Tag Archives: chris deering

Define “cheap”.

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Sony’s former head of Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, believes Sony has a tough road ahead if its to expect PS3 to match PS2′s record-breaking sales.

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Former Sony Europe president Chris Deering has said that AAA gaming titles need to be priced at £70 to support the industry.

Derring, speaking to MCV, also stated that if we are to expect more “blockbuster games” as gamers did in the past, developers need to produce the titles more efficiently.

“In order to price these games at a level where they would support an industry [as strongly as] they did ten years ago, they’d have to be sold at £70. But people just don’t have that kind of money, there’s a psychological glass ceiling.

“Consumers won’t spend more, but to write the game, publishers are having to spend more than ever before. That’s the key problem.

“The cost of development is ten times what it was for PS2, and more like 20 to 50 times more than on PSOne. Yet there are lots of things you can get for less than the relative value of paying 50p an hour for a very high end game.”

Deering is the chair of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, taking place August 13-14, where he and Ray Maguire, Peter Moore and Ian Livingstone will discuss ‘the future of the blockbuster game’.

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Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today, ex-SCEE man Chris Deering claimed that on 30 percent of games ever made the development money back.

“Traditional revenue sources will not be sufficient to fund games development,” he said. “If you look at the very narrow definition of the gaming market, people are saying the software business will be down 20 percent by 2011 versus this year.

“Something is going to have to be there to make up the difference and take us beyond that threshold.

“My guess and analysis shows that less than three out of 10 games recover their development and marketing costs with boxed goods sales. So what’s going to have to happen? Creative use of hybrid online and offline advertising revenues, online offline transactions with consumers – these business models must be explored.”

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According to this GI piece, former SCEE chap Chris Deering’s said that he believes Nintendo and Sony will tie in this generation’s hardware race by 2011. From the story:

The EIF chairman presented figures he arrived at by triangulating Screen Digest and IDG data. He also took into account factors such as the growth of hi-def and the grey gamer market, the emergence of new game engines and increasing ubiquity of wi-fi access. He said the active installed base for hardware is set to rise from 316 million to 500 million over the next three years, with “two big mega-powers” leading the charge.

According to Deering sales of the DS and any future iterations of the hardware will reach 150 million by 2011, while the figure for Wii will be 80 million. He predicted the installed base for PS3 will be 70 million, and said for PS2 it will be 90 million and PSP will be 70 million. In other words, Sony and Nintendo will each have sold 230 million machines.

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