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Gamasutra was at the DICE 2009 Summit in Las Vegas at the end of last week, and has compiled all of our coverage of the event, from Valve through Bethesda, Nintendo and beyond, into one handy post for your reading.

February 23, 2009

3 Min Read

Author: by Staff

Gamasutra was at the DICE 2009 Summit in Las Vegas at the end of last week, and has compiled all of our coverage of the event, from Valve through Bethesda, Nintendo and beyond, into one handy post for your reading. The invite-only event, which is intended to provide a high-level business look at the game industry, and is organized by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, too place from February 18 - 20 at the Red Rock Casino. With multiple Gamasutra editors in attendance at the event, and in-depth interviews with some of the key attendees debuting on the site soon, here are the in-person write-ups documenting key lectures at the event: DICE 09: Valve's Newell On 'Using Your Customer Base To Reach New Customers' "Kicking off DICE 2009, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell discussed a theme central to the Half-Life creator's success: entertainment as a service, revealing 3000% download increases for Left 4 Dead's recent sale on Steam." DICE 09: Capcom's Takeuchi On The Challenges Of Aiming West "Capcom's Jun Takeuchi gave a frank discussion at DICE on why Japanese companies have struggled to address Western markets, revealing the company's ten commandments governing needed adjustments -- and perhaps unintentionally revealing how Japan fell behind so quickly." DICE 09: Electronic Arts' Tactics For Tough Times "At DICE, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello spoke about the current economic climate, sharing the company's plan to get "smaller and leaner", talking new IP like Brutal Legend, and discussing concerns like sequelization, budget reductions and outsourcing." DICE 09: Dave Perry - 'The Days Of Single-Player Games Are Numbered' "During a talk at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, industry veteran Dave Perry reflected on gaming's past -- and pointed to the future, where he sees single-player taking a distant back seat to online free-to-play games." EA's Riccitiello: Recession 'Blessing In Disguise' That Can Clear Away 'Junk' "Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello admits at DICE that even EA "got a little too fat" -- but that the current recession may be a "blessing in disguise" that could lead to "clearing away" some of the "junk" filling gaming shelves." DICE 09: Mirror's Edge And The Perils Of Innovation Over Execution "D.I.C.E. Studios' Lars Gustavsson admits his team's appetite for innovation has sometimes come at the expense of execution, and discusses lessons learned from Battlefield: Bad Company to Mirror's Edge and more." DICE 09: A Postmortem Of Ensemble Studios "Although Age Of Empires creator Ensemble Studios has closed, its legacy lives on, and Bruce Shelley spoke eloquently at DICE about what went right and wrong during the Texas-based developer's nearly 15-year history." DICE 09: NPD - Six Million New Gamers In Last Year "Sharing statistics on console online gaming growth and diminished PC game retail sales, NPD analyst Anita Frazier revealed in a DICE session that U.S. gamer numbers jumped 61 percent over the last year, bringing six million new players to the industry." DICE 09: GameStop's Raines Talks 'Bullish' Retail Forecast "In a notably positive DICE Summit speech, GameStop COO J. Paul Raines claimed that "every indicator points to continued growth in gaming", suggesting of the retail games market in 2009: "We're bullish and optimistic."" DICE 09: Media Molecule On 'The Broad Church' Of User-Generated Content "Media Molecule's Alex Evans talked at DICE about the studio's social, design, and production experiments with LittleBigPlanet, discussing "the broad church" of user-generated content, and why the LBP designers are just "power users" of the same in-game tools." DICE 09: Bethesda's Howard On Supreme Playability "Bethesda's Todd Howard (Fallout 3) detailed his studio's development and design principles at DICE today, commenting that "great games are played, not made", and discussing why his studio has a "very low asshole quotient."" DICE 09: Nintendo's Prata On Stepping Up WiiWare Support "Rounding off the DICE Summit, Nintendo's Tom Prata discussed the company's WiiWare efforts, revealing that only two of the top twenty WiiWare games are Nintendo-created, but noting of the service: "I think there’s more that Nintendo can do for support.""

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