The App Store is an accident of history. (But one that was predicted on here). Apple had been making MP3 tracks available for a few years on the iStore. When they added a bit more memory and processing power to the iPod they realised that it could run third party applications, so they made an iStore for applications. And amazingly they were only doing it as a service to users, they didn’t see the business potential.
Now after a little over a year there are over 100,000 Apps and there have been over 2 billion downloads. 125,000 developers have signed up with Apple and 19.6% of Apps are games. All this has brought up some very pertinent points.
This is the biggest success and the fastest growth, by a huge margin, of any new gaming platform in history. It has changed everything.
Apple put up very little in the way of barriers of entry to publishing on App Store. This means that there are vast quantities of total rubbish on there.
The other side of Apple’s policy is that there has been a vast flowering of creativity on App Store. The biggest ever in the history of the video game industry.
The App Store gives you instant global distribution. 77 countries can download your app the instant it is available. This has shocked the whole digital IP distribution industry. There are now lots of App Store clones for other platforms.
Apple realise that they have a business model that is a license to print money. So it is pretty obvious that they will use it as a template. Firstly for their imminent tablet device which will be like a cross between a netbook and an iPhone. Then with their home console which will evolve from Apple TV just as the iPhone evolved from the iPod.
I opened one of the first computer stores, Microdigital in Liverpool, in 1978. So I was in a good position to see the rise of Apple to dominate the personal computer (PC) market. I even visited Apple in Cupertino in California and was offered the UK distributorship. So this put me in the front row as they built up to own the market, then threw it all away.
Apple computers were well made, came with excellent documentation and were easy to use. All of which was not necessarily true of the competition. Apples were also expensive but were worth the extra. They became a bit of a cult, a fashion item, as well.
The big strength of Apple computers was that the software and the hardware came from the same company, so they worked. The resultant dominance in the early 80s was such that other PCs might as well not have existed. Apple had a virtual monopoly. Then along came Microsoft’s MSDOS and changed the rules. Here was a standardised operating system (and consequential applications) that would run on machines from many hardware manufacturers. So the hardware manufacturers had to compete against each other on price and features. And it was war.
The result of this war was the survival of the fittest, rapid evolution that improved the breed. And Apple was left well behind looking underpowered and overpriced, they could not even vaguely get near competing with the MSDOS machines. So Apple’s market share collapsed and they fell back to serving niche markets such as pre publishing. In just a couple of years they went from near monopoly to sideshow.
And history could very well be repeating itself. Substitute Personal Computer with Smartphone. And substitute MSDOS with Android. Otherwise it is the same. Apple dominate the consumer smartphone market with the iPhone. The hardware and the software come from the same company and it works. It is a fashion item, a bit of a cult. Android, however, is available to all hardware manufacturers. Most of them are developing models that use it. So they will have to compete against each other on price and features. It will be war with rapid evolution improving the breed. Already the Samsung i7500 looks better featured than an iPhone.
Some may think that the tens of thousands of applications on the App Store make the iPhone entrenched. But remember that these were put together in a little over a year, so Android can do the same in a year. Just as Apple’s dominance of PC application software was quickly overcome when the MSDOS computers arrived on the scene in big numbers.
Of course Steve Jobs and Apple, having been there before, may have the answer this time. They need to entrench their position, which they are doing by going to multiple air time providers in each territory and by going to new territories. But Android will be doing all this too. They need to very rapidly advance their hardware technology. There is plenty of room to do this, the iPhone has a rubbish camera and no OLED screen, for instance. And the iPhone operating system has lots of room for improvement. But Android will be doing all this too.
Apple are moving on from the iPhone with a tablet device and probably a home console. Maybe this is their strategy. Don’t compete, move on.
The one saving grace that Apple have here is their brilliant marketing. In fact, to me, Apple are a marketing company first and a technology company second. Compare and contrast that with Google who have a trail of great products that have failed due to poor, almost non existent, marketing. But Android is different because it doesn’t need Google marketing, it will be marketed by all the handset manufacturers and air time providers. Companies like Vodafone, Sony Ericsson, Sprint Nextel, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Toshiba and Garmin. Formidable, isn’t it?
