metagame

From the land of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists look­ing to cash on the lat­est enter­tain­ment fad (social net­work games , as opposed to last year’s vir­tual worlds), we get this garbage from For­tune mag­a­zine:

With more than 235 mil­lion monthly users, Zynga rules the nascent world of free online games played via social net­works like Face­book. Real pur­chases of vir­tual goods, like trac­tor fuel in Zynga’s hit game Far­mVille, gen­er­ate over 90% of the company’s rev­enue, pos­ing a real threat to the gam­ing busi­nesses of indus­try giants like Microsoft and Sony [empha­sis added], whose con­soles depend on play­ers pay­ing cash for games upfront.

A real threat to MS and Sony? Get real. The only threat Zynga poses is to stu­pid VC peo­ple who throw their money down the black holes of me-too imi­ta­tors. I don’t doubt that Sony and Microsoft would like a piece of that money pie (and they have it, hello Xbox Live and PSN), but social net­work games threaten the core gam­ing busi­ness? Come on. The eco­nomic recov­ery has already seen core gam­ing sales recover. And though Farmville’s suc­cess will out-profit Mod­ern War­fare 2, over time, let’s not for­get how lucra­tive the hits in AAA devel­op­ment can be:

The game, whose sales sur­passed $401 mil­lion in the first 24 hours of release, was the fastest-selling enter­tain­ment prod­uct day-one, says Guin­ness, which had pre­vi­ously held Grand Theft Auto IV as the record-holder.

What minus­cule  seg­ment of the audi­ence do you think plays FB games and also core games? Based on my face­book spam, it’s all house­wives and casual gamers that play these games. Sure, it’s more money com­ing into in the games indus­try, but what does this have to do with sales of the next Call of Duty or God of War? Noth­ing. Noth­ing at all.

Leigh Alexan­der says it nicer: The News Of Con­sole Gaming’s Death Has Been Greatly Exag­ger­ated.