Angry Birds Dev Foresees Doom for Consoles

[Sean Strife]

I wholeheartedly disagree with Vesterbacka. About the only time I play Angry Birds is if I'm just bullshitting around at work to kill time or if I don't have access to one of my MANY consoles or my PC. I echo the stance that just because mobile and casual gaming are getting popular doesn't mean that it's going to make consoles obsolete.

Somebody's drinking a little too much of their own Kool-Aid if you ask me.

 

[Blaster395]

Innovation? In social and mobile games? Seriously????
Angry birds is not even innovative. "Catapult stuff at building" is a game which has been made hundreds of times before Angry birds even came out.
Social games, lets see. Farmville is a ripoff of farm town, all social games are retextures and renaming of the same basic mechanics of Farmville, which is perform action, wait 8 hours, "collect" money, repeat.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I can see where he's coming from, but he's getting waaaay ahead of himself. Everything will be one media soon anyway, so this debate won't matter.

That's probably closer to reality.
I do see the consoles in danger right now: considering their performance this generation, I'm iffy on sticking with them in the next gen myself. I don't see the consoles being killed by mobile gaming but I do see them drowning in their own overcomplicatedness: trying to sell too much in the package but not being able to deliver on it.
The AAA makers also have to tone down the amount of capitol that goes into the investment of one title because gamers are finally starting to get tired of being ripped off.
It took a while but we're starting to see more people refusing to pay for unfinished games and overinflated fees.

 

[slipknot4]

Yeah... and the internet is only a trend. Whats next?

 

[StockJN]

I agree somewhat with him, I know I waste a lot of time on iphone games but, thats all they really are, time wasters. They'll never really take the place of consoles, not immersive enough

 

[Stevepinto3]

Trying to predict big changes in the future is like wrestling a gorilla. If you do it right you may come out of it with an interesting bar story. Do it wrong and you'll just get torn to pieces and humiliated. It's never a good gamble.

 

[Captain Bobbossa]

Moblile games, especially those for the iphone are basically just things to pass time when you on a bus, train or avoiding doing an essay, kind of like flash games on the internet. And as far as the acctual games go in the mobile area none of them are all that orgional, most have been done countless times as flash games. the only real differance is that you can now do it with a touch screen.... wow.... Angry Birds is one of these games.

No the consol market is not going to be brought down by mobile games, the mobile phone game market will take a plumet at some point and this is just the sudden rush of popularity getting to some idiot at angry birds HQ's head.

Similar thing happened to farmville, there's an article somewhere on hear that mentions it.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Well that seems to reflect a very limited understand of the culture of gaming. I mean this is pretty much as short sighted an opinion as people who bury there heads in the sand and ignore "casual" gaming. Different stroked for different folks, no one type of gaming or system can capture the entire market. If anything the fact that mobile gaming is growing is a sign that the market is becoming more diverse not less diverse like he predicts.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

the world is always ending somewhere, for someone.

 

[Danish rage]

I read it, but all i hear is blablablabla...insert selfpromoting nonsens. blablablabla

Crap like angry birds and 2inch screens will never, and i mean NEVER compete with consoles, for anything.

 

[Verlander]

I'd rather play angry birds to 99% of AAA games, so he may not be completely wrong. Considering some of the people who play CoD, I don't think his comments are out of line either. As for consoles, I think they will change until they are unrecognisable anymore, with greater use of wireless systems and interactive controllers. I'm not sure that they will go away though... look at the co-existence of PC/Console gaming to see that there is a market for multi-platform gaming

 

[Atmos Duality]

Making Consoles entirely obsolete?
No. The sole reason the mobile market has such flexibility now is ironically because of its limitations; you cannot provide the same experience on a mobile device as a dedicated console or PC simply due to technical limitations.

With such limitations in place, you're forced to attack the problem differently or produce an inferior imitation of an existing product. The same limitations spawned creative titles during the earlier days of PC Gaming and Consoles before; and yet both are still around today.

What he fails to realize is that even if mobile gaming evolved, became more popular and made consoles obsolete, the major publishers would come in and place more expectations on future titles; resulting in fewer companies being able to think outside the box. And thus, that "nimble" advantage he describes will lose its potency; we end up where we are now.

In short, Vesterbaka sounds like he's tooting his own horn.

 

[De Ronneman]

He's serious? Just because his Crush the Castle rip-off is getting a TV show, consoles are over?

A mobile deivce, say an iPhone, has a small screen, no actual buttons or triggers, no analog sticks, a supershort batterylife, and when your battery is dead, you can't call or text anymore...

Yeah, all clear advantages over consoles...

 

[Lord_Bryon]

Angry birds will not replace Call of Duty, Call of duty will not replace Starcraft

oh and smart phones and tablets will never replace consuls/pc's

Those who say otherwise do not understand the the vast differences allowed in the different platforms

 

[Grunt_Man11]

I'm sorry, but what is wrong with some of these mobile/indie developers? Are they really this arrogant?

If anything all this guy did was make me, and looking from some of the other replies here, others lose respect for indie developers.

What he says sounds like an anti-console, anti-competition, monopoly-grabbing, smear campaign if you ask me. So much for the indie developers being "good guys who are passionate about gaming."

Minecraft was the first true indie title I bought, but if all this smear campaigning from indie developers keeps up it might end up being the only indie title I buy.

I know not all indie developers engage in these smear campaigns. In fact most of them welcome the competition from, and respect, the bigger developers. However, some of these more stuck up indie developers need to learn to shut up.

 

[Freshman]

Maybe if 'Mobile' games didn't suck in comparison to console ones...