Dan Kim

It's not that everyone will stop buying them, it's that many studios may find it MORE PROFITABLE to develop for mobile devices with a billion+ install base, smaller development costs, less sophisticated/demanding audience, multiple monetization streams (F2P, ads, flexible pricing, etc.) and so on. Konami looked at the numbers and decided that it made sense for them. More will follow suit.

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As that continues to happen, eventually have to to question the logic of the console model itself. What is a console and why do we have them? They're pay-to-enter gated markets. That's what they are. And we have them because the console creators can sell an audience to developers and sell exclusive games to the audience and take a big enough slice that it's worth their while. If any part of that falls apart for a particular console, then that console disappears. Consider the mobile sphere just one more gated market on the block... one more new console. If business in that gated market is better, why wouldn't a studio enter that market? In fact, if, every dollar invested in that new gated market did better than a dollar in their current market, they should put ALL their dollars there.

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And remember that the market shapes the product. We already have cut-content Day 1 DLC, nickel-and-dime DLC, $100+ special editions, season passes, microtransactions, and some of the the biggest games in the world are already F2P ones (League of Legends, Clash of Clans, etc). The internet allowed us to make the insides of games themselves low-cost to zero-cost gated marketplaces. MARKETPLACES IN MARKETPLACES. The lower the gate fee, the more nickel-and-diming. I'm sure you know that Valve hires world class economists to study Steam and suggest ways to set up games as economically productive units: hats, paid mods, buying banners for Dota, trading goods across games, etc. Other companies are, of course, trying to find the best mechanisms to maximize value extraction, too.

My concern is that EXTRACTING MAXIMUM VALUE always wins in the boardroom. It trumps more interesting design, creative vision, and certainly player enjoyment. Those things matter only insomuch as they get you to pay. In the world world where there was a $60 ticket up front and ONLY that cost, games had to compete by saying that were worth that ticket price and give you a good experience so you come again. In a world where there's no up front price and only a tiny, unknown sliver of the population will pay huge amounts, 99% customers are worthless and are treated as such... and the game doesn't compete by giving you a good experience that makes you want to visit again, but by casting a wide a net as possible and catching the suckers (aka whales).

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Anyway, there might still be niche markets where the audiences are too small to support such shenanigans. But I expect the same forces that gave us hats and F2P will continue to grow stronger. "Player oriented design" may soon be little more an art-house virtue.

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