Phil Harrison, former main man at Sony Computer Entertainment, was hired as the president of Infogrames to transform the company and shape the direction of Atari. The future of Atari is taking a new path, perhaps into a more casual “social gaming” online style future.

In a Q&A session with Mr. Harrison, he talks about Alone in the Dark being, perhaps, one of their last huge-budget video game efforts. Although Alone in the Dark is an Infogrames title, the parent company of Atari, it does mold the direction of Atari.

Although their are plenty of titles in the pipeline for Harrison’s company, Atari will adjust its business model to meet the demands of the industry. Moving towards a community concept and packaged more into an online business (downloadable games perhaps?) and less like the shrink wrapped boxed games we’re all used to buying from Atari.

The industry transition is going “online” and Harrison says, “If we are part of that transition, perhaps we are going to take a slightly aggressive, leading-edge role in that transition.” This may be a bright future for the Atari branding which has never shined as bright as they once did in 1982, just before the video game crash of ‘83.

Although Harrison never directly states “casual games” he mentions shying away from big budget video games and focusing more on social aspects to online gaming. This means an online presents with a community aspect which doesn’t cost a large amount of cash which cancels any chance of an MMO, a move that would surely seal Atari’s fate along with its parent company Infogrames.

Looking at other industry movements, like Instant Action, from GarageGames, its clear there is an effort to move towards flash based gaming with complete network interaction and community focus. As bandwidth increases, online activities rise and gamers continue to look for cheaper alternatives for entertainment we’ll see sites like this continue to expand.

A site like Instant Action isn’t exactly a standard “game portal” which aggregates titles from many developers, but focuses on their own proprietary games and markets them as their own. We’ve seen Valve’s Steam thrive in an online presence with hit titles and partnerships with folks like PopCap (Peggle) for highly cherished downloadable content for a reasonable price.

Boxing and shrink wrapping a game costs money, marketing materials, manuals and competition leads to excessively high costs for game titles. A company like Atari, who has struggled financially, can benefit from a less-costly game development cycle much like any Indy company can.

What do they really have to lose

If you’re not buying into the hype of Grand Theft Auto IV or you believe it’s not up your alley for gaming, that’s perfectly fine. However, there is something the reviewers aren’t telling you–this is the ultimate casual gaming title.

GTA IV has many of the big aspects of a popular casual game of its time, mini-games (bowling, pool, darts, etc), it can be played in ten or twenty minute sessions if you desire and contains a good deal of laid back content which can be worked at your own pace.

GTA IV is best described as TheSims meets the Russian Mafia. You’ll find you can spend a good amount of time going on virtual dates to play darts, grab a burger or hanging out with your friend at a strip club or playing pool. When not driving around town on missions you’ll be simulating life to the fullest experience possible, including sitting on the couch and channel surfing, watching infomecials, cartoons or perhaps hitting the cafe to use the Internet.

Does this sound like an action packed shooter? Not entirely, no.

The fact is, there is something in GTA IV for every gamer of mature age. Granted, it doesn’t have the content-building capabilities of a Second Life for 18+ but it does simulate life in many aspects in both a hardcore and casual manner. I’m leaning more towards casual than hardcore in most aspects with a mature content wrapper.

If you replaced the adult situations in GTA IV, such as spending money at the strip club, shaking down a payment from a restaurant owner or the “occasional” need to shoot at a police officer, you’d have a great life simulator for all ages. Although some folks at rockstar might be afraid of casual games, they sure do use the recipe for success in GTA IV!

The game does have ground breaking graphics, physics all wrapped in a real world environment with creative missions and intense action. However, it also simulates life so well with side quests that mix RPG aspects with casual gaming aspects that it’s no wonder why the title received a perfect 10 score.

Rockstar Games VP Dan Houser seems to have some fear in the rise of casual gaming as an industry mover and shaker. Houser told New York Magazine, “Yeah, f*** all this stuff about casual gaming, I think people still want games that are groundbreaking. The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies.”

GTA IV will have no problem posting numbers which will save their end of quarter results, for sure, but what is with the harsh attack on casual gaming? Is it fear?

The gaming market is definitely big enough for two industries of gaming concepts: casual and ground breaking movie-like entertainment. Will casual games impact the sales figures for large multi-million dollar game development projects? Doubtful.

Believe it or not, casual games have existed for may years, they just never received as much exposure. Than along comes some big companies like PopCap games, Nintendo and publishers like MumboJumbo, BigFishGames and Reflexive who are putting some marketing dollars into their games and are grabbing some attention.

Nintendo has obviously shown that casual gaming is a huge market with limitless growing potential but many electronic game downloads are sharing the wealth as well. Rockstar shouldn’t fear a growing casual game market because history has shown that casual games have evolved over time to something a bit more “hardcore.”

