Today we live in a world of constant economical problems. The main reason its the exploitation of new markets, all in the name of the easy money. Those markets fall when the amount required to put things to work exceds the profits. Unless that that market its a critical one (like weapons) the hype will evaporate and everyone related to it its goin to flee. The VG industry its now in the middle of the storm: several studies report that the game production cost are goin to increase 40% in this new generation, leaving the last remaining independent developers at the edge of bankrupcy. Yea it sucks, mostly becos every market that collpases cant ever be what it used to be. Just look at the internet, when the levels of speculation hit the roof the whole nasdaq came down like bush approval ratings:smt042 Now, when costs go up you cant take the risk to do "innovations", just becos if the game dont sell as planned you would be literally fucked. BUT at the same time, when something lacks innovation the hype sorrounding it evaporates, and people are no longer interested in it. Now we have a paradox: we cant innovate cuz the risk its way too high, but we cant leave everything as it is, cuz the market would stagnate and fall to its doom. At the same time this console ganeration its goin to be the most expensive ever: never in history a product was sold with such loss (look at the X360 price tag). In other words: if this thing is goin to blow, now its the most probable time to do so. The bet its way too high and if daddy doesnt win we all goin to be homeless.:no:smt043
The internet crashed because the investors really didn't know how to make money off the internet, they saw it as a tool, not a new telecommunications system. I'm anything but a pessimist, so all I have to say is that there will be both rough times and good times, but it won't die completely.
It became a speculation bussines when the hype when far away from the real possibilities. The same its goin to happen here: they are investing may too much money in this new consoles and nobody can guarantee that this new generation its goin to be so profitable.
I doubt the industry will collapse, but changes are comming. Whether they be in the form of unbelievable effective productivity tools, innovation over visuals, or something else, im sure something in the industry is going to change at some point in this comming generation.
i agree. i don't think it will die. in fact, i think it will get more and more popular. But the industry will change, it needs to change. If we continue on the same road, the industry will die because of the technology, imo. That same technology that makes great graphics, that same technology that apeal most casual gamers. Because, as it will get prettier, it will at the same time get less and less amazing. And who will buy a system based on power, if it's power isn't really more impressive than the predecessor system's power ? i mean, yes, it will still be more beautiful, but at a point, between near-near-photo realistic graphics and near-photorealistic graphics, who will spend another 299 bucks? What will be the need to make a new system?
Its true, right now were dealing with a down time, its like the 80s all over again, the industry is just at a slow period,but belive me from the looks of it, it is pretty much gonna go a 180 and things will be smooth again.
Definitely. We're not dealing with the 1984 crash here, but it's definitely the equivalent version for our time. And it will slowly turn the gaming world into a wasteland - the lack of innovation and risk from big time producers will make the market so boring it'll be like the time every game was either a Space Invaders clone or Pac-Man clone. And then, when the industry is about to die, the technology will be easily available for independent developers once again, and little by little the innovation will return, to give us a golden age like the one we had in the 90s. But yes, it's the beginning of a slow, stormy period - and money alone will not save developers if their focus in game making does not change soon.
You keep pointing to the dot com crash as example of an impending game crash but one has nothing to do with the other. The main reason those companies crashed was because they had no plan for making a profit and were running purely on venture capitol. Another reason was that many of the people being thrown money had no idea how to run a business. I remember a story of one company that got twenty-three million in venture funding and promptly blew ten million on a party to celebrate getting the funds. Hype may have started these businesses but it was poor planning that killed them. None off the dot com problems apply to the game industry. They are not jumping into the unknown like those companies. They are not running off other people's money. They have experience. And they know how to make a profit. Are some gaming companies going to fail? Sure, but I doubt it will be anymore than in previous generations. Your innovation paradox doesn't hold much water either. The reason being is that nowhere does it say that you have to spend a ton of money to be innovative. A game like Katamari Damacy doesn't cost as much as Soul Calibur III to make. A prefect example of this is the movie industry which resembles the game industry far better than the dot com’s. They have their huge cookie cutter blockbusters every summer but they also have their smaller independent films that they use to test out new ideas. If you want to see how the game industry will eventually test out new ideas just look how Hollywood runs their independent divisions. Finally you talk of how this console generation is the most expensive ever. Hasn't that been the case though for every generation of systems and games? Why all of a sudden is it all doomed to crash? Sure these companies must be taking huge losses but the reason they can take a loss like this on systems as opposed to PC's is because the specs are set. As time goes on the prices of components become cheaper and manufacturing becomes streamlined and refined to the point where they can break even or even profit from system sales. Gaining market share is far more important early on though since the licensing fees makes up the loss. This model has been proven to work in the past and there is no reason so far to say it won't now.
