Interviews// Industry Insights: Dan Griliopoulos

Posted 20 Jun 2013 15:18 by Svend Joscelyne

As part of an ongoing series, SPOnG gets the unedited, open and highly informed opinions of developers, producers and more in the vast world of computer games.

Industry Figure: Dan Griliopoulos
Job Title: Games Journalist

For most editors in the games press world, Dan Griliopoulos doesn't need much of an introduction. A seasoned writing veteran, whose credits can be seen on Eurogamer, PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun to name but a few specialist sites, Griliopoulos has always been an advocate of interesting and thought-provoking journalism.

That can be seen in his side project, leading a panel of judges in the peer-selected Games Journalism Prize. The winner of this year's GJP was revealed this week - click here to see who it was and why. But now, here's Dan with his thoughts on console generations, Ouya and E3.

Do you feel that we are entering a new console generation too soon? Or can it not come soon enough? And why?

I don't think it matters, to me as a hardcore gamer anyway. Microsoft doesn't seem to be entering a new console generation as much as an alternate dimension populated entirely by jocks who are happy paying $400 plus monthly subs to watch the same TV (US-only), play moronic barely-changing sports games and use the same apps that they get for free elsewhere.

But then they'll probably have a Sky Sports subscription as well, paying through the nose to maintain their tribal affiliations, so there's no hope for them - Microsoft have crafted the perfect mechanism for draining their disposable income.

For my audience, Sony has a much better idea, replicating the PC market and mid-end hardware, but standardising it and transferring across their franchises. It's a pity for them they have so few franchises to exploit.

Ouya and Oculus Rift have generated a lot of positive buzz. How disruptive do you think these products will be when they are released to the public?

Ouya is dead in the water, as is Project Shield and probably GameStick. No reason to buy them, no buzz and paperweights are much cheaper. Thankfully, they've shown that people can make really top-end Android hardware super-cheap - there's just no reason that it should be anything other than a phone.

Rift is my PC killer app. When you try it you realise that it just works. They're going to have some killer announcements at E3 I'm told and, once people make a few games just for it, it'll make sense. They do, however, need some central discoverability space - hopefully Steam will support them in that. They sent out 12,000 developer kits in January to a huge number of big name guys and everyone I've talked to is excited - though not necessarily going to make a game just for it, which it needs.