Red 5 Studios CEO: "Who needs publishers any more?"

[CrAwL]

Former World Of Warcraft team lead and CEO of Red 5 Studios, Mark Kern, has criticised the traditional publishing model, calling it broken, and declared the death of consoles.

"Who needs publishers any more? I certainly don't. I couldn't care less about them at this stage," he told Eurogamer.

"You're either an indie game or you're a massive AAA, IP-backed sequel with derivative game play that's rehashed over and over again as it's the only safe bet you can make when you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars."

"Something has to change. Consoles, I believe, are dead"
"The failure is that there's no middle ground. All the games in the middle that could have been made but have been squeezed out and we've seen all these independent studios get closed down over the last few years."

He also slammed the practice of cutting staff numbers after product launches, and said the argument that it was the same model used by the film industry was wrong.

"In Hollywood they work on contract - it's very different. They expect only to work from A to B. In games, these big publishers are hiring swathes of people expecting to have jobs long-term but then lay them off at the end of a project because it doesn't quite deliver. This is unsustainable."

And it's not as if Kern is some mouthy upstart, this is the man who has worked on some of the biggest MMO franchises in the industry, World Of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. And all that experience leads him to believe the console is doomed.

"It takes billions of dollars of investment to create a console and then you have to milk it for five to seven years in order to get your money back," he explained.

He pointed out that the model forces publishers to play it safe, which actually leads to bored customers who stop coming back.


"So something has to change. Consoles, I believe, are dead," he declared.

"There's no incentive for me to be on console. I'm more interested in getting onto the Mac OS or even iOS in some form. That's what's more interesting to me."

Kern's Red 5 Studios is currently working on Firefall, an MMO that is due for release this year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...shers-any-more

[EarthAtGates]

This is guy is completely right and has only be preaching what I have been saying for years!

[HomeBrewPCiq]

Although I believe him to be passionately overstating his opinions, they are generally agreeable by me. (aside from the 'consoles are dead' comment) It's my belief that both consoles and gaming computers are simply starting to blur in to a single entity. To say one or the other is dying is just not accurate to me.

[Sparafucil]

Although I believe him to be passionately overstating his opinions, they are generally agreeable by me. (aside from the 'consoles are dead' comment) It's my belief that both consoles and gaming computers are simply starting to blur in to a single entity. To say one or the other is dying is just not accurate to me.

On the contrary, while their influence will decline in the future, I don't see publishers going any where. Consoles, on the other hand, face a perilous and uncertain future.

[Raptor156]

Although I believe him to be passionately overstating his opinions, they are generally agreeable by me. (aside from the 'consoles are dead' comment) It's my belief that both consoles and gaming computers are simply starting to blur in to a single entity. To say one or the other is dying is just not accurate to me.

I'd definitely say consoles as we know them are dead/will be dying shortly. Tablets and mobile tech is quickly getting powerful enough to catch up to consoles. I think the time of devices dedicated to nothing but gaming will be gone not too long from now, and we'll end up just connecting our phones/tablets/laptops to our TVs for any gaming.

Even integrated graphics in processors are getting quite powerful in a short period of time. The new Intel HD4000 is already ~30% faster than the HD3000. That makes BF3 "playable" at ~30 fps on low @ 1024x768 and Mass Effect 3 playable at ~30fps @ 1366x768 maxed out with AA and AF on. Yes it's got a ways to go before it'll replace dedicated GPUs, but it's good enough to play pretty much any games 3+ years old pretty well, and is very impressive for an IGP. Give it another 5-10 years and I don't think we'll have any need for dedicated GPUs for gaming; integrated will be enough and that will open up almost any relatively new computer to be a capable gaming platform.