Feedback loop
Emerging platforms aren't just new ways to make money - they're also changing the way games are developed.
This creates the possibility, for developers, of starting to work with the same kind of feedback data - "telemetry", as one leading UK developer described it to me this week - which Facebook developers have been using for the past couple of years.
Instead of throwing a finished game into the abyss, developers can now make their products phone home and let them know how they're getting on - sending back vast amounts of data which can be mined to inform the development of patches, DLC or sequels.
This isn't merely a minor change. It's a fairly fundamental upheaval in game development, one which neatly dovetails with the new business opportunities offered by DLC, subscriptions, micro-transactions or in-game advertising - all of which are strong incentives for developers to regard the launch of a game as merely a major step in an ongoing process, rather than the end of the road for a project.
Feedback systems mean that not only do developers now have the commercial push to keep working on games after launch, they also have the tools at their disposal to do so intelligently.
That, of course, is going to require some adaptation from developers. It's all too easy to characterise publishers as the industry's dinosaurs, clinging desperately to the boxed game business models of the past, while developers experiment with the potential of the present and sometimes even end up discovering that they don't need a publisher at all.
The "death of publishing" is a recurrent meme in the industry of late, and while it's an extreme view, it's not one without some truth at its heart.
It is, however, wrong to assume that all publishers are incapable of embracing change - and even more wrong to assume that all developers are welcoming it with open arms. Developers can be a surprisingly conservative bunch, an inevitable symptom of working in a business which has been so hand to mouth over the past couple of decades.
The potential of the feedback loop is immense, but it also requires significant effort - retooling the business processes underlying the development process, developing the data-mining software required to make sense of the telemetry itself, and investing in the staff who will become your feedback experts.
For a developer whose eyes are firmly locked on hitting today's milestones, and already gnawing their fingernails over the schedules for tomorrow's, that's quite a tall order. Those developers, sadly, are every bit as stuck in a rut as some of the industry's slower-moving publishers are - and every bit as unlikely to survive the coming years, as a consequence.
New business models, new platforms and new technology opportunities, such as feedback loops, aren't just the stuff of idle chatter over canapes at industry receptions any more - they are increasingly becoming the bread and butter of how this industry makes money, how it continues to grow, and how it builds for its future.
An understanding of that is becoming essential to surviving in a market that has little mercy for stragglers.
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