Orange County’s video game developers are like kids in an arcade.
They’ve never seen their prospects look so good, even by the standards of the growing video game business.
The current crop of game consoles and handheld players make for the broadest market yet in the four-decade history of video games.
“For independents like us who are putting out two, three, maybe four titles a year, I think there’s tremendous growth,” said Brian Fargo, founder and chief executive of Newport Beach-based inXile Entertainment Inc. and a veteran of the business dating back to the early 1980s.
Video games, which go in cycles based on the release of consoles and handheld devices, are at the starting point of the next go-round.
Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. recently came out with their latest consoles. At the same time, older consoles,Sony’s earlier PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360,are holding their own. In prior transitions, old consoles tended to fall by the wayside.
Wide Audience
The result is a wide-ranging market, from grown-ups playing edgier games on PlayStation and Xbox to families gravitating to Nintendo’s new Wii console and kids fixated by Nintendo’s handheld DS player.
“There are many more channels to develop for, more than there has ever been,” said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the Mount Royal, N.J.-based International Game Developers Association.
There’s another option: the Web.
Last week, Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment, part of France’s Vivendi, came out with the latest version of its “World of Warcraft” game, in which millions of players face off over the Internet.
Analysts expect Blizzard to sell millions of copies at $20 each. It’s another $15 per month to play online.
OC counts a handful of game developers, led by Blizzard. Others include Newport Beach-based Foundation 9 Entertainment Inc. and Irvine’s Point of View Inc.
The range of game devices now out could spur a wave of speculative development, inXile’s Fargo said.
Developing a game for Xbox or PlayStation 3, which came out in limited release for the holidays, costs $7 million on average and can go as high as $50 million, he said.
For Wii (pronounced “we”) or the handheld DS, games cost $1 million or less, Fargo said.
“We can take a concept creatively and get it on the system for not a lot of money,” he said. “We can experiment, we can move quickly and we don’t have to risk everything you’ve worked on.”
Wii and DS are getting a lot of attention for their broad appeal.
“PlayStation 3 and the Xbox are going bigger, badder,” said Jon Goldman, chief executive of Foundation 9 Entertainment. “Wii is about playability and fun,it’s not the graphics. The game-playing market is large and diverse enough that both of those needs are valid.”
Last year, $12 billion in game devices, software and accessories were sold, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc.
At inXile, hopes are high for the console version of the quirky Internet game “Line Rider,” created by a Slovenian student as a project in an illustration class.
Like an interactive Etch-A-Sketch, players create a field of twists and turns and then set a sled-rider loose to navigate them.
Nearly 13,000 player creations have turned up on YouTube since September.
“Clearly they’ve scratched a nerve,” Fargo said. “We’re going to make it a game but keep the toy of it.”
InXile bought the rights to make versions of the game for Wii and DS. They’re due in spring, Fargo said.
Developers have to place bets on which console to develop for, Foundation 9’s Goldman said, though the risks aren’t as high as they were during the last console cycle.
They also face big competition from games from console makers as well as from Redwood City-based Electronic Arts Inc.
The broad scope of the current crop of consoles has leveled the playing field some, said Rob Sandberg, director of business development for Point of View.
The developer is hedging its bets with a push for Wii as well as games for PlayStation. Last week, it started shipping a PlayStation game based on the TV series “The Shield.”