Casual gaming is a “gateway drug” to longer more “ground breaking” technologies like Grand Theft Auto, Gears of War, Oblivion, Bioshock and others. Some gamers may evolve into strategy players, others into RPG players and some for first-person-shooters while a bulk of them stay with their casual gaming roots.

Many of these game developers got their start with Missile Command, Donkey Kong, Pitfall and Centipede yet today their playing games that rival a box office movie title in popularity, revenue and cost. If an individual was inspired by Elevator Action or Pitfall and became a block buster game developer, who is to say a Diner Dash player can’t follow the same path?

It’s true that much of the casual gaming industry is female but women can become developers, marketers, publishers and launch their own studios too.

To those developers and publishers afraid of the casual game market I say, stop whining and dropping “F” bombs upon us, look at us as a “farm team” for future growth in your own industry.

(Thanks, NextGen)

There have been rumors of a new Nintendo DS redesign to help spark sales, dominate the market and invigorate the DS product line. Although the DS may have only declined slightly, with 2-million units less than the year prior, Nintendo has always kept up on product redesigns on an obvious schedule.

The pattern is simple, every two years Nintendo releases some slight design changes for their current hand-held system while every four years we see some new generation redesign arrive. Although Nintendo will not confirm a new redesign, it’s obvious to many that a design must be in R&D by now–what will it look like?

I’m sure many would love to see a product with the sexiness of an Ipod Touch: thin, scratch resistant and a bright clear screen. Unfortunately, the DS is marketed towards the entire family, would a thin product hold up against a five year old?

It’s almost assumed the screen will be bigger than the last generation and some folks believe the GBA port will be removed from the next design. If you compare the DS to the DS Lite you’ll notice the GBA port has become less of a feature and more of a novelty. The DS allowed a GBA game to be inserted and completely hidden from view while the smaller DS Lite doesn’t hold a GBA game so well, allowing it to stick out in an ugly fashion from the bottom of the unit.

If the design gets smaller still, with a larger screen, the chances of GBA support will be slim considering the thickness and relative “bulkiness” of the GBA game carts. Perhaps the games will be smaller than the DS game carts as well, which are already way too easy to lose (my daughter has managed to mis-place roughly five games somewhere around the house). Do we really need to hang onto the Game Boy Advanced games anyway?

My predictions or wishes in the next DS redesign:

• Smaller Form Factor: Perhaps 25% size reduction of the DS size and half the thickness
• Larger Dual Screen: Both screens with touch sensitivity, expanding interactive features
• Auto-dimming Screens: Going to the DS ’setup’ screen to dim the screen is annoying
• High Speed Wireless N: Staying up-to-date with wireless protocol speeds to keep system current for the next four years.
• Longer Battery Life: New lower power chips should help reduce the overall power consumption. Nintendo is good at power reducing their hand-held devices to keep it competitive on a consumer level.
• Faster Processor: Providing a hand-held mimicking the Game Cube in power would be impressive and highly desirable.
• DS Compatibility: Playing ‘last generation’ DS games–very important to maintain consumer acceptance.

The most important feature is to be compatible with the current generation DS, which is why I predict only a 25% size reduction and half the thickness. This is a sacrifice worth taking because the DS audience is huge, they won’t buy a new system if they can’t play their back catalog of last generation games.

Shrinking the size of the games may or may not be a good idea. Perhaps keeping the same form factor for the game carts is desired by Nintendo and simply updating the density to something higher for more detailed “Game Cube” quality games. The main drive behind keeping the same form factor is the children… reducing the size again could make the product a swallowing hazard for young children increasing danger and potential lawsuits.

What are your ideas on a next generation DS redesign? What would they call it?

About Caption: Take a look at Nintendo’s old “Game & Watch” hand-helds…what hand-held device does it look like in todays market?

At what age should you start introducing your children to computers? A typical computer geek will say “as soon as possible” and they’re not that far off from the truth. TV News channels will continue to bombard you with reasons your kids are not safe on the Internet, but the same can be said for students driving, PG-13 movie viewing and many other things that children handle in life on a day-to-day basis. In reality, it’s about how you tackle the problem and the tools you use to building solutions to life’s complicated problems.

We recently purchased a 13″ Mac Book for our daughter (and son, although he’s only two years-old) and it has been a great experience thus far. Her favorite site, right now, is Disney Playhouse and MyNoggin.com which she can navigate on her own with the touch-pad and play the games she wants whenever she wants.

Once she was able to play games she started to expand her abilities, using the iSight camera on the Mac Book to take photos of herself and her brother with Photo Booth and has begun using the text pad to practice her letters and spelling words. The casual games were a gateway to expand her curiosity into other non-gaming applications. Having her own little laptop allows her to play entertaining games, many of which are learning games, build her computer skills using the touch-pad and interfaces in the operating system and builds her respect for computers. She’s learned how to put the computer to sleep and how to keep it safe so it does not get damaged.

All at the age of four!

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