More than consoles for the holidays – Salle Hayden

August 2013, I was a first-time attendee at the Gamestop expo in Las Vegas this year. The show was an interesting mix of presentations on market directions and vendor exhibits. This combination is usually found in standard trade events, not single company events. For the market area of gaming, this worked really well.

There were panel discussions on the future directions of AAA console games and how they will fair in the market next to free-to-play (F2P) and “fremium” games. The conclusion was that the user base is different for each area of interest and the extent of game-play also differs so they really do not compete. The AAA games are designed for long game-play sessions (sometimes running many hours) with multiple people interactively. The mobile and free-to-play games are designed for short play-times (as short as 30-sec/level) and are for one person at a time. The F2P games that are designed for multiple people are “take turn” style games rather than multiple people playing the game simultaneously.

The expo itself was an extensive setup. It had – as the two largest zones – the Sony Playstation booth and the Microsoft Xbox booth. These were filled with the existing platforms the Xbox360 and PS3, and with moderate length lines, but lots of stations with software – the new Xbox One and PS4. The crowd of games players were mostly those that had pre-ordered the consoles and were trying to get a first “hands-on” with real games before the holiday season approached. They were also able to see these platforms spread throughout the show in the booths of the software titles being launched on these platforms.

I had a chance to try some games on these new consoles, including the full driving shell (quite a lovely car that reminded by size of the first time I drove – many years ago – when Disneyland first opened), and system for the Playstation for their racing game. Its realism was very attention-grabbing and an immersion into the game, even just being a “pod” in the middle of the exhibit area floor.

Disney featured their new Infinity game with the collectible character pieces. As a newbie to some the gaming platforms, it took some time for the guy to show me different modes of the game – special scenes for character pieces from the same film, and the free-play mode where you can mix and match characters from different films. He also went through how even though you cannot share game play between Playstation, Xbox and the WiiU, you can move the characters between the platforms. This is important to playing with different friends as they may have different platforms, and this way you can have multiple games going with multiple people.

What was interesting was that the expo did not just have games – there were lots of accessories. These included: headphones, collectibles, t-shirts, tablets, new wifi routers that are optimized for gaming, screen-cleaner, gaming furniture, cases for transporting your mobile platforms (phones, tablets, PS Vita, Nintendo DS3, etc). The ability to test and try these extras was a big part of completing the gaming experience to insure a happy holiday season by making sure there is a fit to the gamer and that the accessories work the way s/he wants. This way the buyer will work in the system they have chosen and there won’t be any holiday time spent in the returns line.