Ener1 Group / Nival interview #2

[Slaughter]

Computer Games Magazine released their second part of the Ener1 / Nival interview today. It's Nival's business development director Mike Allenson who's in focus this time, and you can find the interview here (first part here).

 

Computer Games - The press release indicated that the focus of the new Nival will be on next generation console and wireless games. Does this mean that the PC game market is not as attractive to Nival anymore?

 

Mike Allenson - The worst thing we could do is forget where we're from and how we got to where we are today. PC will continue to be a major part of our culture and development, and is still the absolute best platform to make strategy games - our greatest strength. As I mentioned, the video game industry is global, and many of the world's emerging economies, which offer the largest growth potential, are almost exclusively PC.

[Pete]

Sounds good to me - very positive for us

 

I think after Silent Storm, Sentinels, the upcoming Hammer & Sickle and the other one I can't remember the name of (was it Nightwatch?), plus the whole slew of other popular strategy games they're currently raking in profits from they'd be absolutely crazy to just change direction and just ignore everything they've done so far!

[Slaughter]

Indeed! I don't think they will stop making PC games anytime soon. What I DO worry about is the direction of these PC games. If they start developing games that are meant for consoles as well to begin with, we may end up with dumbed down games . Look what happened to Deus Ex Invisible War (for multiple platforms) compared to Deus Ex (for PC)!

[Thorondor]

"What I DO worry about is the direction of these PC games."

 

My sentiments exactly, Olav...

 

::

 

Let's just hope for the best.

[Slaughter]

Indeed Thorondor! The only thing keeping my hopes up is that I do not think Nival wish to dumb down their games. As Mike says in the interview, they are strategy fans themselves, and PC is what got them where they are. I doubt they would be happy making retarded console games.

[Zombie]

Actually, this doesn't seem to be as bad as we may have initially thought. Nival is happy with the situation, and so does the Ener1 Group. That's a very good sign. It also looks like Nival is still in charge of their gaming section. The Ener1 Group just owns Nival, its not going to play any role in game development. Another good thing, as "too many cooks spoil the broth" so to speak!

 

From the interview, PC games are going to be the main-focus for Nival. Those next-gen games for mobile platforms are going to be phased in slowly. This should keep Nival firmly rooted in the PC gaming market, at least for the immediate future. With Ener1 Group's capital, and Nival's experience, I think we can continue to expect some excellent games from them.

[KoMik]

If Nival does fast some 'Britney-Spears-Pop" games ((which they will never do)) for consoles and spend that 'extra' money what they get from those to developments of their great PC-games... I don't see no problems in it. But if they move they best workers to console games and don't hire new experts (russians got lots of them) may cause many problems to their PC-games (you might know that even before this 'fusion' some Nival games were 'filled' with bugs when published).

 

If they manage develop console games better... well... that's a good thing (but bad to me because I sold my consoles about year ago and then I have to buy those back...oOops I did it again).

 

Mony Mony Mony... you know that entertaiment which sells very-very good in this human-material-world are products what parents/family can (or have to under the pressure) buy to their childrens... actually I pay my rent and electrity with jobs like those .