Next-gen is “a better marketplace” – EEDAR

EEDAR president Geoffrey Zatkin shares observations on how the new consoles compare to the last generation

In a talk on Wednesday of GDC week at 11:00AM (Room 3007, West Hall), EEDAR president and chief product officer Geoffrey Zatkin will provide an overview of his “Awesome Video Game Data” for 2014. While Zatkin will dive into trends and analysis for every sector of the market from mobile to console, he spoke exclusively with GamesIndustry International in advance to discuss how the new consoles stack up with the launch of the last-gen (PS3, 360, Wii). The takeaway? This new generation of consoles is actually catering to a slightly older audience, and there’s more potential to better monetize content than ever before.

Comparing the games released during the first three months of the last generation to this one, it’s clear that there are more mature titles in each system’s respective portfolio. From PS3 to PS4, the portfolio jumped from around eight percent mature-rated games up to 17 percent; on Xbox One it’s up to about 21 percent; even on Wii U mature games are approaching 10 percent.

“E10+ was considered maybe not the kiss of death but only sports games ever got rated E10+. If you look at how it’s shifted from PS3 to PS4 they only have half the number of Everyone games launched. E10+ was boosted and a lot of it has come out of teen. They have also doubled the amount of Mature games that have been coming out. We usually don’t see such radical shifts. They are redefining who their market is when you look at who they’re targeting age wise. They’ve shifted away in some ways from an audience below 10 fairly dramatically. They are going for an older audience skew on this one,” Zatkin commented.