EA founder: consoles to become 'hobby' market

Thats stupid. Consoles are home to casual and hardcore gamers alike and i don't see that changing anytime soon. His analogy using passenger planes is equally stupid. Gaming will simply reach different levels of casualty. While people on tablets, phones, and a percentage of PC gamers representing the most casual of gamers. Then you will have the slightly more serious PC and console gamers playing an hour or two daily. Then you have the hardcore gamer on PC and console. Finally you have the Gamer/Modder/Amateur Game Designer. Gaming at its core will always be funded by people that play on consoles and PCs their markets are simply wider, more predictable, and make more money. Great casual games are like great accidental pieces of art. Then when it gets old its time to "stumble" onto the next addicting game. Where PC and console gaming has better set genres and larger specific groups of gamers to market to.

New gadgets are reshaping the gaming market, and nobody is quite sure what it's going to look like in the future.  Here's my prediction:

The core console and PC gaming markets will remain for those of us who like immersive, challenging, long-form games.  We will continue to upgrade our systems, download demos, and look at screenshots.  The business is still profitable even if there can only be a small handful of players at the upper echelons of that business.

Casual gaming will evolve as the devices available for gaming evolve.  Casual gamers will be less concerned about what games they play than about which devices they use to play them.  They won't seek out specific games so much as select among the games supported by whichever device they choose to use for gaming.  That will certainly nibble at the margins of core gaming, but I think there will be an equilibrium point at which the two will peacefully co-exist.  I'm not sure whether handheld consoles (e.g. Nintendo 3DS and Sony PlayStation Vita) will be caualties of this advance or not.

Frankly, the idea of having more options for gaming (core and casual) sounds great to me.

It will be a long time before that happens!

(Where consoles will be a niche market of gaming sales and not the majority of sales.)

And if it takes as long as Trip Hawkins to just now realize gaming has become mass market - then it will be way past my life time.

Except console games sales dwarf the other gaming sales based on dollars.  The top 20 titles on xbox360 alone is more than the entire iOS has gotten total.  And if you count multiplatform, just the top 10 would do that.

Isn't COD breaking all kinds of sales records on consoles? What's this guy talking about...

Disclaimer: In no way am I advocating the purchase or play of COD.

what is the point of all these philosophical EA "news" articles?  are you guys trying to force me to a different gaming site?  also...the reviews have been TERRIBLE lately (last 6 months).  it's like EA has taken over management here...

In my opinion it could be the other way around. Consoles are becoming less hardcore (what with Move and Kinect) and are being aimed at the larger demographic. Hardcore gamers, or hobbyists as he puts it, may end up moving to another media, like PC gaming or something.

this would be good news if he took the opportunity to abandon games altogether and move to  ruin a different business. Just shows how lost he is in his greed, instead of looking at what 's in his plate he's looking into everybody else's plate and drooling. The hardcore gaming market actually grew in the last decades and went from a few hundred thousand world wide to a few millions. So just because a few more million people besides those  also love to play browser games or mobile games, console market it will never become a nich again. At the very worse, it will eventually stop growing.

it has become my hobby to laugh at the idiots working at ea :D

His analogy of plane passengers and pilots is stupid. I'd figure a 'pilot' would more indicate the 'game developer' in the way he is speaking. I don't like it when stupid people try to make analogies. It makes me sad.

I hope he's right. Gaming was a lot better before frat boys and soccer moms got involved and filled the software libraries almost exclusively with shooters and soulless motion-based games.

lol he is a d**k.

Shows what big company executives who are rich and dont know anything about the people who they sell games to.

Gaming will become more popular. It already has in my 25 years of gaming. only nerds and little kids use to play games now I'm seeing people of all sorts, genders and ages playing games. Gaming will only get more popular in the future.

I have no idea what the hell he was going for with that analogy.  Hardcore gamers are pilots while everyone else is a passenger?  What?

This actually doesnt make much sense because if hes saying hardcore gamers want innovation (which I agree with). Then how is that innovation going to be delivered ? On mobiles and tablets ? I think consoles are going to become more mainstream not less and if you want really think gamers want deep innovative content (WHICH WE DO) then stop making 10 hour long teeny trash games and start making some of these so called innovative ones. Then release them..... um .... on console.... I think Trip is a good name for you.

