Gaming Industry Opportunities in 2009

As you might know, Vancouver is a hotspot of the game industry: The HQs of EA, Relic and others are here and it's a pretty big industry. On Thursday, we attended a panel discussion on the opportunities of the gaming industry in the face of that so-called recession and as many of you are somehow gamers, I wanted to share the key outcome with you:

- Not all the companies are actually going down:
Up: Activision (owner of Blizzard and their cash cow World of Warcraft), Nintendo (Wii), lots of small companies producing casual games
Down: EA, Disney (some big high-end games and sequels)

It seems that you can now become successful by aiming at the casual players as well, not only through hardcore gamers. On the other hand, hardcore gamers still provide the best margins as they are willing to pay high prices for high-end games.

Other trends:
- The AppStore has become a great success story and every day, Apple approves about 200 new games for the iPhone
- The success of the AppStore might be a first step towards Digital Distribution, which is going to change the distribution chain a lot
- The other big trend is to link social network pieces and their stickyness to games to create a community etc.

So, if you are in one of these fields, digital distribution or social networks, you're pretty well off. On the other hand, competition in these markets is increasing and the gain from advertising decreases, which is problematic for many free2play games.