Hi, Quote firstly, independent gaming is becoming a lot more common, and while small devs don't have the cash, in my experience they do on average tend to be much nicer than the large companies when it comes to accessibility... End quote
Around a year ago I actually was talking to a Microsoft MVP about this very same subject of large game companies vs small game companies and he said something that is very interesting. Basically what he said was when you see the statistics that the Sony Play Station has more games than XBox or Windows, or Linux gaming platforms what they really mean is games by major recognised companies like MGS, Activision, EA Games, etc. Those statistics seldem if ever take in to account the small one man operations that are producing games for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs which hasn't distinguished themselves as anything important to be counted in the statistics. Our little accessible game nitch is just such an uncounted and unrecognised market. Anyway, the bottomline is that we really have no idea how many small one/two man operations are out there on the web making games. Independant game companies has been growing along with the web and with the availability of good development kits for gamers such as DirectX, XNA, OpenAL, SDL, etc. Quote Most blind people are over the age of 60, where as most gamers are at the oldest about 40. Of course in both cases there are exceptions, but this is the rule. But when the generation who grew up in the 1970's start losing their site, they're going to want games to play, thus there will be more people interested in accessible games. End quote Well, it really all comes back to the principle of supply and demand as well as good advertising. Right now as you so aptly pointed out the target market for most accessible games is between the ages of 15 and 45. Those on the lower age bracket want games similar to the XBOX and Play Station games they have played or want to play. Those on the older age bracket tend to go for board, card, and other non-triditional games. I recently did a poll on the Mac Visionaries list, and the overwelming requests were for puzzle games, word games, board games, and card games. Games we take for granted on Windows. Anyway, I don't think we are going to see a major improvement in the accessibility of those Play Station and XBox games until the children of the 80's and 90's get older and begin griping that they can't play Halo 2055 on there XBox 20 vidio game system. Oh, I forgot the XBox will of course have been out dated since the mid 2020's. in the year 2055 all gaming consols will be strapped to your wrist and have pop up wide screen displays, killer built in speakers, and can be attached to a docking station with a huge 65 inch wide screen display. Lol! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
