Well now that's a big question isn't it? It's a long time, 365 days.
One thing I do know, is that in 2013 Aphelio are making a move to become a bigger part of the gaming industry, and this is why we have made some goals for ourselves in the coming year.
Our first goal is to communicate better than ever before: with you guys. This means we are going to be blogging as much as humanly possible, as we want to provide you with as much regular entertaining and interesting content as possible, offering opinions and more importantly asking for yours.
We also want to unleash new ideas on you, even if they are just ideas and don't materialise into anything physical. That is ok for us, its healthy. We want to have glass walls, where you can see how we work from conception to completion and give you an inside look into what it's like to be an indie games studio.
We also want to release more stuff, more regularly, to wider audiences. We're making more of a move to iterative, online, live product development, so you can be a part of our gaming experiences from the moment an idea goes on to paper to when its unleashed upon the world.
Aphelio will become influential in the realm of video games in the coming years, it's not a case of ‘if', it's just a case of ‘when'.
But we are just a small cog (at the moment) in a very, VERY big wheel, which has spun out of control in 2012. And no one, and I mean no one, knows where it's going to end up in 2013. But here are a few guesses.
- Tablets will start to replace portable gaming consoles in market share with a surge of high quality premium games ($20+)
- Smart TVs will become gaming hubs through their app stores
- Console and PC will lose further market share to casual platforms
- Digital download revenue will exceed physical purchase revenue
- The indie scene bubble will ‘pop' as studios don't make solid returns, even on great games
- There will be more studio closures than ever before, with fewer start-ups created than last year
Whilst I wouldn't say these are my predictions, these are things which I wouldn't be surprised about, or I think are likely to happen. Slightly pessimistic, eh? Strange coming from the most optimistic person at Aphelio...
So how's this, I predict that a totally unforeseen prominent new business model (pay per play, arcade style?!) or a new platform or console (Ouya?! Rasperry Pi?!) will change the market in 2013.
And with that, I'll leave you, to ponder how much of this is total bollocks in a year from now...
Leave your comments with your predictions/comments!
Mike
Aphelio
I'd go more in depth but the character limit is restrictive.
Tablets will start to replace portable gaming consoles in market share with a surge of high quality premium games ($20+)
Doubt it, limitations of touch input (obscuring screen, lack of pixel perfect precision, only one action "tap") will continue to hamper tablet (and phone) gaming until controllers (built in or otherwise) become mainstream.
Smart TVs will become gaming hubs through their app stores
I'm not wholly knowledgeable but it looks like Phone/tablet games on your TV, looking terrible and mimicking touch with Wii motes but without the graphical fidelity to match, forgive me if I'm cynical.
Console and PC will lose further market share to casual platforms
Apples and Oranges, you can't lose market share to something which is a completely different market. As it stands the focus of both markets are on multi-hour immersive/deep games and 5 minute "pick up and put down" ("toilet") games.
Digital download revenue will exceed physical purchase revenue
In what? Gaming across all platforms? It's likely that's already the case, it certainly has been on PC and mobile platforms, even the consoles have been moving in that direction, there's no way to know since Digital Distributions sales tend to be kept closely guarded.
The indie scene bubble will ‘pop' as studios don't make solid returns, even on great games
I was about to say this seems more like a wish list than a prediction list but this is the odd one out. Very easy prediction to make given the IOS focus a lot of indies, who recently banned app discovery apps. Think back to when we were are Dare+, we already knew this was happening.
There will be more studio closures than ever before, with fewer start-ups created than last year
For mobile I agree, market over-saturation with low product visibility, consisting of endless clones, treadmills (with pay to run faster models) and games based on single gimmicks.
For other platforms I've run out of space.
Contd.
For other platforms it's hard to say... Old mega-companies like Activision and EA do dominate the marketplace but on PC particularly smaller developers are getting as much coverage as they ever had with constant accessibility (whereas with consoles good luck getting it after it's stopped being sold in stores). That's not enough to predict it's growth or decline though since every developer's success and failure is a case by case basis.
Slightly pessimistic, eh? Strange coming from the most optimistic person at Aphelio...
The most optimisic person at a company who's name is very close to Aphelion; the name of the part of a stellar bodies' orbit in which it's furthest away from it's star. Doesn't surprise me one bit :P
A couple of predictions of my own:
Games will start to be offered with multiple business models, for example buy the whole game at once, or buy sections of it at a time; don't fancy multiplayer? Just buy the single player.
Hybridisation of mobile platforms to start development/concept. Just imagine how much more of a success the PS Vita would have been if it also did everything a phone did. You'd only need one device to have good portable gaming and a phone.
Happy New Year Aphelio!
My argument and other stuff done by someone more intelligent and able to form better structured arguments: