Today has been all about Change - Barack said so - and what he says goes from now on!
But with all of that happening, you might have failed to notice another “change” that pricked my interest. The Video games industry’s sales are up 42%. Video games are outselling music. So I what’s going on I wonder?!
Is it that nobody is listening to music anymore? Surely not. iTunes has sold over 3 billion songs since it’s launch, I don’t use amazon or anything else, but they must be doing ok too. That’s got to be eating into tangible music sales [Never mind Illegal downloads over p2p etc]. But why is it that nobody’s buying tangible music anymore?
I have a friend that insists on “owning” cd’s with cases and paper artwork etc. The same friend alphabetizes his collection by artist and keeps discs from the same artist in chronological order. I guess he sees his CD’s as a status symbol… “I’ve got x number of…” but I think he’s of a dying breed. Wait ’til he has to move house and pack his 2000+ discs away, transport them and unpack them into a diferent corner of a diferent house where they look even more unsightly than they did in his old house.
I think that the bigest reason people buy digital music is because because it’s convenient. I don’t mean that they don’t have to go out in the rain to get their disc, though I’m sure that’s a factor too. What I mean is, they buy digital because it’s simply drag-and-drop to put it on whatever generic mp3 player you have… and I guess that’s probably an iPod. Convenience is king and nobody knows it better than apple. If you’ve bought an AAC with DRM from them, it’s not going to play on anything except an iPod - and if you’ve added your own music to iTunes, you can only sync it to an iPod. Monopoly anyone?
I’m not being disparaging of apple - on the contrary, I’m probably one of the worst fan-boys you’ll ever meet. My iPod is my status symbol. I still have a 40gig 2nd gen one, but there’s a nano, a mini and 2 iPhones in our house - between 2 people. They haven’t cornered the market, they’ve invented it, and reinvented the [click] wheel (sorry) while they’re at it. Weren’t we all obsessed with mix-tapes once upon a time? Hi-Speed dubbing was the highlight of my evening, ready for the 45 minute journey to school the following day - one side each way. Bliss!
Who’d have thought 10 years ago that you’d be able to carry 160gig of music in your pocket? Who even knew what a gig was or how many songs that would be? But that’s the point. Everything is starting make a bit more sense to everyone and all the parts of one machine are starting to talk to everything else around it. Format’s are settling down enough (and are being licensed enough) so that other manufacturers can incorporate support for them into their hardware. I can drop my mp3’s out of my iTunes and into my iPod, almost any phone, PS3, Wii, 360, onto another computer - mac, pc, linux box…
But what’s all this got to do with the Video Games Industry?
Sorry, that was a bit more of a tangent than I expected. There was an interesting debate on Radio 4 today about this, and their expert (didn’t catch who, sorry) was citing that the real growth in the games industry was down to the multi-functionality of these ‘home entertainment systems’. The convergence of technologies and the portal they provide to interacting with your digital media. He went on to suggest that interaction was the key factor in all of this. The “Black Box In The Corner” is finally starting to reciprocate! No longer does it talk at you, but now, with the array of games consoles connected to it, feedback is instant - you are in control!
Video games have been ‘interactive’ for decades…
But basic input/output has been getting less basic every day. And the better the interactive experience gets, the more we seem to want to play. But the interactivity doesn’t stop in your living room. You don’t just get to play against the silicon brain under the telly, but you can now play against the brains you know and love, or love to hate around the world, while talking to them and seeing their distracted faces in a distracting part of the screen!
But what ever happened to real, tangible people?
Just because they don’t go out in the rain to but CD’s, doesn’t mean they don’t go out in the rain full stop. We’ve all become a bit too drag-and-drop, haven’t we? I check to see what so-and-so did on that night out they had without me (the one I was invited to, but was simply too useless to attend). At something past midnight I catch myself looking at the photos they took and posted on facebook… Does anybody actually keep in touch any more? Or do you just ‘poke’ your friends every now and then and join the groups that you feel obliged to because you’re not going to attend the event around the corner that Jim invited you to… Why?… erm… because you’ve got HellBoy666 from Copenhagen to slaughter on HALO for the 3rd time this week? (remember: a Halo doesn’t have to fall very far for it to be a noose!)
I think the TV’s pulling the wool over our eyes yet again. It’s not becoming more interactive, it’s becoming more of a barrier.
In response to this ‘interactive is good’ talk of today - I agree in part, but I think there are more shared and sensory experiences of interactivity that we’re not exploring and are missing out on. That’s not to say that I think there should be no screens or games in our lives at all, I just think the flat screen’s that we’re all buying so we can sit at home and feel connected could just be a step backward, or at least a side step…
Follow us on our journey to develop interactive fulldome content that you can enjoy in 360 degrees with other living, breathing human beings - express and share emotions with - and let them do the same with you - then we’ll talk about Halo!
Again, this is why we’re so lucky to have Mario and his team on our side. This just wouldn’t be possible without his openness to our new ideas. Dr Martin (pictured, dressed for polar exploration) and I, extend our warmest thanks to them again.