It's all that cheap and widely available media entertainment that's accessible anytime you want it. Epic still champion quality to make console titles stand apart.
"We're seeing downward pricing pressure from free content on the internet, and subscription-based video content like Netflix," said Epic Games boss Mike Capps.
"You have a huge amount of entertainment sitting there anytime you want it, and then there are really fun 99 cent apps or even $6.99 apps like Infinity Blade." That $6.99 app he just mentioned its Epic Games own creation.
Quality should be the utmost focus for big budget titles to compete with free-to-play, streaming media and all those cheap tablet apps. "We're still betting on quality," he said.
"We'd rather make one giant Gears of War 3 with more content than we've ever made, hoping that will attract people, as opposed to having made Gears of War 3 alongside another game at the same time… and I'm hoping people respond to that."
Their Raleigh, North Carolina-based studio has focused on Gears of Wars 3 to the exclusion of anything else. Console is their primary business still but Infinity Blade was their "first step in the direction of microtransactions," discounting map packs of course.
"What gamers are interested in consuming and the ways that they are willing to pay are changing really quickly right now. It's hard to predict how they're going to want content and in what way," continued Capps.
"We can look at what's going on in Asia over the past few years and how that's quickly moving to the U.S., you can look at what's going on the console space, but predicting what's going to happen correctly is going to be key."
Gears of War 3 releases exclusively on Xbox 360 September 20th.
