As many of us know, the video game industry is going through its every-five-year slump that happens as consumers transition to the next generation of video game consoles. This means that many of the
top game publishers suffered last quarter, primarily because the Xbox 360 is the only next generation console to arrive so far, with the next offerings from Sony and Nintendo due out later this year.
But game developers will have to offer more than fancier graphics to lure increasingly picky consumers into the next generation. At a recent industry conference, "Sims" creator Will Wright shed light
on a new project for the Xbox 360 that would let consumers create game content. Wright said the new Xbox would encourage developers to let players add on to worlds and even sell their creations
through a central Xbox store. It would be a sort of "open source" model for massively multiplayer online games. Such an idea jives nicely with other media trends that paint a picture of a consumer who
has a voracious appetite for customized entertainment. Of course, this kind of customization has already penetrated the PC game world, where massively multiplayer online games have become second lives
for many people. Developers create the game engine, and consumers pretty much find ways to interact with and change the environment. So far, these types of games have played well (excuse the pun) with
the early adopting tech geek audience. This would be the first push to bring MMOGs to the more mainstream console gaming market. As one game developer put it: "If only 1 percent of our audience that
plays Halo helped construct the world around Halo, it would be more human beings than work at Microsoft Corporation. That's how much human energy we could harness in this medium."
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