Smartphones, Tablets Are ‘Future’ of Game Industry –- Gameloft Exec
LOS ANGELES -- The soaring popularity of gaming on smartphones and tablets, as well as the rapidly increasing processing power of those devices, were cited by game company executives attending the L.A. Games Conference on Tuesday as the current key industry trends. Smartphones and tablets are “really the future” of the industry, said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft.
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High-end mobile devices will reach the same level of processing power as the Xbox 360 next year, Corman said. Tablets, in particular, are helping to “broaden … the base of users” of games and making this an “exciting time to be a developer,” said Mark Spenner, executive vice president of games at new online game company Rumble.
It’s hard to deny the growing dominance of mobile devices in the game arena, said Matt Hulett, president of the RealNetworks casual game division GameHouse. There are many more smartphones and tablets being sold than dedicated videogame systems, he said. “Wake up,” he told those who still see game consoles as the most significant part of the game business. Agreeing with Corman, he predicted that there will be tablets as powerful as any console next year.
The sole representative of one of the console makers at the conference stressed that his company is supporting multiple game platforms. Sony’s PlayStation Suite development program is in open beta testing now and will be available later this year, said Jack Buser, senior director of PlayStation Digital Platforms at Sony Computer Entertainment America. The program enables developers to make games that can run on any PlayStation-certified device, including the PS3, PS Vita and Sony’s Android-based mobile devices, he said. Android-based mobile devices made by companies other than Sony will be added in the future, he said. There’s an “expansion” being seen in the entire game industry, not just mobile gaming, he said.
PlayStation Suite “means a lot for us,” said Corman, who called the program “huge” because it will bring “real games” -- namely the sort of complex ones players are used to seeing on consoles -- onto mobile devices. Corman also stressed the importance of emerging markets, including China, to the growth of mobile gaming.
There’s also a growing opportunity being presented by in-game ads, said Buser. The challenge facing the TV industry is that there’s no way to be certain that a viewer is truly focused on what is on the TV screen and not on the Twitter feed that is on the tablet in that person’s lap while watching TV, he said. Gaming provides a “more immersive experience” and is, therefore, a “powerful offering for advertisers,” he said. Hulett said there’s lots of metrics at a game company’s disposal to figure out what players are doing. There’s typically just one set of metrics from TV viewing, said Jesse Redniss, senior vice president of digital at NBCUniversal’s USA Network.
Rumble’s Spenner pointed to “the notion of ‘play anywhere'” as being an over-hyped feature of games. That’s because different “devices are used differently by people,” he said. Developers need to be “player-focused” when making games and keep that fact in mind, not just merely port games from one platform to another without taking into account the unique aspects of each platform and device, he said. There’s a “higher bar for what players deserve,” he said. On the same subject of possibly over-hyped trends, Corman said it was still “early” for HTML5 games. There’s “a lot of noise” now for a technology that he said may only be significant “later.”