Insomniac: "Core audience isn’t really expanding much," industry needs to broaden the audience

Insomniac Games CCO Brian Hastings believes social games face lees problems than core titles, especially when it comes to financing. Therefore, the market has to expand in order to survive.

Speaking with CasualGaming, Hastings talked about the studio's social development division, Insomniac Click.

“I’m not in the doom-and-gloom camp in terms of the health of the console market, but I do think it’s becoming increasingly challenging in that space,” he said. “It’s getting to the point where only the very best triple-A console games are profitable.

“That core audience isn’t really expanding much and the total dollars each core gamer spends isn’t going up, so as triple-A budgets inflate, each developer has to steal players away from other games in order to simply keep their revenues above their costs,” he said. “The only long term viable solution for all parties would be to expand the audience.

“So I don’t think that every console developer needs to join the social and mobile markets to survive, but as an industry we do need to broaden our audience in order to have more companies survive in general.

“You still have to compete with the other top teams in the industry. They're not giving away free money in the social and mobile space.”

Hastings hopes that a year out, Insomniac Click will have a game that helps blur the line between the console and social gaming audience.