bradley newman

By SETH SCHIESEL Published: August 20, 2005

In the video game world, huge annual conventions like the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles and the Tokyo Game Show naturally attract lots of attention. But it is both easier and more accurate to take the industry's true temperature at small private gatherings like a conference organized by the Ziff Davis publishing company in northern California last week.

The roughly 100 invitees sat through a light schedule of formal presentations and talks, but much of the gathering's real substance emerged over the various dinners and rounds of cocktails, where one could see senior executives from rivals like Nintendo and Microsoft chatting amicably or a major player like Paul Eibeler, the chief executive of Take-Two, having a glass of wine with Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association. I'm sure the golf outing was great, too, but I didn't play.

(Full disclosure: I was invited to the event to participate in a panel discussion on how the media cover games, along with Chris Morris from the CNN/Money Web site and Dan Hsu, editor-in-chief of Ziff Davis's own Electronic Gaming Monthly. None of the social events were on the record, so I cannot quote many people by name, but I can report on the discussions' general tone and content.)

Two major themes emerged. First, much of the industry remains somewhat underwhelmed for now by the prospect of the new generation of video game consoles. The second, somewhat related, issue is that for all its growth in recent years, much of the industry fears that it is stagnating, both creatively and financially.

The conference's most valuable presentation was the Xbox 360 preview by Peter Moore, one of Microsoft's most senior game executives. Mr. Moore showed off some of the 360's appealing features, but ultimately his talk was as provocative for what it did not include as for what it did.

To begin, Mr. Moore talked about how carefully Microsoft considered the 360's actual box, how the company really wanted to move toward a sleeker, more organic look rather than the bulky, industrial design of the current Xbox. Then he explained how the 360's Internet capabilities are meant to make it a sort of Friendster or Myspace for gamers: a social network.

By far the coolest moments came when he showed off the 360's home media abilities. First he plugged an Apple iPod into one of the 360's USB ports. The Xbox immediately recognized the iPod, and in moments was streaming hip-hop beats. Then, as the music kept playing, he plugged a digital camera into another port on the 360, and the console displayed a slideshow of pictures taken at the conference's cocktail hour the previous evening.

That was impressive enough, but Mr. Moore then wowed the audience when he whipped out a PSP, the new portable game machine from Sony, Microsoft's nemesis in the game sector. In seconds he had the PSP plugged into the 360, and the Xbox was playing music stored on the Sony device.

So it is evident that the 360 both looks nice and sports some excellent features. But there was one important thing missing from Mr. Moore's presentation: any real, playable games. There was a canned video clip from the coming version of Project Gotham Racing and a demo from ATI, the chip company making the 360's graphics systems, but nothing anyone could get their hands on. (In terms of graphics quality, they seemed comparable to current high-end PC graphics - a compliment for a console that will cost $300.)

Microsoft is now promising that some actual 360 games will be available at a big trade event it is sponsoring in Amsterdam in early October - and underestimating Microsoft is always foolish. But the fact that the company did not seize the opportunity to show real games to a very influential insider audience mere months before the system's expected debut this fall was disappointing, and not just to me.

It reflected a generally blasé attitude toward not only the 360 but also the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Revolution, which are expected next year.

That vague sense of underexcitement even extends to some assessments of the industry's creative health. Gamers know that for every cool new concept like Katamari Damacy, Lumines or the Sims, there are scads of Grand Theft Auto clones and Doom knockoffs - pale imitations of games that broke new ground when they first appeared.

"We're running out of talent in our industry, and to a certain extent we are running out of creativity," Neil Young, general manager of the Los Angeles studio of Electronic Arts, acknowledged during his insightful talk at the conference.

In one sense, the imitative reflex is no different from those in other media, where innovative products like "Survivor" and "The Da Vinci Code" spawn loads of schlocky imitations.

The difference is that people who enjoy television keep watching television, allowing the networks to keep selling ads. Likewise, people who like mass-market books keep buying new beach-and-airplane books. Even casual gamers, however, pride themselves on being discerning. And if a gamer is not enthralled by a season's new crop, he might not buy anything at all. Instead, he will continue to play the game he bought last year, or even the one he bought two years ago.

That is why game companies keep falling over one another to build massively multiplayer games, with their recurring monthly fees. And it is also why the industry's reliance on rehashed concepts is ultimately such a threat to its bottom line.