| t3mporary_126 said: We already know third party publishers practices to get money. Are you saying, in this hypothetical future, third parties will become satisfied with their current offerings for smart devices and completely ignore the chance to make games core gamers will want to play. Yes there are the desperate ones will settle for the subpar Dead Space app on iOS, but they're not coming back for Dead Space 2 on iOS and Android. Especially if another company makes a better game that requires an add-on to your smart device or a home dock with a controller. There will be a company who will take the opportunity to release a subscription service like Netflix but with games for core gamers. If EA and others don't want to support it, other gaming publishers will and earn the core gamers' money. You may think these profits are small because of the shrinking console game sales compared to mobile gaming is and that's correct. However, if smart devices become the dominant multimedia device in every market (PC, laptop, MP3s and more) more electronics will be produced to support it. Just like how the TV replaced the radio and we got video players and video game consoles! We're already seeing how popular smart device covers, chromecast, and bluetooth magnetic keyboards are. Why can't video game controller add-ons and a home dock to stream content from your smart device to the TV be popular? A home dock and a tiny magnetic keyboard/game controller for your smart phone can provide a physical controller or buttons to your smart device for core gaming again. And I bet the audience will even grow when games like Angry Birds and Call of Duty are on the same platform, making adoption to bigger games more seamless. |
I'm saying that "core gamers" will be playing games on smart devices because all hardware will be smart devices, and that from the perspective of major publishers, there will be no distinction between the mobile market and the core gamer audience because of this. On a case-by-case basis, publishers may integrate their mobile design choices into their "core" series iterations -- for example, instead of there being separate console and mobile versions of Madden, there will be only one Madden release, and it will more closely resemble the current mobile version than the current console version, because it will be made for mobile devices.
Imagine Assassin's Creed: Rogue watered down for mobile devices. Now imagine that the Assassin's Creed: Rogue you play on your TV is the same as the version you would play on an iPhone, because TVs and iPhones use the same OS. Just because you're playing it with a controller doesn't mean it's not watered down to be one consistent experience.
Streaming services and features like cross-buy, cross-platform play, and cross-saves are actually guiding the industry in this direction: unified, homogenized experiences across all platforms. This is not inherently a bad thing. But if the template for that unified experience is the worst iteration of it (watered-down mobile ports), we've got trouble.
