WildTangent Chief Executive Alex St. John never fails to amuse, entertain and stir the pot. And that was certainly the case during his 45 minute talk at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle today.
St. John, who has built WildTangent into the one of the bigger online gaming networks over the past 10 years, made the bold prediction that video game consoles will be "extinct" by 2020.
He started his talk with an image of Moses on the screen and this rapid-fire comment:
I am going to make some outrageous claims today. And then I will attempt to substantiate them. Feel free to disagree with me. Just remember, that I am right.
St. John called the console business an "extremely fragile business" which has been subject to major collapses over the years:
We are looking at the last generation of consoles right now. I am going to predict to you that the PS3, the Wii and the X-box are the last generation of consoles that you either see or that anybody regards as successful in the market.
They will die out over time for several reasons. St. John argued that shareholders of Sony and Microsoft will no longer tolerate the massive, billion dollar investments that it takes to create proprietary video game consoles. Furthermore, he said consoles will no longer be needed to prevent privacy and that people will want to play games on different screens other than one entertainment center in the "living room." Also, kids will increasingly have laptops at school and they will want to use them for games.
St. John also noted that the big game console makers will face major challenges in making the transition to a market where people want to buy, develop and play games online. That also goes for the big publishers, with St. John saying they have a "negative advantage" when it comes to producing the new breed of community-based PC and online games:
Everything they know how to do is wrong. They start in a well. They think that brand matters. They think that their marketing expertise matters. They think that a pile of art work and a box matters. They have got a bunch of people paid huge salaries with years of expertise who would never dream of firing themselves because they have got the wrong domain expertise. And so Disney, for example, would never have funded the $200 million project to build Club Penguin, but boy they paid $700 million to buy it after it hit the market.
So the weird thing is that the expertise and the skill set to create these games - they are not really rocket science to make - it is just an entirely new mentality. The big budgets and the money and all the stuff these companies have that are entrenched are not an advantage, they are an encumbrance.
Even though Nintendo's Wii console has met with success in the market, St. John said the only thing that makes it different are the proprietary controllers. That's the same thing that happened to the arcade video game business years ago, which had to design new controllers and devices to try to compete with the home consoles that had equal or better graphics and game play.
Because of that trend, St. John says that the console business is "starting to behave like that dead arcade business."
In his view, the shift to PC games is already occurring. And there are many reasons for it - including the advertising-supported business models that allow game players to try out games for free before making a purchase decision. For developers, it makes more sense too since they can sell direct, no longer having to rely entirely on publishing partners or traditional retail channels.
St. John, who has built WildTangent into the one of the bigger online gaming networks over the past 10 years, made the bold prediction that video game consoles will be "extinct" by 2020.
He started his talk with an image of Moses on the screen and this rapid-fire comment:
I am going to make some outrageous claims today. And then I will attempt to substantiate them. Feel free to disagree with me. Just remember, that I am right.
St. John called the console business an "extremely fragile business" which has been subject to major collapses over the years:
We are looking at the last generation of consoles right now. I am going to predict to you that the PS3, the Wii and the X-box are the last generation of consoles that you either see or that anybody regards as successful in the market.
They will die out over time for several reasons. St. John argued that shareholders of Sony and Microsoft will no longer tolerate the massive, billion dollar investments that it takes to create proprietary video game consoles. Furthermore, he said consoles will no longer be needed to prevent privacy and that people will want to play games on different screens other than one entertainment center in the "living room." Also, kids will increasingly have laptops at school and they will want to use them for games.
St. John also noted that the big game console makers will face major challenges in making the transition to a market where people want to buy, develop and play games online. That also goes for the big publishers, with St. John saying they have a "negative advantage" when it comes to producing the new breed of community-based PC and online games:
Everything they know how to do is wrong. They start in a well. They think that brand matters. They think that their marketing expertise matters. They think that a pile of art work and a box matters. They have got a bunch of people paid huge salaries with years of expertise who would never dream of firing themselves because they have got the wrong domain expertise. And so Disney, for example, would never have funded the $200 million project to build Club Penguin, but boy they paid $700 million to buy it after it hit the market.
So the weird thing is that the expertise and the skill set to create these games - they are not really rocket science to make - it is just an entirely new mentality. The big budgets and the money and all the stuff these companies have that are entrenched are not an advantage, they are an encumbrance.
Even though Nintendo's Wii console has met with success in the market, St. John said the only thing that makes it different are the proprietary controllers. That's the same thing that happened to the arcade video game business years ago, which had to design new controllers and devices to try to compete with the home consoles that had equal or better graphics and game play.
Because of that trend, St. John says that the console business is "starting to behave like that dead arcade business."
In his view, the shift to PC games is already occurring. And there are many reasons for it - including the advertising-supported business models that allow game players to try out games for free before making a purchase decision. For developers, it makes more sense too since they can sell direct, no longer having to rely entirely on publishing partners or traditional retail channels.
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