“I don’t think Microsoft sold it in the right way–they weren’t strong enough,” says Codemasters founder David Darling.
Codemasters founder David Darling has said the Xbox One’s physical disc drive is like having a “dead body handcuffed to you,” and that console games publishers need to embrace the idea of lower prices.
Speaking about the backlash to Microsoft’s now-reversed Xbox One’s policies, Darling said Microsoft sold the idea of a digital future in the wrong way. “It was interesting how the market did pull back with Microsoft,” he said in an interview with GamesIndustry International.
“I don’t think Microsoft sold it in the right way–they weren’t strong enough. I don’t think they should have had a physical drive on Xbox One–it’s like having a dead body handcuffed to you. It’s dragging along this dead body and it’s going to slow them down. They’ve let the market pull them back but I think that was a mistake.”
After leaving Codemasters in 2007, Darling founded smartphone developer Kwalee, which is currently working on upcoming title Farm Fighters.
Darling also says that the price of console games needs to drop in order to stay competitive, and that such a move is inevitable for the games industry. “The price of console games has to drop otherwise they will not be competitive with Apple and Google,” he says.
“The industry will definitely move in that direction, and I think it will move very quickly. It’s a bit like flipping a coin–at some stage it will just flip. It will change in six months and everybody will wonder why it never changed before. There’s no point in distributing physical media when the internet exists.”
Ultimately, though, Darling thinks the mobile gaming has more opportunity for creative developers than the console market. “This industry has grown to be much bigger than the console and computer industries ever were,” he said.
“Now you’ve got games like Puzzle & Dragons, which has allowed creator GungHo to grow enormously in just a few years. If you hit upon something really innovative in the mobile sector then you can have hundreds of millions of downloads, and some of those people will want to spend money–but they don’t all have to. It’s the perfect model for games. It enables the creative people to be really innovative and to entertain bigger audiences.”
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