Phil Harrison, the former Sony, Atari and Microsoft executive, was recently interviewed by GamesIndustry. In the interview, Harrison talks about an upcoming golden age for the gaming industry.
A golden age of democratisation of platforms, democratisation of technology to make content. When I started out, 80% of your development budget would be writing your 3D engine, and you'd have to throw that way every time you make a new game. It'd almost be like a filmmaker throwing away the Panavision camera and reinventing another one each time they went to make a film.
We've got to the point where the reach is there, the tools are there, the distribution is there, the ability to stand up an online service is there. And we can now start thinking about what happens when you have very believable worlds, very believable graphics, very sophisticated AI, what happens when those things co-exist? That's a very interesting future.
I hope that the same tipping effect [that TV had with Netflix and other streaming services] will happen with the golden age of games I just talked about. Let's hope that we can engender the next generation of writers and creators to think about games in that way.
Actually, I would argue that this year could very well be the best one in the last decade in terms of quality of releases. In fact, it's almost overwhelming to see several noteworthy games launching on a monthly basis, even in the middle of the Summer when there used to be a major drought.
What do you think of Harrison's thoughts, readers? Is a golden age of gaming coming - or perhaps, it is already here?
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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