Sunday, May 07, 2006

Electronic Arts’ Jamdat purchase

Even Electronic Arts paid a big money to get Jamdat, they seem to have made a good deal. We all remember Jamdat from long and winding shopping spree, in which it kept acquiring smaller mobile game companies to gain that critical mass. That mass wasn’t enough to ward off from Electronic Arts, or could it be that this was exactly Jamdat’s planned exit strategy? Anyway, now Electronic Arts seems to have finished the primary fusing operations and it should be just continuous flow of published mobile games ala Electronic Arts.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Small can still beat big

Under is my post from my mobile phone games blog.

Many have been asking why a relatively small publisher and distributor, PlayerX, got Miami Vice into their stables. Because they care their partners, that’s why. They offer excellent service that can overtake bigger competitors who have degenerated back to corporatism. Now all they need to do is to produce a great game, easier said than done... Original news source The Inquirer has a picture of Miami Vice detectives. Do they look like Sonny and partners, what do you think?
Anyway that got me thinking. Will it always stay the same? Small and hungry players come to the market. These can be found in some industrial complexes running away from high rents. They do everything to strech that last mile and they create something wonderful, therefore they manage to beat the big girls and boys.

After the success slow decay starts. More people join the company and they are more interested the benefit package than working somewhere at skid... Company grows and leans towards management and total shift from innovation to evolution happens. It is time for some small player to come along and challenge the biggies.

Activision hit by employee lawsuit

Does this mean that workers in every single U.S. game company will raise hell? How this will affect to game development investments? Asia is already strong contender in game development, and this sort of lawsuitism that is getting more common will trash the economics of U.S. game development.

Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony’s division is also in trouble as similar class action lawsuit is sneaking on its doorsteps. Really troubling, I wonder how rigid this will turn game industry in general?

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Game industry shakedown

Interesting news from Gameindustry.com they ran an article that among other things writes:

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities, who has pinpointed the struggle between Toshiba and Sony in the high definition movie space as crucial to how the games market will move in the coming years.


It all comes down to different DVD standards that the game consoles support. Far bigger customer to decide the future development of storage standards is the movie industry. This industry’s choice will thrust the market to either direction and that promises difficulties on other game console block. Fascinating.