Geomerics: Industry must deliver a better gaming experience
CEO Gary Lewis believes companies need to keep working harder to get gamers spending
The games industry must look carefully at how it can improve the gaming experience if it is to shrug off the impact of recession and "continue to persuade people to buy games."
That's according to Geomerics CEO Gary Lewis, who was also confident that the Enlighten middleware developer faced a strong year ahead.
"I think it helps a great deal," he said when asked if a tightening economy helps middleware companies. "I think our original goal was to do that - to take Enlighten, and other products over time, which were traditionally some of the more inherent problems that the industry's had, and solve them. So we'd become a specialist team for areas that were difficult.
"I think also, the way the market's gone, it only speeds up our business plan - but ultimately what we're about is to allow game developers and publishers to do what they do best, which is just create games. We want to supply them with solutions that have historically been difficult, but we can concentrate on them and solve them, and help increase the gameplay experience in the market place - which we think is incredibly key during these difficult time."
And he went on to explain that while he did believe the games industry should look carefully at development costs, this year it would be crucial to create ever-better games to entice gamers into spending.
"I think every industry is looking at costs," he said. "Even the games industry has to be very aware of what they're spending on games. We're fortunate in the fact that the industry is still very buoyant, and still growing at a tremendous rate - but we have to be aware that this probably will not continue at the extent that it has. I'm sure developers and publishers are looking at the overall costs, and they're looking at areas they can save - and Enlighten would help them.
"But more importantly they have to look at areas they can use to increase the gaming experience going forward. I think in this difficult year the gaming experience has to be increased dramatically, we have to continue to persuade people to buy games, which means we probably have to speed up our technology and deliver bigger and better things on a more regular basis."
The full interview with Gary Lewis, as well as company founder Chris Doran, is available now.