibly a much greater extent Sony will be relying more heavily on their current and next generation game platforms to drive profits.

Games seem to be the new movies.......back when movies produced enormous Easy Rider, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and JAWS like profits.

The movie industry, outside of the rare guaranteed blockbuster(like Hunger Games), feels like it's paralleling the higher education industry.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Dead Island.

Games seem to be the new movies.......back when movies produced enormous Easy Rider, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and JAWS like profits.

I agree and case in point: CoD 3 earned $400 million in one day:




The upcoming trend for the industry appears to be the desire to prevent a second-hand market for games (resale/used game market) as these consoles will have to be connected to the internet at all times:

Next Gen Xbox May Not Run Used Games