Mobile developers are more “nimble,” says Rovio’s business development head.
Rovio Mobile’s Peter Vesterbacka, thinks that the days of console gaming are numbered. Speaking at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, he said that mobile gaming would eventually eclipse its static counterpart, and that consoles would become obsolete.
Vesterbacka was critical of the triple A model: where games cost upwards of $40 and are difficult to upgrade. He felt that the only innovation that was going on in gaming was happening with mobile and social games, largely because the smaller teams behind such games were more “nimble.” Vesterbacka railed against the term “casual games” however, saying that a person could throw him or herself into Angry Birds just as much as he or she might with Call of Duty, Gears of War, or any other “hardcore” title.
He didn’t think that any developer or publisher had quite cracked the mobile gaming model yet. He said that Rovio continually tried new things, and didn’t let itself become attached to any one particular way of working. Rovio would seem to be doing something right, as Angry Birds has recently crossed the 100 million downloads threshold.
It’s hard to agree with Vestabacka’s vision of the future. No one would deny that the mobile gaming market is experiencing significant growth at present, and this growth is thanks in no small part to companies like Rovio. But to look at that growth and think that it’s going to kill everything else around it is a strange assumption to make. There’s obviously some crossover in the mobile and console gaming markets, and the success of developers like Rovio will obviously affect the console market, but it’s not as simple as, “one shall stand, one shall fall.”
Source: Venture Beat
