Gamebryo and the market
Let us talk about the market positioning of Gamebryo. First, how would you define the actual middleware market? Do you consider it to be a crowded market, or inversely, do you agree with commentators who see the market expanding?
I can say without hesitation that the middleware market is expanding. We’re seeing more interest in our tools every day. Developers are much more open to middleware today than they were five years ago. I think this is because we’ve really proven ourselves to be very trustworthy partners during that time. There have been some tremendously successful, beautiful, engaging games made using middleware. It’s hard to argue with their success.
Where is Gamebryo’s heart platform-wise? When you look at your sales data, do you see a company making primarily middleware for Consoles or for the PC?
We’re really focused on next-generation gaming on both consoles and PC. In our business, we’ve got to be able to provide optimized solutions on every platform that developers are delivering games on. And among the developers we’re talking to, we are certainly seeing a surge in interest among the in next-gen consoles. In addition to our core middleware offering, however, we’re bring a series of ‘development accelerator’ products to market. These innovative products will help game developers rapidly iterate gameplay and content development, helping them bring better games to market quickly—and with much lower cost and risk.
When asked about the market success of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3.0 some folks like to say, “They were just there at the right time.” As a competitor in the same market, do you agree with that?
First, Epic’s success can’t simply be attributed to being “there at the right time.” I think their success is just the most visible example of developers’ growing trust in middleware. Epic just gets the most attention because Unreal is so closely tied to their own big-name games, and because they’ve got a few personalities who always find themselves in the news. We’re just much more under the radar.
Some of this hinges on how you measure success. Yes, Epic is more notorious than Emergent. But there are more titles shipped or in development using Gamebryo than Unreal, which is a fact that surprises a lot of people.
Moreover, as such, would you say that the “next-gen” version of Gamebryo was not ready as early as UE 3.0 was?
Is this a trick question? Gamebryo was ready for next-gen before Unreal, which is why Bethesda was able to get Oblivion out to market so quickly. We’ve got developers making PS3 games right now, and BVG just bought a multi-title deal to use Gamebryo on PS3. We feel really good about our next-gen progress compared to our competitors, especially when you compare how advanced our new architecture is—we’re not pushing a poorly performing port out the door; we’re really enabling developers to take advantage of all the processing power that next-gen boxes have to offer.
You seem to have a close long-term business relationship with Bethesda. One of the most famous games running on the last-gen version of Gamebryo was Morrowind; while Oblivion is today’s Gamebryo 2 highlight. Different times, different games, but the same people. Can you talk about the importance of your relationship with Bethesda to your past and future success?
We love working with top-notch developers, and Bethesda is one of the best shops out there. They’re constantly challenging us to push the boundaries with Gamebryo, which is very productive for both of us. The things they’re able to do with Gamebryo are amazing. As long as we have customers like Bethesda who are pushing the envelope, we’ll have an exceptional product ready to meet any challenge.
In closing, is there anything else you’d like Beyond3D readers to think about when they think about Emergent?
Emergent is about much more than Gamebryo. Gamebryo is one element of Emergent Elements, and I think people are really going to be blown away when they see what we’ve been up to over the past year. If that sound like hype, just stay tuned.
