For any interested, here is a handful of my recently published video game works after my visit to Baton Rouge two weeks ago.
The 10 Most Underrated Consoles (GamePro) — The road to modern video games is littered with the corpses of noble game consoles who flew too high to the sun. Here are the 10 best under-achievers of all-time.
Not Every Politician Hates Video games (Crispy Gamer) — At a VIP game developer event in a secluded upstairs San Francisco lounge, a well-dressed man in his 50s is making the rounds. “Hello, I’m the mayor of Baton Rouge.” “Do you just walk around calling yourself a mayor?” asks one doubting attendee. “No, I’m really the mayor of of Baton Rouge…” Continue reading…
The road to modern video games is littered with the corpses of noble game consoles who flew too high to the sun. Here are the 10 best under-achievers of all-time.
Continue reading at GamePro…
Since 1999, major console makers including Microsoft (MSFT), Sony (SNE), Nintendo, and the now-defunct Sega have been touting online gaming as a mainstay of the industry. And though online console use is rising, mainstream apathy means the initiative has never matured.
Of the 172 million systems sold in the last generation of consoles*, an estimated 5 million gamers ventured online — representing just three percent of the market. But wouldn’t you know it, each and every major console circa the early 2000s was capable of online play (some better than others).
By comparison, there are currently 26 million “next-gen” consoles in households (11M Wiis, 11M 360s, 4M PS3s). As of August, Microsoft’s Xbox Live claimed more than 7 million active users, including paying and free silver account users that aren’t privy to online multiplayer.
Continue reading at GigaOM…
A new school year is creeping ever closer, and it’s time for the editors of GamePro to grade the year in gaming.
Continue reading at GamePro…
Be it a lack of games, poor strategy, or inadequate marketing, a majority of video game consoles are commercial failures. Here are the 10 worst selling consoles of all time in terms of high-profile systems that stood a viable chance. Other lesser-known consoles are sure to have sold worse, but the below represent the notable platforms that never met expectations.
Continue reading at GamePro…
You can learn a lot from the past. Gauging the current state of the console wars is no different; historical context can be enormously helpful. In this article, our goal is simple: to predict the commercial victors of the next-gen console war.
But how? Easy: by comparing the sales of the last-gen consoles — the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube — to the current crop of next-gen consoles using a concept called “sales velocity”. Sales velocity is just a fancy name for how fast (or slow) something sells over a period of time. In this case we’ll examine the launch numbers and examine the complete last-gen sales cycle. And even though the data is U.S. only, what bodes well here generally bodes well globally and vice-versa (with the occasional exception, such as the PC Engine’s monstrous success in Japan).
First up, Last-Gen Sales Velocity in terms of the first five months of launch:
Continue reading at GamePro…
