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Oberon Media's new COO, Don Ryan, believes that there is little difference between male and female gamers.
"Myexperience at MSN and Xbox Live is that women are as competitive if notmore competitive than men, except that they just don't want to spend orhave the time or learn 'up-down-X-X-Y-Y'...They don't want to deal withthat," he told GamesIndustry.biz. "You give them one button, they'll kick your butt."
Ryanalso recognises that although the current generation of consoles aren'tnecessarily considered as casual devices, that could changesignificantly over time - so that while the USD 300-500 price points ofthe Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 can compare with the PlayStation 2 whenit launched, Sony's older console has a much bigger casual appeal today.
"Iagree with your general premise in that, if I'm a single mom thatreally likes puzzle games, I'm not necessarily going to go and buy aPlayStation 3 to come home and download Bejeweled," he said.
"Whenwe designed Xbox Live Arcade...That's the reason it had a retro-arcadetilt to it. We knew that we had to have the rabid owner of the boxcompletely engaged. So, you know, Geometry Wars and the rest of it.
Then, what happens, underneath it you have this nice foundation of Hexic, Bejeweled and Astro Pop."
Ryanknew that the users of the Xbox 360, and those who paid for content andservices, were often different people - giving Microsoft the potentialto reach both.
"What we tried to do was, again, segment intothese two core audiences, with some content bridging - puzzle gamesalways bridge, especially action puzzle games - and link them to thecommunity."
"And what ended up happening is exactly what wethought. 'Hey, I'm familiar with that. I know how to play that! Get outof my way. Oh, I beat you!. And then the competition kicks in..."
To date, Oberon's titles haven't yet appeared on the PlayStation Network or WiiWare - but that could change in the near future.
"Ultimately,what we're going to try to concentrate on are a few set of coreplatforms, then we'll partner with people for expanding thedistribution of our intellectual property across other platforms," hesaid.
"Just like any publisher who is focused, we are going toidentify potential franchise extensions and find people who are just asexcited about our IP for those devices."
So, while the companydoesn't have any plans to internally build WiiWare games, for example,that doesn't mean they won't talk to other parties about exploitingtheir IP on other platforms.
"Ultimately, what you are going tosee is the PS3, the Xbox 360...as the price curves comes down, you aregoing to see more and more casual content."