Following my visit to Milestone S.r. L’s headquarters at the start of this year, I was able to have an interview with Senior Vice President Luisa Bixio regarding the company, its future and also the path of the industry itself.
Back in January, I got the chance to visit Milestone S.r. L at their studios in Milan for preview events of Monster Energy Supercross and Gravel. During this, the conversation turned to the state of the industry and Milestone as the biggest games company in Italy. Amongst other things.
As a follow up from general conversations I was able to have a little interview with Milestone’s Senior Vice President, Luisa Bixio. In it, we talk about Milestone, its development, the talent pool of Italy for the gaming sector and the path that the industry is taking.
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One heartening thing to take from this is that the industry, particularly in countries like Italy that don’t have a strong base, is growing. This is evident alone in the fact that Milestone as a company has over doubled in size over the previous five years. More than that, while Milestone is certainly happy at the top of the food chain in the Italian games sector, they are taking risks with making own-IP titles like Gravel.
I will have to admit, however, I’m somewhat disheartened by the knowledge that the company is working on ‘virtual currency technology’. This may eventually be a stepping stone into the mire that has recently plagued the industry in the form of loot boxes fuelled by in-game premium currencies.
This could be just my own personal fears taking hold, though Milestone does feature have a not-insignificant amount of downloadable content for all of their titles. Fortunately, as the company itself states, this has never been in the form of pay-to-win or game skipping content.
It will be interesting to see the path that Milestone take. As it stands, the focus on yearly licensed titles has served them well, and the move to Unreal Engine should certainly make for marked improvements in their titles. Only time will tell to see how the company will further expand.
