EEDAR's Jesse Divnich

The music genre is over-saturated. There's a lot of releases, a lot of competition. Music peaked in late 2008 and we will down in 2009. I believe consumers got their fill in music quickly and exited the category much sooner than anticipated. Additionally, you can only sell so many hardware band kits before you reach a maximum saturation point, after that you must transition your base to software and digital purchases, and while that has worked, it has only been successful among the core of the industry.

On DJ Hero, I was disappointed in European sales. Most analysts, if not all, were expecting the majority of sales to come from the UK and mainland Europe where house/trance music is popular. Unfortunately, US analysts were wrong as North American sales are looking to outpace European sales.

I was shocked to see Guitar Hero 5 outsell the Beatles in the UK. You should all be ashamed of yourself!

We were surprised Guitar Hero beat The Beatles in the UK. Maybe The Beatles are bigger now in the US than in the UK. The Beatles still sold a lot though. We talk about it 'failing' against Guitar Hero, and that's the problem, we talk about Rock Band and compare it to Guitar Hero, but when we take Guitar Hero out of the picture, we see that Rock Band is a billion dollar franchise. It's one of the top 10 franchises of all times. That's a big achievement and it's nothing to sniff at.

Well, how do you get bigger than The Beatles? The music genre will probably show steady declines for a few years until someone comes along with some breakthrough innovation to rejuvenate life back into the genre. What that will be? I don’t know. If I knew, I’d be designing it and so would you.

It's because our industry works off persistent fads. I say the word 'fad', and some publishers hate it, but fad shouldn’t have this negative connotation. It's a good thing. Fads can last in the gaming industry for three or four years and if you can get four years out of a product, that's great.

It's one fad replacing another. Music's dying and then here comes fitness. In 2006 when the Wii was released, music was just beginning to pick up. As music was picking up so was casual gaming. As casual gaming picked up so was the fitness category. That's what drove the growth of the industry – three booms happening at once. The problem is they have a lifespan and all three movements are beginning to die all at once. The core of the industry couldn’t be healthier. The core of the industry has been up every single year and will produce gains this year despite the industry as a whole declining. That's never going to stop. It's the satellites demographics, the non-traditional gamers, the casual gamers – they need a reason to come back and keep playing games and the truth is they can only buy so many Rock Bands and so many Wii Fits.

Yes, Natal will be viewed as a gimmick. I hate to use the word 'gimmick', but that's what we need as consumers. We need a feature to stick out and grab our attention and being able to advertise a peripheral that completely drops the need for a physical input device, like a controller, will be huge. Although I personally believe the Natal will deliver a very deep and sophisticated gaming experience. However, the non-traditional and casual side of the industry will look at the Natal as an exciting new product that they will probably get bored of within 18 months.

It’s for the same reason Transformers is in the top ten for box office revenue of all time. The movie was bashed by critics, the story line and acting had little depth, but it sold well. Why? Because it had a gimmick, a hook, an angle. It had branded transforming robots from our childhood with a smoking hot chick.

The entertainment industry is very risky and anyone working in it will tell you the same. I’ve personally always said that the entertainment industry, which includes movies, games, music and fashion, is the riskiest businesses to be in. If you’re in this industry to make a fortune, quickly, you are crazy. If you want riches, buy an oil company. Consumer’s appetites change so quick in this industry that even the best products will fail without some sort of hook or gimmick to them. Entertainment is a crapshoot.

Yes, I do. I think it's a crapshoot. That's why Zynga and Playfish have done so well – they've just tossed Jello at the wall and seen what sticks. That used to be the philosophy of the old PlayStation and PlayStation 2 days. Publishers were just throwing games at the wall to see what sticks. Unfortunately games got so expensive that they couldn't do that any more. Research in games did not exist in 2000. If it sounded like a good idea, it would be made to see if it worked. It's much riskier launching a game title in this generation than ever before because of the increase in failures. And the extreme increase in costs.

The Wii became a social epidemic. Everybody had to have a Wii and they didn't know why. Unfortunately, social epidemics whether positive or negative, will eventually fizzle. Which is why I truly believe we're going to see a successor to the DS next year, the DS 2. A new piece of hardware from Nintendo.

In terms of games, digital distribution is still very hard to grasp. It's tough because it's technology ahead of its time. The PSPgo and the PS3 are well ahead of their time. When digital distribution is standard 10 years from now we're going to look back and see the PSPgo as being there first, and we'll put it on a pedestal as the first console to make the jump, even though it might not be that commercially successful. The success of the PSPgo has more to do with its commercial success, it's about what it represents for this industry for digital distribution.