There could come a time on the not-so-distant future when all your games are piped to you over the internet via subscription-based services.

That's according to EA Sports label VP Andrew Wilson, who sees a possible future in which the games industry goes entirely digital.

"If we look at what consumers have pushed other industries for: if we look at what consumers forced the music industry to provide, if we look at what consumers have driven as a result of television and movie subscription, if you look at us - there's absolutely a time somewhere at some point in the future where the consumers say, 'Hey, this is how we want to interact with you: we want to give you a monthly or annual subscription and we want access to everything you make'," said Wilson.


"They get to drive the time and place for it, and a lot of it is technology dependent, but absolutely we can see a future where that might be the way we deliver games," he added.

With regards to the technological boundaries for such a future, Wilson said it's not the consoles that are restrictive but the global internet infrastructure that can't yet come with huge games being served digitally. "It's less about the generation and more about internet infrastructure," he said.

"The thing about consoles [is] that's a lot of content: six, seven gigs of information. Right now there are some places in the world where you can move that size of information around relatively seamlessly; there are a lot of places you can't," he went on.

"Right now the consoles themselves could facilitate it, but there are other barriers to entry that make getting it from Game or GameStop a viable proposition, at least today."

Sony has already taken a step in this direction with its PlayStation Plus subscription service which allows gamers access to vast amounts of content for a fixed monthly fee.

EA Sports president Peter Moore recently hinted that EA Sports games may soon integrate persistent player profiles that allow users to carry save progress over from one game to another

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While many question the true graphical benefit a new console generation would bring, Square Enix worldwide technology director Julien Merceron is confident the new hardware will offer significantly more realistic games that will compare more closely to CGI movies.

"I think that we're still going to see a big leap in graphics," he said. "In terms of technology I think we'll see developers taking advantage of physically-based rendering, physically-based lighting. I think people will take advantage of global illumination, or at least some form approximation of global illumination, so that could have a significant impact on graphics quality."

These are techniques currently used by CGI movies, which Merceron says will offer studios the opportunity to take assets directly from CGI flicks and reuse them in next-gen games. "It's going to enable new forms of art direction, but it's also going to enable deeper convergence between multiple media - being able to share more assets horizontally between movies, TV series and games," he said.

He goes on to say realistic-looking games will benefit most from the new advances rather than cartoony style games. "If you take most of the Pixar movies from the last five to six years... do you see a big difference between one that was released five years ago, and one that was released last year? I'm actually not sure we see a huge difference," he explained.

"But if you take a film like Avatar, there's a huge leap in the graphics techniques that are being used and the level of realism. The conclusion I would draw from that is we might end up seeing the difference way more in realistic-looking games, rather than those trying to achieve a cartoony look."

Nintendo's Wii U console compares in processing power to the current-gen HD consoles, but a much bigger generational leap is expected from Microsoft and Sony's next efforts.

But who will jump first? M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon has speculated that the release of a new Xbox may leave the hardcore market wide open for a PS3 clean sweep.

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You'll be used to reading about Wii dominating hardware sales this generation, but which of the other two consoles will, in the end, come in second place?

While Xbox 360 remains marginally ahead of the PS3 on a global sales basis, PS3 is catching up and analysts note its 10% lead over Xbox 360 sales so far this year.

"The Xbox 360 does have a 5% lead over the PlayStation 3 worldwide, a minimal difference," noted EEDAR's Jesse Divnich, While he says that "the race is neck and neck" considering factors such as Xbox 360's higher replacement rate and PS3 being "a tad bit more future proof", he goes on to note that PS3 is winning this year.

"If one looks at the total amount of sales through the first 6 months of 2011, the PlayStation 3 has sold about 10% more than the Xbox 360, worldwide, so the PlayStation 3 is definitely gaining ground," he told Industry Gamers.

But, he later adds, "the Xbox 360 has increased its velocity without the aid of any price cuts or redesigns over the last year ... The only reasoning that seems plausible is the Kinect or the strength of its software library has reached some sort of tipping point making the Xbox 360 an incredible value to consumers at its current price points."

