Is RockYou the next EA?
In a recent panel, I heard Jia Shen use an interesting analogy of his business to the video game business:
Social network platforms such as Facebook and Bebo are much like game consoles (Xbox and Play Station). There are two types of game developers, those who make a deep experience and a long thought out game, and those that create many simpler various vertical games such as EA. RockYou is similar to EA in terms of our relationship to the console (platform).
One of the most appealing things about social applications is that they are very easy to make and do not require large teams; this allows the teams to generate cash flow fairly quickly. In the early days of video games, development costs were extremely low and the games were highly profitable. The ease of making games made it possible for many developers to release several games a year. This seems awfully similar to the application market today.
With technology obviously changing rapidly it has become difficult to create games for the complicated consoles. Years of development and research are taken into consideration before the game is released – the games are obviously more in depth and intense.
With Xbox Live, Microsoft is definitely taking steps in the right directions by making their online game play more social. I can now view my friends buddy lists while browsing. It is just a matter of time before these two spaces collide.
With gaming currently being one of Microsoft’s most profitable divisions, this might be something they are thinking of stepping into with their investment in Facebook. I haven’t heard much input on this lately and it seems like the application market could possibly mature to the gaming industry’s level at some point in time.
Do you see these two spaces colliding?
Recent Updates:
EA has started its own social efforts.
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Seems there are some general views on “platforms” vs. “applications” that can be applied to both situations, but unlike game consoles, Facebook isn’t subject to inevitable obsolescence the way the game consoles were — a “generation” of console was very well defined and getting consumers to adopt each new generation was an enormous task. Facebook (and the other social platforms) can iterate gradually, constantly changing to adapt to changing user needs and adding/subtracting as needed. Of course, this does not mean that Facebook is guaranteed to be a strong player a decade from now, and it does not mean that RockYou won’t have a lot of advantages in being available on all platforms, but I’m not sure the underlying economic constraints and time scales that played out in consoles make a good parallel to the current dynamic between facebook (etc.) and rockyou (etc.)
I think you have a point. Games will evolve into more social applications that integrate peoples performance with rankings amongst their friends. Really brining the competitive level and creativity up. It’s only a matter of time where you’ll always be playing against another person rather than just the computer.
Interesting point Nathan, I think you are absolutely correct when it comes to new generations of consoles being an extremely difficult task for adoption and Facebook doesnt have that problem. There are many reasons why this parallel doesn’t work — but on a more general level it made sense.