Jaffe: Digital platforms need more commercial hits
Eat, Sleep, Play boss warns of visibility danger arising from too much content
David Jaffe, the head of Eat, Sleep, Play studio and creator of the God of War franchise, believes that the digital platforms - principally Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network - need a more hit-driven mentailty if they are to thrive in the future, despite his love of indie and artistic titles such as Flower.
"For the love of f***ing god, put some commercial titles on XBLA. [With Battlefield 1943] EA's the first company to really go out there and say 'Hey, we're speaking to our console consumer...' Let's think a little bit more about what the consumer wants."
Speaking in the opening session of this year's DICE Summit, taking place this week at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, he also agreed that those platforms are facing issues regarding visibility as a result of too much content being available - but that it was nothing new.
"There's absolutely that danger," he said. "But there's that danger at retail, or when you go to buy a car," adding that he felt XBLA was "in more danger" than PSN because of the greater level of content.
However, he pointed out, marketing has a role to play in generating brand awareness and rising above the rest of the noise.
Jaffe, whose follow up to God of War II was the casual title Calling All Cars! revealed that he felt in some ways working on the game - a PSN exclusive - had been a mistake, but one of the lessons learned was that game creators needed to put the end user's needs higher up the priority chain.
He was joined onstage by David Crane, who pioneered the creation of games in the early days of the industry on the Atari 2600 - Pitfall among them - underlined the threat by using the iPhone as an example.
"It's my favourite platform," he said, "but there are 150,000 apps... Any teenager in his bedroom with a Mac can build an app and put it on the App Store."
The DICE Summit, organised by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, will later feature a keynote from Disney Interactive Studios president Stephen Wadsworth, while Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will deliver a talk on Thursday.