Is the App Store the new Arcade? Blackley reckons so.
There's nothing better than a stir of the pot. Seamus Blackley, one of the original team behind the concept of Xbox, has spoken to Edge Magazine about Apple and its policy on games. He claims that it expressed little interest in gaming until the lure of money got too strong and it had to give in. Until that point, Apple just plain "hated videogames".
Macs have historically lagged behind PCs when it comes to games being released. This may well be down to Apple executives' belief that games on their systems would tarnish the brand. "The victory of games is utterly complete with Apple," says Blackley, "They resisted it as hard as they could, and they couldn't resist it."
He thinks that despite wanting to keep the iOS platform within strict parameters, there was nothing Apple could do; the demands of the audience led them. "They tried real hard to make the iPad about word processing and music, and the audience just doesn't want it. You don't need to have a games strategy anymore. You need to have a strategy so that your platform isn't disadvantaged in playing games, because gaming is going to be the number one activity on any platform."
He also likens the App Store to the good old days of the arcade boom in the seventies, where games have mere seconds to capture a player's attention. "A game had to succeed or fail for a completely casual audience, with no marketing, based on its attract mode or the first 30 seconds of play," says Blackley. "Those arcade guys understand exactly what's going on now: we're in the era of the new arcade. It's something I'm betting heavily on."
As a representative of developers through the Creative Artists Agency, he certainly knows how the industry works. But what are these comments all about? Is Blackley just mixing things up for fun? We'll have to wait for the new issue of Edge.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Macs have historically lagged behind PCs when it comes to games being released. This may well be down to Apple executives' belief that games on their systems would tarnish the brand. "The victory of games is utterly complete with Apple," says Blackley, "They resisted it as hard as they could, and they couldn't resist it."
He thinks that despite wanting to keep the iOS platform within strict parameters, there was nothing Apple could do; the demands of the audience led them. "They tried real hard to make the iPad about word processing and music, and the audience just doesn't want it. You don't need to have a games strategy anymore. You need to have a strategy so that your platform isn't disadvantaged in playing games, because gaming is going to be the number one activity on any platform."
He also likens the App Store to the good old days of the arcade boom in the seventies, where games have mere seconds to capture a player's attention. "A game had to succeed or fail for a completely casual audience, with no marketing, based on its attract mode or the first 30 seconds of play," says Blackley. "Those arcade guys understand exactly what's going on now: we're in the era of the new arcade. It's something I'm betting heavily on."
As a representative of developers through the Creative Artists Agency, he certainly knows how the industry works. But what are these comments all about? Is Blackley just mixing things up for fun? We'll have to wait for the new issue of Edge.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
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