The New York Times online is just packed with good articles today! As I was flipping around I noticed this one about the video game industry. I try to stay abreast of what’s going on in the video game industry since I really believe that their cutting edge technology will change the future. The devices and mechanisms used in the United States military were developed by video games and I’m confident that this industry will continue to bring new and innovative technologies to the mass market into the future. Did you know that some doctors are studying actual online role-playing games to watch public reactions to new diseases? I read an article about that somewhere – try Googling it if you’re interested.
I should also say that I’m very interested in investing in some of these companies, hence one of the reasons why I keep an eye on them.
The Times posted an article talking about the merger between Activision and Vivendi Universal’s game unit last Sunday. I found the following bit of text very poignant:
Until recently, it seemed that the only way the game industry knew how to grow was to keep drilling deeper into its core demographic of tech-savvy young men who had few interests beyond cleavage, explosions and touchdowns. And that vein was just about tapped out: over the last few years, the growth of industry bellwethers like Electronic Arts has slowed to a crawl.
But then, over three successive autumns, true visionaries demonstrated a new way to conceive of video games — not merely as a niche pastime for geeks but as the next mainstream entertainment medium, one that could appeal to women, families, older people and all the other demographic groups the industry had forgotten about.
In terms of profits, Nintendo has dominated the competition. Microsoft is dead-set on creating a quasi-computer that runs video games and calling it an XBox and Sony is very concerned about being the center of your home entertainment world. Nintendo focuses on video games and fun; this is why they are so successful.
Anyway, interesting article that I thought some of you may enjoy.
Leave a Reply