Portal Might Bring the Casuals
Filed Under News
If you haven’t played Portal yet, you need to get on it. It’s one of the best games made in the last decade. So much, in fact, that Wagner James Au over at GigaOM is theorizing that it could lead to an industry shift.
Casual gaming is a huge market, shown by the number of flash, poker, and bejeweled sites on the internet, but core gaming has yet to cross over into that lucrative market. The Wii is trying, but it’s still has a struggle on its hands. Portal, on the other had, is a non-violet, low-budget puzzle game that lasts about 6 or 7 hours and is addictive. It’s the kind of game you could get a non-gamer to play, with mechanics from hardcore FPS but gameplay straight out of nothing else. It’s selling like gang busters and shows no signs of stopping, and the ending theme song has crossed over into the casual market space. If anything, Portal is the game to lead the way to mainstream revenue.
Other developers are more than likely looking at the success of Portal and prepping their own crossover games as we speak. In two or three years, you might be sharing (read: fighting for) your computer space with your significant other, who was never a gamer before but thanks to the likes of Portal, digs them now. You’ve been warned.