Former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton has been doing the interview rounds lately. Earlier this month he talked about the lack of support for the PlayStation Vita from Sony. Now, in an interview with Game Informer, he has been discussing the acquisitions that seem to be taking over the industry. Asked about the recent spate of purchases, Tretton said he believes it’s a good thing for gaming and the industry as a whole.
There’s a way to look at virtually everything that happens as being glass half-full or glass half-empty and you can find ways to come up with negatives about these acquisitions, but I think the positives far outweigh the negatives, and the positives are that it brings attention to an industry that’s already $200 billion and growing, and even though it’s more than double the size of the box office and the music industry combined, I still think you find a lot of people out there that don’t appreciate how big and sophisticated and…mainstream entertainment gaming is.
Jack Tretton
The gaming industry has struggled for mainstream acceptance for years now. It isn’t a new phenomenon that the gaming industry is bigger than the music and movie industries. Video games have been setting financial records for years now and video games consistently set records that movies and music can’t match. Tretton believes that the recent acquisitions are giving the industry legitimacy that it may not have had before.
Tretton also believes that compared to in the past, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo aren’t competing in the same way. He believes that each company is following its own strategy regardless of what the others do. He also thinks that competition today isn’t about Microsoft v Sony or Nintendo but about video games against the rest of the entertainment landscape. “I think I would much rather a competitor invest in the video game space than a competitor invest in the movie industry or the music industry because to me, investing in the movie industry isn’t necessarily going to help grow the video game business.”
Be sure to check out Game Informer’s interview with Jack Tretton at the source below.
