We need to be loud and proud of Irish gaming

IRELAND MAY BE trying to establish itself as a hub for gaming firms, but on first glance around the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of a green revolution having a whirlwind impact on the industry.

But just because the Irish presence isn’t as obvious as at other exhibitions, that doesn’t mean it’s not there – it’s just more muted than we’re used to.

There are plenty of multinationals with Irish bases at the event: Microsoft, Activision, EA and even Zynga are all at E3 in some way. But there are also some success stories closer to home. Havok, for example, is a regular presence at the annual event, even if the company doesn’t exhibit on the main floor.

One firm that was there, however, is Boxpay. The global payments provider returned to E3 for the second year in a row to showcase its billing platform that allows consumers to pay for digital content through their mobile phone instead of using a credit card.

Co-founder Iain McConnon said that, while exhibiting at E3 can be a pricey business, in the case of BoxPay, it has paid off. The company announced a deal with Samsung for a new billing product related to purchases on the tech firm’s Smart TV platform.

It can be an advantage to be an Irish company when it comes to dealing with US firms, he said.

“I think it’s because they’re more familiar with it, beause Google, LinkedIn and Facebook all have offices in Dublin,” said McConnon. “I think they see it as more US-friendly and also trustworthy. They speak the language, contracts are very similar.”

But industry figures in the US say Ireland could do a bit more to shout about its successes in building a gaming hub in the economy.

Belfast-born David Perry left Northern Ireland in the early 1990s to pursue a career in the games industry. His company, Gaikai, this week announced it had signed a major deal with Samsung TV to bring cloud gaming to its Smart TV platform, and has also done a deal with LG.

“People never assumed that we would have as much support, as much money and as much tenacity,” he said. “This is the biggest consumer electronics company in the world. There’s no bigger deal I could do.”

Perry said Ireland’s successes in building its games industry are not as well known as they could be in the US, citing Canada as one of the more successful and vocal countries in this regard.

To a company such as Microsoft, which has a considerable presence in the State, Ireland is a hugely important market. The marketplace is savvy, said Chris Lewis, Microsoft’s Europe vice-president of interactive entertainment, and it has a knowledgeable gaming community and plenty of indigenous talent to feed into its Xbox Live Arcade platform.

“It’s very much an open forum, we’re always looking for new IP, we love to encourage new IP and new development houses to come and talk to us about what ideas they might have,” he said.

“We don’t have a monopoly on finding good ideas. Invariably, they come a lot of the time from partnerships with other businesses.”

Those partnerships were coming thick and fast at E3 this year. Microsoft announced a number of new deals for its Xbox Live platform that would see new sports content from the NHL and NBA come to the entertainment platform. Agreements with Nickelodeon and Paramount Movies were also unveiled during its press conference on Monday.

However, it’s unlikely that much of this content will find its way on to Irish Xboxes.

What is coming, however, is the new training programme for Kinect that has been devised by Nike. The Kinect controller is a major part of Microsoft’s strategy. At this year’s conference, the company announced that voice integration was coming to games that previously would have been considered unlikely to opt for it. The new Splinter Cell title will get voice integration, while sports games Fifa 13 and Madden NFL are getting integrated voice commands.

Ahead of the exhibition, there were rumours circulating that Sony and Microsoft were both planning new consoles. Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005, some time before Playstation3’s 2006 launch. Going by previous consoles’ lifecycles, both should be almost ready for the scrapheap.

However, the introduction of Kinect “shot adrenaline” into the current console, Microsoft said. The latest figures for Microsoft show that 19 million of the peripherals have been sold since it launched in 2010.

Playstation Move, meanwhile, has also extended the rival console’s life cycle, and Sony has been attempting in previous years to push the importance of 3D gaming. This year, Sony seemed to be taking a different tack, making its focus all about games – and not a pair of 3D glasses in sight. One major focus was the compatibility of the hand-held PlayStation Vita and its PS3 console, with Sony demonstrating how players of PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale could challenge opponents on both platforms.

The hand-held device can also be used as a controller for the PS3 console.

Sony Computer Entertainment chief executive for America, Jack Tretton, urged gamers to “never stop playing”. “Keep pushing us. Keep driving us. We will continue to do everything in our power to meet and exceed your expectations,” he said.

Nintendo stretched its announcements over a couple of days. Although the main press conference took place on Tuesday, the company was drip-feeding information over a number of days.

On Sunday, it posted a video announcement by president Satoru Iwata, outlining some of the hardware details. The press conference concentrated more on the games coming for both Wii U and 3DS, although 3DS got its own broadcast later in the day. And finally, tech specs for the console were unveiled on its website on Tuesday.

Things have certainly changed for the gaming industry. Five years ago, no one would have thought that mobile gaming would be as big as it is. And social gaming certainly wasn’t a force to be reckoned with.

Fast forward to 2012 and there was more evidence than ever before of both gaming trends. EA announced new versions of Sim City for Facebook. Sony said it would be expanding its mobile PlayStation Suite – now rebranded to PlayStation Mobile – and taking on new partners such as HTC.

Nintendo was keen to push the importance of social gaming to its Wii U.

“It changes your gaming, it changes how you interact with your gaming friends and it changes how you enjoy your TV,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo North America. “It stands to revolutionise your livingroom.”

And it seems as if there could be more changes on the horizon. There are rumours that the exhibition could be moving from LA next year due to construction work at the convention centre.

Although the Entertainment Software Alliance, which runs the exhibition, said nothing has been decided yet, potential venues that are allegedly under consideration include San Francisco, New York and Chicago.