Stopped in at the IGDA (Israel Game Developer Association) conference...was a packed house, well over 200 people, standing room only.
Besides presentations by some up and coming locals, such as GameArray, Funtaktix,there was a keynote presentation by Jesse Sutton, CEO of Majesco Entertainment (NASDAQ: COOL). Jesse is a wonderful speaker, passionate, honest, and to the point. Not knowing the crowd so well, he gave a short history of the computer game industry, and then delved into state of the industry, economics of bringing out games today, and where he sees industry going (and obviously where Majesco fits in).
Here Jesse is explaining that for Majesco, the Wii platform is one of the major foci of the company, and what they believe will be the most popular mass consumer platform in the years to come. Hard core gamer will continue on XBOX and Playstation, but Wii will be the one to really break through, according to Jesse.
Majesco is also closely following the growth of WiFi and handhelds as a platform for MMOs as a possible direction for future products.
To connect up to Israel, Jesse hit upon some of the same points that we at Jerusalem Capital talk about -- that Israel finally is coming of age, with all the right ingredients to break through to digital entertainment, and that he and Majesco will be coming back frequently to scope out partners from the current wave of start-ups...sounds like good news, especially with such a warm and experienced CEO -- who characterized himself as "approachable." You can be sure many Israelis will be approaching him...certainly the hundreds that were at the conference today!
We look forward to many return visits by Jesse as he finds more and more reasons to be in Israel!
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