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Former Playfish Co-Founder: Big Publishers Distracted by Next Generation Consoles

Ravi Sinha — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:53:57 +0000

Former Playfish head and co-founder Kristian Segerstrale recently wrote that, “The next generation consoles are doing a wonderful job at distracting the big publishers away from the fastest growing parts of the game industry. That clears the water for pure digital plays to gradually build up dominance with new IP on new hardware platforms.”

In an op-ed on Tech Crunch, he also spoke about the “innovators’ dilemma”, wherein big publishers will be more focused on innovating with next generation consoles while new companies take advantage of opportunities in other streams.

“The innovators’ dilemma confronting the big guys is creating continuing unopposed growth opportunity for new and established digital pure plays alike. That is giving new players time to build up the brand and marketing advantages that big publishers have held for years on what are rapidly becoming legacy platforms.

“But who is making the category-defining racing game, the best first person shooter, sports game, real-time strategy, monster breeding or puzzle adventure game on these platforms?

“The console guys are hamstrung by their lack of focus. The starlets who already dominate one or two categories will have similar focus challenges due to successes to date. Seldom have there been such clearly profitable, well-defined opportunities for new start-ups to re-imagine these experiences for personal touch screens.”

Segerstrale currently leads the investment firm Initial Capital.

Former Playfish VP Joins Angry Birds Developer as Executive VP

Ravi Sinha — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:51:36 +0000

EA’s Playfish studios has closed down, marking a shift in the company’s social games strategy, but their loss is mobile developer Rovio’s gain as former vice president Jami Laes will be joining the Angry Birds developer as its new executive vice president of games. Laes will be heading up Rovio’s game division.

He stated that, “Thinking back, this was a natural next step in my career. I have always been a huge fan of Angry Birds and it has been great to see the phenomenal success that Rovio has already achieved.

“Even so, we’ve only seen a fraction of what can be achieved with great brands like Angry Birds and Bad Piggies and I wanted to be a part of building that story.”

CEO Mikael Hed added that, “Jami´s diverse international background and vision of the quickly-evolving games industry makes this the perfect moment for Jami to jump in and take us to the next level.”

SimCity Social Shutting Down on June 14th

Ravi Sinha — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:12:42 +0000

SimCity Social, the Facebook version of the wildly popular and also quite controversial city-building franchise, is being axed on June 14th according to an announcement on the official forums from the developing team.

“We want to inform everyone in our community that as of June 14th, SimCity Social will be retiring on Facebook.

“We know that you may be disappointed by this. Retiring games is never easy, we hope you’ve enjoyed playing SimCity Social as much as we enjoyed making it. Thank you to all of our passionate and dedicated players for supporting SimCity Social. We hope to see you in some of our other titles on Facebook and other platforms.”

The decision to cut the game was made by EA, in due part for the purpose of reallocating “development resources to other titles that we hope you’ll have just as much fun playing.”

Or maybe it’s a way of helping to push the new SimCity and its “social features” to a new audience. Thoughts?