Article: approaching the end of the disc?

The last three years have been particularly important for the video game market, which recently saw its increasingly innovative and security titles, especially, to platforms very different from the usual console.

With the advent of the iPhone, in particular, digital distribution has made great strides, capturing the attention of millions of players (not only) with a different way of making video games. The birth of hit-and-run titles sold a few cents there has slowly become accustomed to pay reasonable for rewarding experiences all with the unique difficulty represented by the need to find the best products in a sea of more or less valid titles.

This new market, pi open and not yet burdened by royalty monstrous and prohibitive development costs, has opened the door to a large number of geeks crammed with innovative ideas and proposals, previously caged by market processes cumbersome Eurocracy must become to say the least.

In many respects we found ourselves in front of the return of ' gaming ' garage ' 80 years, with the small difference is represented by the presence of a gi rooted and mature market come to a stage of worrying redundancy.

In a landscape like this natural look with concern the annual output of the latest Call of Duty, continuing nearly famous pi namespace generational or, another fashion of the moment, the return of old glories after years of neglect.

Exponential increase of costs of development on next-generation consoles pushes fewer teams to take the risks of launching innovative proposals, at least not with the traditional market games and physical distribution in stores.

Behold, then, that Xbox LIVE, PSN and the thousand virtual markets related to smartphones and social network, become the ideal ground where give vent to imagination and experiment with new solutions. Also because while developing with little money, the chance to cash in on record figures are very high, as evidenced by the case of Angry Birds.

Peter Vesterbacka, leader of Rovio, is part of the cohort of people convinced that traditional console games are now dying, crushed by the competition of "small" products for mobile phones.

In recent years the revenues derived from sales of video games has been a clear downturn (at least according to official figures reported by UKIE and NPD), detail that takes on a meaning even more clear when you consider that the bodies in question did not keep track of the products sold via digital delivery.

Tip the balance, then, is slowly moving towards the downloadable content, but that's not to say that the course for the traditional console games are destined to die at all. More simply, the market is expanding into a new direction, with interesting ideas pi's and up-and-coming eager to sign the roster.

Among the games for iOS, those for social networks and those created specifically for Xbox LIVE and PSN, new chance for budding talents are many and even big companies are starting to feel and smell of dollars to launch projects so far snubbed.

Behold, then, that make their appearance as Dead Space experiments for iPad and iPhone, Dragon Age Legends and Assassin's Creed Legacy on Facebook, or the impressive (but essential) Infinity Blade Epic.