Darren Herman

If you’re in the video game industry or watching it closely, you probably want to have Adrian Crook on your radar screen as you probably already subscribe to Raph Koster and Nabeel Hyatt’s RSS feeds.  Adrian is head of Relic Labs (THQ), trying to figure out new ways of developing and monetizing games through different [...]

I spent part of my Sunday afternoon reading a presentation given by Paul Heydon, Managing Director of Avista Partners.  The purpose of the presentation was a strategic overview of the space for M&A purposes.  Being in the industry, I found most of the information redundant, but I did like how he highlighted the following:
Trends in [...]

Microsoft reported that it has generated about $125M off of virtual asset sales through it’s proprietary Xbox Live platform. This equates almost $18 per user, or 6 transactions of precisely $2.78.
What I find interesting is that the market today is all about the hardcore gamer purchasing virtual goods (currency, characters, etc) through services like [...]

In one of John Riccitiello’s first in-depth interviews since taking the helm of the world’s largest game publisher [EA], he speaks openly about a lack of innovation of building and monetizing games.
He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court “casual” consumers and to experiment more with new [...]