Colin Sebastian of RW Baird suggests that while Xbox is still holding strong with the launch of Kinect and strong software propping it up, he says "you would never want to count the PS3 out".

"For instance," he adds, "if Sony combined a strong first party lineup (e.g. Uncharted/Resistance) with another hardware price reduction, I believe we would see a nice pick-up in unit sales this fall."

While Xbox 360 is comfortably outselling PS3 in the US, sales data from Strategy Analytics suggested back in April that the global installed base of Sony's console reached 43.4 million at the close of 2010, compared to 42.9 million for Microsoft's system.

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After creating quite a stir upon its unveiling last week, the Limited Edition Star Wars Xbox 360 console has been given a £349.99 RRP in the UK.

The highest price Xbox 360 hardware available on the High Street right now is the £299.99 250GB Kinect bundle, though this can typically be found for anything up to £40 cheaper than RRP.

Other SKUs include the vanilla 4GB console (£150), the 250GB standalone (£200) and the 4GB Kinect version (£250).

As reported last week, the Star Wars console itself is styled on charismatic robot RD-D2 with the controller boasting C3PO stylings. The Kinect sensor also boasts an exclusive white finish.

The machine will include a 320GB HDD and includes custom Star Wars SFX for operations like powering on and ejecting discs, plus a copy of both the Star Wars game and Kinect Adventures.

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Nothing is too expensive if enough people are willing to pay the price, and Microsoft says that it may not yet have found the price ceiling for titles released over Xbox Live Arcade.

XBLA portfolio director Chris Charla has admitted that the average price of a title on the service has risen, but that sales have not been negatively affected.

"If you look at Live Arcade, and do the math, and look at the publicly available sales numbers, you can see that average prices on XBLA have crept up over the last few years,” he told Games Industry.

“That has been an interesting trend because on some app markets there's been a race to zero as fast as possible.

"We've seen a little bit of the opposite happening. I don't really know where prices are going to go – ultimately, that's set by the market – but it has been really gratifying to see that people are willing to a premium price for digital content."

In 2009 just 21 games out of the 86-strong XBLA release schedule were priced at 1200 Microsoft Points, Last year that rose to 27 out of 85 titles, and already in 2010 we’ve had 20 games charging that top tier price, the site reports.

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The US arm of online retailer Amazon has suspended sales of Nintendo’s new handheld the 3DS.

“While this item is available from other marketplace sellers on this page, it is not currently offered by Amazon.com because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it's described here.

“We’re working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.”

Examiner speculates that the move may be connected to an alleged screen-scratching issue, where some users have reported marks being left on the machine’s upper screen.

The site also claims newer shipments of the 3DS boast slightly longer rubber feet to protect against the issue, though there is no official confirmation of this.

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The hunger for glasses-free 3D screen technology is misjudged, Sony’s 3D gaming boss Mick Hocking has claimed.

"There are already glasses-free TVs, big screens and small screens out there," he told Eurogamer. "The problem with glasses-free, or auto-stereoscopic as it's called, is that it has inherent limitations.

"With stereoscopic 3D, however you do it, you've got to get one image to the left eye and one image to the right eye to produce the stereoscopic effect. So with all these screens they typically have a sweet spot for where you need to put your head in distance and in angle, and if you move your head relative to it, you break the 3D effect until you get into the next pair of images, and you see artefacts going across the screen.”

Hocking went on to criticise some of the current glasses-free 3D already on the market, though he stopped short of actually naming the 3DS.

"We've also seen with mobile devices, if it's a mobile device you move relative to your head and it's got a 3D screen, that will break the 3D effect. It won't work very well,” he added.


"There's lots and lots of work going on with auto-stereoscopic screens because people wearing glasses is something extra for them to do to enjoy the content. We've been saying over the last 12 months, if the content is good enough and compelling enough, the only way at the moment to enjoy full high definition 3D is on TVs with the glasses."

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EA will smash its $1bn digital target this year, analysts have predicted.It follows the publisher’s $750m to $1.3bn acquisition of PopCap. The move means EA is now back as the No.2 publisher on Facebook (behind Zynga) and its mobile revenues should top $300m this year.

EA made $833m in digital revenue in its last financial year.

