In one of the most surprising statements of the year, and it’s January 12th, one of the major players in the video game industry has claimed that the problem in the sector is the excess of supply.
Benoit Clerc, publishing manager at Nacon, a video game publisher and peripheral manufacturer, has reflected in a new interview on the current state of the gaming industry.
In statements to GamesIndustry.Biz, Clerc states that one of the problems faced by medium-sized publishers is that there are simply “too many games on the market” right now, which has left consumers with no time “to be able to play them”.
Explain that “when you look at Steam some days, there are 50 or 60 games released in a single day, so it’s harder to get enough traction to expose a game”.
The only way to succeed is with niches
Using some of Nacon’s games as an example, it argues that the way for a company to be successful is to target demographic niches.
“I’m not going to spend 200 million dollars on promotion, so I have to target players who feel passion and are experts in off-road racing when I do WRC, who are experts in rogue-like games when I do Ravenswatch, or who are experts in sports games when I do Cricket 24,” he explains.
“The current market is in a different situation when there are games that don’t have anything very specific to say to a specific group of players,” he says.
In my experience, this is true, especially because lately I have been trying to find new games on Steam. With so many options on the homepage, it is quite difficult for me to find quality games that appeal to me directly, unless I search within a very, very specific niche.
Although I have a general idea of the genres I like, the huge amount of options in each category sometimes makes me spend a lot of time making sure I’m getting the most out of my money.
