Former Xbox Live Arcade man David Edery has come out against digital content hyping, saying it’s ”neither as big nor as significant” as the game consoles themselves.
During a Develop keynote he also commented there were ”too many” multiplayer games with ”too few players populating them.” Digital distro doesn’t have such a ”long tail” as claimed.
While some studios will likely profit from digital download titles, ”there’s no question that digital distribution is neither as big nor as significant” to game consoles ”as it’s been cracked up to be,” said Edery, reports Gamasutra.
‘Long tail’ refers to content enhancements and other upgrades designed to extend the life of a game. It’s believed the notion of ‘long tail’ will continue to influence developers, publishers and platform holders - but not as most think it will says Edery.
However PC and other web-based digital distribution has flourished, ”eclipsing anything that the digital console services will be able to achieve anytime soon,” he concedes.
”When GameStop says there us is no addressable market for digital distribution ‘til 2014, that is in fact wishful thinking.” The digital model does in fact have benefits to it.
”By far the best way to make successful and profitable games today is by releasing early and releasing iterations often, something that the downloadable game model explicitly encourages,” noted Edery. The consoles need an ‘Amazon-like’ recommendation system he argues, with user feedback and better searching and bundling - or long tail will keep struggling.
Most multiplayer games don’t seem to get on well with ‘long tail’. ”The number of players in an ecosystem is crucial to a real-time multiplayer game’s success,” he said. ”There are too many multiplayer games and too few players populating them. Why would a user buy a real-time multiplayer game from the long tail if they won’t have anyone else to play it with?”
Would an Amazon-like environment on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network better convince you to splurge on some digital downloading, videogamer?
Long tail; at least music tracks seem to do okay…