“There’s no one like us. There isn’t a competitor that’s a leader in console, PC, DLC, microtransaction, iOS and social networks,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello. “Today about a quarter of industry revenue comes from mobile, social, tablet and casual PC. We expect that 25 per cent to rise to 50 per cent or more in the coming five years.

“We’ve been stepping down investment against our core packaged goods business, and stepping up investment against digital opportunity. This year we’re getting close to 50/50. Three years ago, we were closer to 90/10.

“Virtually everything we’re doing now is against the digital opportunity. It’s where we see our growth. It’s where we see our margin expansion. It gets us that less seasonable, more ratable, and more profitable business.”

IHS Screen Digest analysts said in a report shown to MCV: “EA should realise its ambition of creating a $1bn digital business this fiscal year with aplomb.”

EA is the West’s leading iOS publisher, success which has offset a decline in traditional mobile gaming.Last year EA generated $242m from mobile games alone, and this year IHS Screen Digest predicts that number will exceed $300m thanks to the PopCap Games buyout.

PopCap is just the latest in a long line of acquisitions that have boosted EA’s mobile aspirations. In 2006 the company bought JamDat for $680m to essentially launch EA Mobile, last year Angry Birds-publisher Chillingo was purchased for $17m, while this year the firm has acquired iOS developer Firemint and port specialists Mobile Post Production.

“The fastest growing part of the mobile industry is the smartphone, all of which are game-ready devices,” said EA chief John Riccitiello.“We estimate that 64 per cent of the owners of smartphones use them to play games.”

EA is making aggressive moves in the full game PC download space by creating EA Origin. The new service is currently a rebranded version of its EA Store, but the publisher is recruiting technical and regional staff to turn this into something more in-line with rivals such as Steam.EA’s ambition to grow this part of its digital business suffered a set-back after a disagreement with Steam that means some of its titles – such as the upcoming Battlefield 3 – will not be sold through the platform.

EA’s biggest digital market comes from DLC and free-to-play (including Facebook), which combined generated $295m during its last financial year.

On Facebook EA acquired developer Playfish for $400m in 2009. Playfish has seen its revenue grow in that time, but its market share fell 4.2 per cent in 2010 (according to IHS Screen Digest), meanwhile Farmville developer Zynga increased its dominance of the market by growing its share 7.6 per cent.

As a result EA temporarily lost its position as the second biggest Facebook publisher to German firm Wooga. EA is now back at No.2 after the acquisition of PopCap as the developer is successful on the social network with games like Bejeweled Blitz. PopCap has also enjoyed success on Chinese social network RenRen thanks to a version of Plants vs Zombies re-made by its Shanghai studio.

EA will likely grow its Facebook business with the release of The Simpsons and The Sims social games later this year.EA’s Riccitiello believes free games with revenue generated from microtransactions will become more significant to EA in the future: “It would not surprise me to see microtransactions become our largest potential revenue stream in the course of the fullness of time,” he said.In terms of DLC, EA will grow this segment primarily through its Battlefield and FIFA games. FIFA 11 is on-course to generate $64m in digital revenue by the end of its lifespan, double what FIFA 10 achieved. This is expected to grow for FIFA 12.

“We’re starting to see significant digital leverage per packaged goods franchise,” said EA’s CFO Eric Brown. “What we’re looking to do is to get more titles into $50m+ digital extension level like we’ve done with FIFA and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.”

The success of EA’s subscription business this year will rest heavily on when Star Wars: The Old Republic is released. If the BioWare-developed MMO manages to arrive during this financial year, EA can expect to comfortably beat last year’s total, which was driven by EA’s legacy MMOs and casual games network Pogo. In-game advertising is continuing to have a difficult time.

“Subscriptions will grow substantially once Star Wars: The Old Republic launches,” said Game Investor Consulting analyst Nick Gibson. “I do think there will be a lot of people who buy the boxed ...

A new report offering data and expert insight on the iPad/tablet market is available via this very website.

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With some forecasts projecting as many as 70m units to be sold this year alone, it's a sector that can't be ignored - and needs to be understood. Here you'll find the sales figures, the projections, the apps, the user habits... and 50 key products.

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