Consoles will only become niche because big companies like EA will push hard to develop games for mobile tablets and the like. With most of the development budget, they will flourish and us hardcore gamers will be sidelined. i guess casual gamers are quicker to open their wallets.

I'm a pilot and love PC so I must look like a Jedi to Mr. Hawkins, or more likely a leper...

PC is not dead, consoles are not for simulations and are not "niche". this is poppycock i say!

Calling these social "gamers" gamers at all is quite funny, at best social gaming has replaced newspapers in the bathroom and on the bus. That's about it, I've yet to see anyone say anything like "I'm gonna take a break from Skyrim, I really need to get that third star on Angry Birds".

On the other hand, if this is publishers' current view on the situation, great, let's get more innovative on the console and leave the copy-paste jobs for the mobiles.

"Airplanes' LMAO

And this guy is supposed to be providing software for the future of gaming.

Shame everything he touches turns to dust for gamers and $$$ for him.

clearly what Trip Hawkins knows about consoles can be filed under '3DO'.

I honestly haven't seen any data that points to this, nor do I know anyone tossing aside their consoles for ipods, androids, or tablets. This is all part of a race to capture as much of the giant casual market as possible. Think about what he's saying. When you look at both the console and PC, it's easier to compare them since they play games quite similarly, both utilizing controllers, keyboards, or mice; this is a fundamental element of the way we play our games. There's also high definition televisions or monitors that we view our games on. So basically, he's saying that people are abandoning these and going for simplistic touch gaming on a tiny screen. It makes no sense. These companies are all trying to grab their share of the giant casual market and they're simply defending their positions(based on things they know they're doing within their company) in these interviews or wherever. 

Hobbie of mine since the megadrive days, wake up saturday morning for some streets of rage and road rash :D

I think of it more as "Quick Fix" gamers vs. "Full-Blown Addict" gamers. QF's are completely fine with turning on the iPhone/tablet and getting a few minutes in with Angry Birds & the like. FBA's dabble in QF territory once in awhile, but when it comes down to it, would rather be immersed in their worlds all the time.

3 D O ! - enough said.

people who sit in the 'big chairs' will always see it from a dollars stand point.  thats their job.  to make money for their company.  im talking about the big ones of course.  actual love of games comes from people in the industry either further down the ladder or within smaller companies.  consoles will always be there yes but now other types such as mobile gaming are big.  gree bought fuzio for 250 mil and they make three mobile phone  games. COD games are making a bazilion dollars for activision.  if i was ceo of any of the other companies id try to follow the trend too because i have board member who want profit. example is  resident evil has become all action  and dead space is turning to action even though both these games were put on the map because they started off as survival horror.  it suck but it s business.      

It was essentially a hobby market to begin with. There's still a big difference now between "people who play videogames" and "people who played videogames when they were 4 years old"

I agree, he's actually the first person who's made some sense for once! But I don't think it will get too much smaller. The popularity of gaming in general will eventually leave those casual gamers wanting more than they can get on their smartphones. When that happens(Which already is happening) people will suddenly flock to consoles again to get something new. It's a circular cycle. Once this cycle of consoles gets older, a new form of gaming will come out outside of consoles and get popular for a short time. Once the new gen comes out yet again and those people see something new, they will again flock to it. Were just at the very beginning of a new cycle. Nintendo knows this, that's why they are making sure that Wii U is the first to the market. They know there's a big market of hungry consumers out there right now, and they want to cash in first.

This might be the first thing I have read from anyone associated with EA that does not make me want to break out the pitchforks and torches, probably because he left EA before they became a bunch of money grubbing a******s.  I think most people are missing the point he was trying to make.  He is saying that consoles will be more focused on hardcore gamers and not trying to appeal to everyone from your 2 year old sibling to your 80 year old grandma.  I would like a little less attention paid to the CoD players to.  I like shooters but for crying out loud like other genre's too.  Plus smaller is not always a bad thing.   If you want the anti-thesis of smaller then look at CoD.  I think the industry could use a little less CoD mentality.