ComicCon 2008: Content is King, and Gamers Still Love Their Big Boxes

Frequent readers of the Semico Spin know that I am a fan of ComicCon and attend it in San Diego, CA during my family vacation.  This is the fifth year in a row if I remember correctly which we attended.  As I say every year, there were more geeks than you can shake a light saber at.

 For those unfamiliar with ComicCon , it is the largest convention for comic books in the world.  However, it covers a great deal more.  Science fiction and fantasy TV and movies are heavily represented.  These are usually tied in with comics and animation.  There is also a strong tie in with video games.  For the first time in its history ComicCon was sold out for all four days with attendance of 125,000 each day.  It is the largest convention through out the year for the city of San Diego.

ComicCon 2008

 No, I did NOT go in costume, though there were plenty of interesting sights.  There were the usual Star Wars storm troopers of various types, including the Elvis storm trooper and this year the Burger King storm trooper.  At ComicCon one sees the rich source material for new entertainment.  This is very important for the video game market.  The fans of the sci-fi/comic genre want cutting edge graphics and special effects.  They represent a key segment of the video game market.  ComicCon is a venue for previewing many new upcoming games for the holiday season.
I can always count on my 18-year old son for in-depth research.  He spent the entire time in the video game area just like every other year.

 In 2007 one could find gaming, both consoles and PCs, in the central portion of the exhibit area.  This year all gaming was pushed to the far left side.  There was not as strong an emphasis on the hardware.  Last year I said that content was king.  It was even more so in 2008.  Various game vendors had demos for all of the gaming consoles, but the consoles themselves were not prominently displayed.

Last year Sony and Nintendo were quite prominent with their handheld games.  This year I could not find a single demo featuring PSP or Nintendo DS.  I guess the vendors see no need to keep promoting the platforms.

In 2007 Sony had several areas for different product lines including PS2, PS3, Sony Ericsson cell phones, PSP, and Blu-Ray.  This year Sony focused on upcoming movies from Paramount.  There was a PS3 area.  However, there were no signs of PS2 anywhere.  Clearly Sony is intent on phasing out this platform since there were no games featured for it.  Little mention of Blu-Ray except for DVD releases.  Sony has won that battle, no need to promote the hardware at this show.
There was an Xbox 360 booth.  It appeared that this was mainly for demoing the Xbox Live service.

The big story in the gaming area was Capcom.  Like last year, Capcom’s booth was an arena hosting tournaments played on the PS3 and Xbox 360.  The big news is the release of Capcom’s “Streetfighter 4” title.  In fact the “Streetfighter 4” presentation was in one of the larger rooms in the convention center holding over 1,000 people and was at capacity.  It was like being at a preview for a major Hollywood movie.

As always I could count on finding my son around the Maximum PC booth.  Several PC games on Alienware platforms were featured.  There were other PC games featured around the exhibit floor, most notably World of Warcraft.  At the Maximum PC booth there were tie-ins with hardware vendors such as Sapphire and Antec.  The big raffle item people were salivating over were the Intel quad core Extreme MPUs in boxed sets.  My son missed out on an MPU by a number or two more than once.  He had to satisfy himself with other PC components he won.

What was quite notable in the PC gaming area was the lack of any gaming laptops.  These platforms are advertised on line and are being promoted by Intel, AMD and their key customers.  However, at ComicCon 2008 it appears that gaming laptops have yet to catch on.  The gamers still love their big impressive desktop cases.  The fact is that this upper end of the PC market likes to get into the inner workings of a PC and be able to “supe-up” their machines like hot rodders.  A laptop does not lend itself well to this.

The last couple of years the gaming consoles and handheld consoles were heavily promoted.  It appears the hardware vendors have established their foothold and will grow based on the demand for new game titles. Based on what I saw at ComicCon 2008 this coming holiday season should see healthy activity for the video games.  The driving force will be content – new game titles and films.