Now for the gaming perspective. The iPhone and App Store have produced the biggest flowering of gaming creativity in history. In terms of range of products they have left every other platform behind. However the business model employed here is easily copied. So we are moving into a new age where the iPhone game publishers will maximise their profitability by going multi format. Develop for Android, iPhone, PSP, DS and possibly PC simultaneously and reap the marketing benefits. It makes sense.
I am very, very glad that I am not in competition with Microsoft’s Xbox division. They really are grinding the opposition down. And it is not as if they are attacking on one front. No, Microsoft believe in being better in every single possible way. The Xbox 360 is now, by a huge margin, the gamer’s choice of consoles from this generation. It is cheaper to buy, has far more games available and has the best online gaming service on earth, Xbox Live. Little wonder that in September Microsoft sold $404 million of Xbox 360 hardware, software and peripherals in North America alone. A phenomenal result.
Part of the success is down to platform exclusives. Halo is massive and Halo 3: ODST has done the business again through this summer. But there is also Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, Forza Motorsport 3 and Left 4 Dead 2 with Mass Effect 2, Gears of War 3, Crackdown 2, Halo Reach and Alan Wake to come. Relentless and formidable.
There is the constant upgrading of Live to become a media hub, with HD movie rental, Facebook, Twitter, Zune and Sky Player on the way. This makes the 360 by far the most powerful entertainment hub that you can connect to your television. And it is a lesson to everyone that Microsoft are a software company, they see the Live service as being infinitely more important than the 360. The 360 is just the current box of choice, there will ultimately be far more that can use the service.
Also, quietly but persistently, Microsoft are moving content distribution away from the physical plastic and cardboard sold at retail. Online is the future and Microsoft are already there. They keep adding to the number of game titles that can be directly downloaded with a new batch just released including Army of Two, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and Sonic Unleashed. Microsoft are making the transition gradually so as to wean both retail and consumers to the new reality. But the rumours are that the Xbox 3/ Xbox 720 / Project Phoenix will be a download only device.
As if the weren’t enough we have Project Natal on the way. An implementation of gesture interface technology that is a quantum leap beyond anything else. This will bring infinite new possibilities to how humans interact with video games and the whole online world. New levels on immersiveness will transform the potential of the medium. We are about to make a paradigm shift of epic proportions.
This is going to be absolutely fascinating. When it comes to absolute simulation of motor racing the best game in the world, by a huge margin, is rFactor on the PC. But add in a bit of arcade elements and the two daddies are Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. We have moved, in this generation, to a market where you tend to have one massive game in each genre with the “me too” games selling far less successfully than before. But these two games are different because they are platform exclusives, GT5 is only on the Sony Playstation PS3 and FM3 is only on the Microsoft Xbox 360. And they are both due out in Q4 ‘09. So we have war.
GT5 is the latest game in the biggest selling Playstation franchise of all time with over 50 million sold. It is famous for featuring a huge number of cars and for absolutely amazing graphics. This fifth edition is due for release on 1 October 2009 and has been under development for many years. For the first time (other than as a test) it features online play, with 16 cars. Also for the first time it will have vehicle damage, a weakness of previous versions.
The original Forza Motorsport was Microsoft’s answer to the GT series, had a Metacritic of 92% and a GameRanking of 93%. It is famous for it’s realistic physics engine and had vehicle damage right from this first version. FM2 introduced online play with 8 players and sold 5 million units. Forza 3 is due for release on October 27 2009 and has over 400 different cars and over 100 different circuits.
So we have a unique situation. Two of the biggest game brands there are going head to head on different platforms. The importance here is not the number of sales that each of these games gets. It is how many machines each of them sell, because these are two of the biggest system selling titles there are. Lots of people have been waiting for GT5, for instance, before buying their PS3. And lots of people who have one of these consoles will end up buying the other one as well, just to play one of these games. These two games will increase the installed bases of both consoles significantly.
