Page 3 of 4 Dissecta 21 Feb 06: The Year of Next Gen
Bs and Cs of quality titles on current consoles, it has to be top quality.
The transition makes a small distributor like Stomp question whether to do co-publishing deals now or wait, but continue to just do distribution for others. "You are going to sell more titles [now] if you have a quality PS2 title than if you have an Xbox 360 title: you are going to have to fight more for the shelf space and you are going to have to work with a marketing window but it is more appealing for us still, to look at finished goods for acquisition on a current format" explained Martin. "Leading into the next twelve months will start to look at next gen" he added.
PC product as well is good, because PC doesn't change said Martin. However "Xbox is different. Xbox is probably going to lose its appeal a little bit more quickly mainly because Xbox 360 has come in and I think they have done a good job on convincing us of the backwards compatibility issue."
On the issue of backwards compatibility Martin said it is important for titles coming out to be backwards compatible and for this to be confirmed with the developer, but stated that the list of backwards compatible games seems to still be changing, causing an issue.
Martin noted that the market is losing indie retailers which is an issue as they both provide a good access point for good gamers and they have a range of products which in turn supports small distributors who think they have unique product.
"If we are presented with a scenario that next gen consoles can hold security the market will flip on its head; the unit difference between what could be sold and what is currently sold will completely change."
Getting Hype on Current Format Titles
"One of the other things that the console market tends to do is that it floods the media market so that it is very hard to get dedicated hype on any