Triple-A games ‘aren’t going anywhere’

Triple-A games will not disappear in the near to long term future, industry icons Ian Livingstone and Peter Molyneux have claimed.

Speaking at the Bafta Games questions time, the games veterans agreed that triple-A development was here to stay, although the way in which customers recieve it may change.

“I don’t think triple-A games will ever go away because they are still leading the way in terms of production values, investment and R&D,” said Eidos life president Ian Livingstone.

“It’s just how the next consoles are going to survive, will there be any hardware after the next-generation? Probably not, it’ll probably all be embedded in TV.”

22 Cans founder and former creative director of Microsoft Games Studios Europe Peter Molyneux said that whilst the sector for blockbuster games would not disappear, there would be less and less titles meeting the high standards expected at the top-end of gaming.

“It is not going anywhere,” claimed Molyneux. ”There’s interesting research here comparing sales success with metacritic scores.

“Publishers are becoming more and more obsessed with metacritic bands. I think that’s going to squeeze the number of titles that come out. I think at E3 there were about 500 titles and last year we had 1000. I wouldn’t be surprised if that shrunk to sub 100 titles.”

Mediatonic co-founder Dave Bailey also said he believed that triple-A gaming stay around for the forseeable future, particularly as the industry was still only in the early stages of mobile development.

"I don’t think triple-a games are going anywhere," he said.

"I think they’re changing, they’re moving to more platforms and more users. We aren’t all going to stop wanting really high quality content as a result of that, we’re only at the early stages of mobile."