Aside from those talking to Europe, I know very few in the US who use Skype for voice/video communication. I’m not sure why it’s so big there (maybe phone call prices for more frequent cross border calls? maybe they’re smarter and don’t mind the settup process for cheap voice/video? who knows), but here it’s primarily just another IM technology. My business partner is european and a major Skype user, who periodically asks me to get on voice with him (across town), but I don’t see why I’d use fairly lousy voice when I could just use my unlimited voice minutes on ATT. I have dozens of Skype users in my list, but the americans tend to stay gray, and those that are active IM me, while the bulk of active users all light up during european activity hours.

In terms of the massive number of Skype users that Wagstaff mentions, it does seem like all of Europe is on Skype. I’d suggest that this isn’t the same early adopter audience we used to see on Skype, as much as it’s just everyone who wants to save on phone calls, so integration with social media isn’t the no-brainer hit he implies. I feel that perhaps Skype’s primary competitor in the US is the chronically underrated MagicJack, which exploits the complexity of competitors’ installation processes to rule the market.

Also, although it’s a bit difficult to track the actual usage of a freestanding app like Skype, it’s even harder to track Twitter usage, given the heavy reliance on third-party apps for usage, although Fred Wilson puts in a credible attempt. I’m just not sure that Skype really eclipses competitors within the social space in the way Wagstaff’s numbers assume. Especially as I’m not sure it’s really a social thing as used in Europe today. -Vivox is much more a product of the social era.

In a recent interview, Josh Silverman described a situation in which “1/3 of usage is video, despite the fact that video calls can only be 1-1. Voice calls are multi-party.” Which shows that Skype actually isn’t doing spectacularly well with multi-party voice calls for social purposes, where new players, like Vivox and Ventrillo are highly active and and have cultivated strong relationships with that audience.

If Skype can do some brilliant things involving integration with social nets on mobile devices (bypassing carrier voice functionality), maybe they do win big worldwide, but I think that will be a hard space to take, and I’m not sure they’re actually the best positioned to do that right now.

btw: If you’re a business (game developer, designer, marketing folks, etc.) that’d like to participate in superfluid, for a limited time you can submit for the beta here.

-Nathan

So, my question to industry folks is; does this seem to have enough value to developers that it’s something on which I should spend my own spare time as well as that of a few other folks, to get it started?

EA is actually in a rough position; unlike Activision/Blizzard and others that have been successful in creating/acquiring succesful alternate distribution and models, they are sort of in the process of another re-start of such efforts. Apple would largely get them out of this bind, as they could grow and learn on Apple’s digital distribution platform from a privileged position, while also growing their IP base and sales generally.

The game media websites have been handy resources, as they provided easy searchability for the in-depth reviews that are required to drive such a considered purchase. But still largely the same old content; deep editorial previews and reviews, cheats, walkthroughs, etc.

Don’t get me wrong; at the time of their inception, Gamespot and IGN (or at least the interesting part of its amalgam, Gamespy) were unique and groundbreaking beyond such simple content. It’s just that they’ve atrophied and their founding sparks have departed, as conventional media entities have taken over. Gamespy, with community building/user-generated content and the early integration of their matchmaking technology into frontline games, prefaced most of what’s interesting and groundbreaking today in the web generally, so many years later. Gamespot had a sub-focus on collecting all of a user’s interests into something presaging a semantic web sort of solution (that its founder is focused on today), and a content-licensing model that worked uniquely well, built on consistency of quality. If Surfas and Broady were building their game businesses now, they’d certainly be something a lot more interesting than what their abandoned offspring are up to.

Today, there far are better solutions for gamers than conventional in-depth static content. Integration of game content (via XML feeds, add-on functionality, etc.) facilitates play in a much more satisfying way than the simple aggregation of non-editorial game info (cheats, etc.). -It sort of makes you wonder if the conventional media entities will always be buying the dying limbs on the tree. Ziff’s creation, then shedding, of 1Up to Hearst, sort of epitomizes the inclination. The trend for these publications seems to be static or downward, and definitely has the feel of print pubs of 2006.  The Escapist does a nice job of providing depth and analysis for anyone wanting a good and informed read about a game or the industry, with value based upon its quality and bloggy style and structure; rather than all-inclusiveness or hardcore dissection of gameplay. And as we come closer to a business model for game sales that actually works, and we really do seem to be on that course, editorial and news from Kotaku (and, on the indie side, playthisthing.com) should be the sort of resource to drive game sales. Because that provides a much more appropriate and useful level of information for a category of entertainment product that’s now so much more diverse and flexible in form.

EA’s woes are widely documented, including closing the door on the Wii horse a bit late. THQ now seems in dreadful shape, with only Activision Blizzard truly flourishing among the majors. There are endemic issues with the existing models for game sales, and as we move to digital distribution, it remains difficult for the big publishers to find the right way to that transition.

