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The president of leading portal Big Fish Games Jeremy Lewis has told MCV sister site
that his firm isn’t worried by the likes of EA, Activision and Midway upping their game in the online casual market.
Speaking as part of a wider interview, Lewis said that investment from established boxed publishers in the sector can only help the size of the sector.
Last year, EA – which owns leading casual games firm Pogo – set up a dedicated casual games division.
We’re not especially worried,” he commented. As the demographic widens, specialization is required and each of these companies, including Big Fish Games, has a distinct areas of focus.”
However, Lewis warned startup casual games portals and developers that they may find profit hard to come by in the sector.
The traditional, or core, games business is plagued by multi-year, multi-million dollar development cycles, whilst casual games are relatively inexpensive and take a fraction of the time to produce,” he added.
However, for portal start-ups it is quite the contrary. Barriers to entry are low, but barriers to scale, profitability and staying power are almost insurmountable at this point.”
