I got an email from an associate the other day about a mini video documentary called “Digital Trends Presents Players Only with Scott Steinberg: Video Games are Dead.” The headline irked me because to say that ‘video games are dead” is a shock-jock journalistic trick to get attention, and instead of watching, I ignored it.
The story is better than its gimmicky headline.
A half dozen months back when Wired wrote that blogs are dead, I felt the same way (ugh, more gimmicky headlines), but I work in the video game industry and from all accounts, the industry is far from dead. So I went back to playing Resident Evil 5 with my son.
But while reading VentureBeat.com over coffee this morning I watched the whole piece, and the content of the story has real meat to it. Its author asks good questions and gets a surprising wealth of responses from industry designers, businessmen, and presidents, and analysts including Chris Taylor, Michael Pachter, the good doctors from Bioware, David Perry (yes, he’s my long-lost Irish brother), and more.
What’s it all about? The video game market isn’t dying, it’s changing. From the popularization of online casual games to the iPhone to the immense cost of production, the video game industry is still in its teenager years and still sprouting. How exactly is the gangly, pimpled kid turning out? I recommend watching the video; it might surprise you.
2 Comments
August 18, 2009 at 12:57 am
Didn’t Madden sell a million copies for XBOX 360 alone last year?
August 19, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I don’t know off the top of my head, but Madden usually sells in the millions, across multiple systems, so that sounds about right. There is only one official NFL football game to play, so I would hope they’re selling a lot!