Orange Lounge Radio

Here's a link to an article from the Escapist I first saw posted on Kotaku about how Wal-Mart can have control over what games publishers and developers make. Since apparently a ton of casual gamers actually go to Wal-Mart to buy their video games, putting your game on Wal-Mart's shelves can make a huge difference in profits. At the same time, Wal-Mart is a family store and refuses to carry anything that contains nudity or excessive gore. As a result, US releases of some games get their content toned down from Japanese and European versions so Wal-Mart will sell it. Indeed, Wal-Mart seems to have a final say over what publishers can release. Not only does this stifle creativity, but this has led to the decline of several existing genres.

"Wal-Mart and other retailers display an ever- decreasing range of game types. More and more, it is difficult-to-impossible to market an adventure game, or a non-Microsoft flight simulator, or a non-Maxis city-builder, or a non-Civilization turn-based strategy game. Did the audiences for these forms simply wither away? No, they're still out there - but they're not sufficiently profitable for big-box retail chains."

The article goes on and talks about how digital distribution may spell the end of Wal-Mart's influence on game developers. Soon enough, they won't need to sell games in actual stores anymore except to casual gamers. It's up to the publishers and developers to see if they care about casual gamers that much. As for me, long live the hardcore!

By the way, the article also explains the creation of Deer Hunter. It was made specifically for Wal-Mart's audience.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/40/11

In other news, the DS demo kiosk we were talking about earlier is actually just a DS in a box. If you've played a GBA or DS single-cart multiplayer game, you know exactly how this works already.

Anybody want to trade DS friend codes?