When you look at smaller publishers/larger developers, the current economy is painfully throttling, as development of a conventional title takes a significant period of time, and is generally dependent upon debt or external funding for some portion of the cycle. Alternate models are able to coast a bit at the moment, and hopefully will find a way to thrive; many online startups were funded last year and continue on that investment. -The word is that A rounds are not happening, but Bs are solid, although it’s hard to get real stats on that sort of thing.

With various low-overhead casual intitiatives (including iPhone) thriving, I suppose it’s a nice time to be a garage developer. But the two entities that are doing fantastically well are Activision Blizzard and Gamestop. Activision because it’s sublime in management, cash-rich and, in World of Warcraft, owns the leading online game entity. And Gamestop because it’s highly effective in taking advantage of the benefits of increasing game sales, without suffering from the downside of an inefficient publishing model. -It also happens to be about the only retail chain that’s doing really well these days, so they’re in an incredible position to negotiate real estate.  What will they do with this additional footprint, to say nothing of the existing footprint, when things move further to online distribution? It’s hard to say, but the power that being the strongest player standing in games today, combined with the pause that the economy is creating, give them the best possible shot at bridging to the next era. A question has been raised about whether GameStop’s influence over the industry is entirely positive at the moment. But I don’t believe the problem, if there is one, comes from them; it’s rather lack of vision from publishers, and an inability to move forward appropriately.

Now we’ve pretty much cleared out the black box technologies from post-production, and created a more flexible and less expensive production environment. This is all fairly obvious, certainly, as the PC has by now certainly achieved something similar for most businesses. Unfortunately, (thus far) there hasn’t been a powerful living room solution with similar openness and practicality, probably because of technical and usability reasons (as well as the Cable MSOs having a limited model that won’t well enable a strong technology here). On the game device side of things, dedicated hardware has been the best solution, given the useful model of software subsidizing hardware.  But, for the past few years, we’ve seemed on the verge of enabling an organic and extensible model on the consumer/gamer side, with network-connected hardware in this generation of consoles that were positioned to be the primary settop box. xbox is certainly furthest along in attempting this, with its Netflix relationship in place, although it remains so much a game-centric device that it’s questionable whether it can ever the primary living room device. I do realize that any time this sort of conversation regarding multi-use hardware is engaged, some will bring up the unappealing toaster/refrigerator example of its overuse; but, in the end, processing power and a screen is processing power and a screen.

Now, though, on the mobile side, Apple seems to be doing a bit better with enabling a general purpose device that does games so well that the dedicated black box looks increasingly less attractive. And one of the big rumours coming out of MacWorld was that the iPhone is about to get a lot more processing power. It seems that this would likely kill the PSP, and potentially force future generation of mobile Nintendo devices back down into the less lucrative youth/gameboy demographic. Which Nintendo can probably live with, as they’re quite smart at optimizing for this sort of thing, and since a primary strength of iPhone is third-party sales while the core strength of Nintendo is first-party product. Additionally, a more powerful iPod touch could easily be primarily a game device, and it’s not that far from the DS in price…

On the mobile phone side of things, of course, carriers have long-subsidized the handset sale, based upon their contract revenue expectations. -They then hobbled the market for mobile game sales by demanding an exhorbitant revenue share for any games sold over their networks.

Now, along has come Apple with the iPhone, which does create a better ecosystem for game sales (better store, better revenue share to devs/pubs), but simultaneously muddies the water in several areas:

• Intuitionally, somehow it does bother me that a device for which it is so simple to create applications, and which is in the hands of an everbroadening and general audience, should be throttled, with only approved applications being enabled. This is the user’s device for everything, encompassing all aspects of their personal and business lives.
• The only hardware subsidy for the iPhone is from ATT, and is based upon the existing subscription paradigm. So I don’t feel that I’m getting my hardware subsized by the software markup. Apple restrictions of any sort just feel odious, unlike Microsoft’s restrictions on XBLA, etc., which only seem like self-inflicted wounds on their part.
• The iPhone is ubiquitous enough in its class that it is beginning to feel like a monopoly player. The proportion of startups developing applications for iPhone as opposed to all other handsets is impossible to measure, but it feels like a massive difference. There is no effective competitor in the U.S. in the area of rich functionality smartphone devices; if you can’t distribute it on iPhone, you’re out of the market. Of course, this is only the case because Apple is so good at what it does, but that’s the reality.
• By virtue of its usability and functionality, the iPhone makes the carrier’s network a pipe to everything I need for daily life. I just don’t have any expectations of restriction in that. A problem is that Apple, in all of its products, sets up a basic expectation that its products will do what you want, when you want, and very elegantly. Which is fine on the Mac, where their profits come from expensive hardware, and software upgrades, or limited-function iPod, but doesn’t fit so easily with being the carrier-selected front-end to a big pipe of data. And Apple’s need for complete control within the iPhone environment leads to some controls that are beginning to strike users as a bit yech, primarily not allowing Adobe Flash, or the use of other browsers which might enable such a thing.