Rock, Paper, Shotgun

With the Western gaming industry, or at least the traditional boxed product aspect of it, currently in the doldrums (just ask Max Payne) many eyes have turned Eastwards. Huge audiences, huge development manpower, increasingly huge piles of cash, both real and potential. China especially is slowly moving into (and being moved into for) games, despite having a mainland ban of sorts on consoles, and the next major herald of its intentions comes in the news that Chinese giant Tencent has bought a “minority interest” in Jazz Jackrabbit developer, Epic.
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The writing appears to be on the wall for increasingly troubled UK videogame retailer GAME and its subsidiary Gamestation. Its share value has fallen dramatically to less than 1 penny, and allegedly it put itself up for sale over the weekend.
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There is Steam, and then there is Direct2Drive, the IGN-owned PC game download service. It perhaps doesn’t get mentioned here as often as does its esteemed rival, despite it having been on scene almost as long and having had a big old slice of the market. I guess it just doesn’t seem to reflect the strange and rapid evolution of PC gaming in quite the same way, even if its catalogue is suitably fat. Perhaps things will change as it moves into the next phase of its seven-year-old life – IGN have just sold Direct2Drive in its entirety off to someone else…
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