Browsing a Fortune magazine, I found an interesting article titled: “Videogame geeks go to Hollywood” by Evelyn Nussenbaum. I transcribed some paragraphs below:
"The game developers’ conference is typically a low-key geek fest … The power structure used to be clear: Video gamers bowed before Hollywood grateful for any chance to make movie-based games.
But that’s all changing. With global reach of their own and a taste of the big time, the game makers are learning the movie game well enough to play it themselves. … It’s now common for videogame designers like Jordan Mechner, who created Prince of Persia , to have agents that scout out lucrative studio development deals."
What surprised me, was the comment about Microsoft (yeah … sometimes I am a little naïve)
"Microsoft’s Xbox division has made the most aggressive move into studio territory. It’s commissioned a screen player for its hit game Halo from novelist Alex Garland and tapped former Columbia Pictures president Peter Schlessel to try to ignite a bidding war for it."
In the article, even though the author doesn’t mention the source, she presents some figures about the income in different categories of entertainment. Among movies, DVD/videos and online games, the games still do not have enough market share compared with the other categories:
"…. While consumers in the US spent $7.3 billion on gaming software last year [2004], they brought $9.5 billion of movie tickets and spent $15.7 billion renting and buying DVDs and videos". How close the figures of video and movies are, captured my attention.
The last part of the article … “Will Hollywood makes room at the table? Facing the triple threats of slowing growth, piracy, and the mounting influence of DVD retailers, they certainly should.” Make me thing that the synergy between Hollywood and the games industry definitely will raise the bar for the type of sophistication that the educational e-games will have to have.
Source: Fortune Magazine – April 18, 2005. Vol 151- No. 8. Page 40
No comments:
Post a Comment