Are Console Games Dying?

Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz predicts Activision's next Call of Duty title will sell 25 million copies worldwide in its first year. He also reckons EA's Battlefield 3 will sell 10 million units - three million more than the estimated seven million sales enjoyed by Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In the face of such gargantuan, almost guaranteed success, it's hard to take Vesterbacka seriously.

But it's equally hard to dismiss him. What appears to be happening is not the death of console games, but the evolution of gaming. The game-playing audience is changing. More and more of us are using our iPhones and iPads and web browsers to play games - sometimes instead of our PlayStations and Xboxes. And more of us are happy doing so.

The makers of console games have seen this evolution and are adapting - or at least taking wild stabs in the dark at adapting. Resistance developer Insomniac, which recently opened its casual games division, Click, is one. Bayonetta, MadWorld and Vanquish developer PlatinumGames, whose boss Tatsuya Minami this month admitted the current games business is "struggling", is two.

Should we care? If console games aren't dying, and we, year after year, get all the Call of Duties and Gears of Wars and FIFAs that we could possibly want, does it matter if some are ploughing fields in Farmville or flicking touch-screens while they wait for the bus?

For Just Cause maker Avalanche Studios, which is experimenting in the downloadable space with vehicle combat game Renegade Ops - its first foray onto PlayStation Network and Xbox Live - it does matter, because the casual and mobile explosion is forcing console games to change.

"The hot buzzword among publishers and console developers is now 'monetisation'. I couldn't walk one block around GDC without hearing someone say that damn word," founder Christofer Sundberg explains.

"Everybody is placing all of their bets on 'transmedia' to save the games industry."

"After a couple of years of running around like headless chickens, publishers and developers, Avalanche included, have now stopped and everybody is placing all of their bets on 'transmedia' to save the games industry.

"It is the way to go and we have to watch closely how Dragon Age II / Legends and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood / Legacy perform as a whole and not just the individual platforms. By collaborating across multiple platforms and creating a bigger value and broader experience for the consumer, we can extend the life of our games.

"On top of that we can add small DLC and we can add large DLC, but it needs to be great extra content for the consumer to actually think it's worth holding on to the disc a few more months rather than return it to the local games store and get some money back.

"I don't blame anyone for returning their discs these days as most of the DLC out there offers nothing extra. Consumers want to spend money but not just on hats and a funky gun for their character."

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This is the future of our console games: Facebook, iPad, day one DLC, and micro-transactions and multiplayer when it isn't needed. Sundberg highlights Dragon Age Legends and Assassin's Creed Legacy, but there are many examples of social-fuelled brand extensions. Only this week BradyGames launched a $3 Call of Duty: Black Ops iPhone and iPad app that features interactive maps of all multiplayer levels from both Black Ops and the First Strike DLC pack.

Expect to see more of these types of extensions. Expect to see more Dead Space on iPad. Expect to see more Street Fighter on iPhone. Expect to see more Xbox Live on Windows phones. Expect to see more FIFA on Xperia Play. Expect to see more multiplayer map apps on, well, everything.

Console games are not dying. They are evolving. It's survival of the fittest. Perhaps, in this way, Vesterbacka is right.

Those that survive this evolutionary step will emerge stronger and better - ripe for gamers who love sitting in front of their 60-inch TVs blasting soldiers in the face and taking that same universe on the go with their phones. Those that don't - the middle-class games, as Cliffy B calls them - well... they face a very bleak future.

"The big are getting bigger, and the also-rans are in trouble," Lovell concludes. "That means that unless you are capable of making incredibly good triple-A games, with development, marketing and distribution budgets of $100 million plus, there is no place for you in boxed product development."