You know WildTangent? The casual gaming specialists, fronted by former DirectX creator Alex St. John and long-time believer in the “casual games will soon rule the universe” train of thought, just announced that they are killing off their internal development studio, which had only managed to churn out three games in two years. The company’s online casual gaming portal will remain, along with it’s 1000 or so games, but it’ll be staying without boss Alex St. John, who is stepping down from his post. The move was made to cut costs, with the benefits of developing their own games not seen as being as economically viable as simply hosting somebody else’s.
WildTangent is home not only to a games development studio, but an online publishing platform as well. Companies such as PopCap, Atari and Reflexive already enjoy the benefits of WildTangent’s Game Console, an application installed by end users that allows them to browse and download titles provided by WildTangent and its affiliates.
Gamasutra has just posted the results of a recent fat-chewing with WildTangent CEO Alex St. John. Of note is St. John’s talk of getting more “big-name developers” onboard to distribute their games first via WildTangent, followed by retail shelves:
You talked about working with Vivendi to bring some of their games to WildTangent, and you also talked about how this is somewhat of an alternative to traditional publishing, but have you been working with any developers of large-scale projects, to be able to deliver them?
AS: Yes. We’re talking with a number of what you would consider “famous, big-name developers” for taking their content online. I think you’re going to find some big-name titles released for pure online distribution — as well as boxed titles released very quickly — in the next year or so.
So you’re talking about games that have never come out before in a box on a shelf.
AS: That’s correct.
There’s no doubt that online distribution has come a long way since the days of a prepubescent Steam, and more support from big publishers is only going to help it prosper.
St. John has quite a bit more to say, and you can catch the whole interview over at Gamasutra.
Q&A: WildTangent’s St. John Talks PC Distribution’s Future [Gamasutra] More »