So which will win? They both will of course because they are platform exclusives. But Gt5 should win on the sheer content of the game and the huge amount of polish it has received. FM3 will win online because the Xbox 360 is a far better online platform and because they have solid previous experience in this area.
And the biggest winner is gaming. This is what we want, massive global brands of the very highest quality. Brands that are comparable with the very best that the film and other media industries can produce.
All three current generation home consoles are about to or have had substantial price cuts. Sony have been forced into it by being ridiculously overpriced, Nintendo are doing it to counter a huge slump in Wii sales and Microsoft are doing it because they can and because they want more market share. So let’s look at the current state of the Xbox 360.
Firstly for every three Sony Playstation PS3s in the world there are four Microsoft Xbox 360s. A considerable success considering that this is only Microsoft’s second machine and that they entered a market dominated by Sony.
All this will change going into Q4, not only will the hardware price cuts be felt (for instance with PS2 owners upgrading) but there is a veritable glut of new AAA blockbuster titles on all three platforms, a glut that is continuing into Q1 ‘10. It will be very interesting to see what the state of the industry is like in March, after the dust settles.
In an extensive interview John Carmack, co-founder of id Software had a lot to say about the next generation home consoles.
Like this site he is a fan of using online instead of plastic and cardboard to ship inventory: “I think that Xbox Live… the advent of that and the App Store with the iPhone are wonderful signs of the future of digital distribution. I think there’s a decent chance that one of the next gen consoles will be without optical media… the uptake rates of people who have broadband connects surprised everyone this generation. It’s higher than what the core publishers and even the first party people expected.”
As the title of this article says, he thinks that Sony will launch first: “The whole jockeying for who’s going to release the first next gen console is very interesting and pretty divorced from the technical side of things. Whether Sony wants to jump the gun to prevent the same sort of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely. As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible. We’d like to see it be quite a few more years before the next gen console comes out, but I suspect one will end up shipping something earlier rather than later.”
And he knows what will be inside these machines: “We do have a very good sense of where the technology is going because we talk to NVIDIA, we talk to Intel, we talk to ATI/AMD and they’re all pursuing variations on massive multi-core processor integration. There’s lots of interesting things about that, about how we need to think about things on the game development side to take advantage of that.”
All good stuff, and there is loads more in the videos.
My thoughts are that the PS4 and Xbox 720 will just be the application of Moore’s Law to the current consoles. So they will be about 8 times more powerful and 100% backwards compatible. They will have 2 to 4 Gbytes of memory and terabyte class hard drives. Obviously they will all come with gesture interfaces and there is a very high likelihood that they will incorporate 3D technology.
This time it is called Wii Sports Resort, a collection of sports oriented mini games on the Wii. And it is selling something like a million units a week, in the dog days of summer. It will go on to become one of the best selling games of the year. How do they do this?
Universal appeal. I would not be ashamed to be seen playing this. But it would be a lot of fun for an 8 year old too.
Surprise and delight features. It takes imagination to come up with these, but they really add to the player experience. We need more of these in every game.
Polish, polish and polish. Why can’t other game developers and publishers do this? It doesn’t cost a lot of money, it just costs time. This really sets Nintendo first party apart.
Easy to get into. All great games are simple to start with. Chess, card games, scrabble and all the great classics do this. It is no good ramping the difficulty curve too steep too soon, you put off too many people. Think pick up and play accessibility, Nintendo do.
Difficult and rewarding in the higher levels. So it is worth putting time and effort into it. Just like chess etc etc.
Huge potential user base. There are about as many Wiis out there as there are Microsoft Xbox 360s and Sony Playstation PS3s put together. A lot of people who want good games to entertain them.
Build a brand, own your own IP. This is the obvious sequel to Wii Sports, itself a massive seller. Nintendo can milk this franchise forever. And they will.
Bundle with hardware that genuinely adds to the gaming experience. Wii MotionPlus takes Wii play to a higher level.
All the above is not rocket science, yet how come so many publishers still get it so wrong so often?
