For netbooks, design is king
Back in the early days of the dot-com era, when there were still such things as rockstar game developers, John Romero left ID Sofware and struck out to found his own development house, Ion Storm, on the back of a single dictum: “design is king.” The idea was that an over-emphasis by a developer on the under-the-hood aspects of games could actually detract from the overall user experience, especially in a world where game engines had become commoditized and anyone could license on to create yet another clone of an existing title.
Though Romero ultimately failed in his quest to create a breakthrough (or even an on-time) game, today’s portable makers would do well to adopt his design-centric philosophy, especially in the red-hot netbook space.
A recent study of online opinions about netbooks by market research firm Biz360 showed that netbook buyers who post user reviews are talking about three things: performance, display, and features.
Netbooks right now are based mainly on Intel’s Atom processors, and given that the entire category is a variation on a basic reference design there’s really not much to be done in the performance area (other than add a fast SSD, which can make a huge difference). The Biz360 article does note that users don’t seem to be that impressed with netbook performance across the board, and are bringing to the products expectations formed from using more high-powered portables. This is something that netbook makers should be aware of, since performance still matters to users. Read More »