Hmm, I've been thinking about this for a while too. I'm not too sure there will ever be another major crash but there are a few factors that make me wonder what will happen. Developing games for new systems is becoming ever increasingly expensive, meaning that only the big Softcos (i.e EA ) could survive. I mean look at the vast reduction in crap budget cash-in titles. These all used to banged on to GB/C and PSone; now they just appear on GBA. It really is costing too much to make a game unless you are assured of big sales. Only problem with this is that small softcos that make quality games such as Triangle Service (Trizeal) and the crazy guys behind Alien Homonid simply won't be able to afford to publish games. Plus the increased cost in software and expensive hardware don't help. Why should people upgrade when they're happy with the current gen. What would happen if everyone decided they don't want to pay the increased prices and actualy just wanted more games for their PS2s? As other ppl have mentioned, there really isn't much real innovation in games. You can't take a risk when you're dealing with a game worth millions. Now, we all know that good graphics don't equal good gameplay, but these new consoles don't really offer anything new to the gaming experience other than improved graphics. So all we're gonna end up with is FPS, racing games and sports games, all with the most super photo realistic graphics that can be displayed on current (HD)TV equipment. Then what? eh, what do you do when the ultimate super-real games engines have been created, along with the best graphics possible? Maybe everyone will realise that replicating the daily-hell that is real life as realistically as possible is pretty pointless. At the end of the day, these are games. Something to entertain us when the kids are in bed and the missus is watching bloody Hollyoaks. I don't want some super-realistic life-consuming game. I want to be an elf rescuing a princess in a cartoony world, or saving the universe in my R-9. /rant
I'm sick of hearing that all we are getting with the new consoles are better graphics. Better physics, larger environments, more characters on screen etc, all will all be possible on the new hardware as well. Just as a game like Shenmue or GTA3(at least not at a reasonable framerate) wasn't possible during the 32/64bit gen there are sure to be games that are not possible on the current gen.
I know this, you know this and so does everyone else here. Whether or not this software actually appears is another matter. FPS, driving and sports are nice non-risk games. After all, it's easier to churn out another Resident Evil (with larger environments, more zombies on screen and better zombie head explosion physics) than to activate brain and come up with something potentially new and marvelous. Plus Resi games sell guaranteed. Same for every other game franchise that will get an 'upgrade'; you know what's gonna happen with the GTA series already. I'm just hoping that Nintendo do something really special for the machine to deserve the name Revolution. I do have to give Sony a mention for Eyetoy. Not that it's super revolutionary or anything, but Sony did take a bit of a risk with it. Turns out they were right when they though drunken 20something PS2 gamers would want to lark about infront of their tellys, randomly kung-fu chopping at ninjas. :funkinmu:
Eye toy is cool, but alot of people think the eye toy is something new, but it's not. Some webcam came with those kind of games way before the ps2 was launched.
If the games industry continues to grow like it does now, I can really see everything becoming more and more like the movie industry (although there will always be differences). On one side you would have the hyped, big budget, blockbuster games, some of them being good, some being mediocre/rip-offs/average/clones/... On the other side you'd have the 'niche' games, with smaller developer houses and indie developers creating highly innovating titles that just like non-Hollywood movies could also sell or break-even.
Dude, a AAA game like GTSSA wont cost more than 10 millons to make, but publishing for a game like that (packaging, adds, product placement) goes up to 30 or 40 millons extra. For example, to get an audition (just that, not a contract reunion) with a console maker (to get the license to release the game in that console) you need to cash around 15K/20K to that company, and then a little more to secure the contract. And thats in this generation, expect it to increase as high as the console prices go. Think how hard its for an indie developer to raise that ammount of money. M$ was the FIRST console maker to sell a console under its production costs. Before that SEGA and sony released their 128bits with a null profit. But in the 32bit NO console was sold without some profit. Not to mention the 16bits, when a console like the SegaCD gave SEGA a profit of 50$ for every unit sold. I want to make this clear: the industry isnt goin to crash for the lack of innovation. Dumb-normal ppl doesnt give a damn if GTA and madden are the only games in the market, WE do. The problem is that the VG industry CANT appeal to everybody (like the movie and music ind.) for the simple reason that not anyone can play games. Thtat said, i seriously doubt that the industry could grow enough to mantain the rising costs. If the mainstream cant maintain this new industry, then its goin to crash, for the simple reason that every game is made for the mainstream, not us, the gamers....
Is it going to become a tradition for me to say that JTI2K is totally right?? That's precisely the problem. The industry has been able to support itself with its niche, the actual gamers. Mainstream audiences have short attention spans and will "grow out" of the "fad" of gaming, but the industry will have invested too much in pandering to them. When they get bored and flee, game quality will have dropped in the "game" area so much, that they will not have the support of the original gaming niche. Thus, they lose both markets, and still have brutal production costs for products that nobody really wants. It's a possibility. I'm not saying it's the only thing that might happen, but it's a possibility for sure. The industry cannot compete with Hollywood or with Record Companies because it's harder to pander to the lowest common denominator with a complex medium - and therefore, it's more expensive to make dumb games with tits and explosions and celebrity gangstas, and market them for everybody - at least than it was to make actual games. This might be the downfall for the industry for a couple years, until alternative developers, or developers with new ideas, pick up the pieces like they did in the 80s and 90s.
The numbers you quoted account for the smallest fraction of games. Halo 2 and maybe GTA:SA are the only games that I can think off that would have those kinds of advertising costs. It is hardly a representation of the industry as a whole. Internet, print, and word of mouth are how the majority of games are sold and the costs of those are relatively cheap. Pressing and packaging are also minor costs I believe it adds around $3.00 at most to the cost of the game for those. When I said that every new generation is the most expensive ever I meant from a software development point of view. That being said it from a hardware side it still doesn't matter because of all the different reasons I talked about in my previous post. Finally I don't understand where you are coming from when you say that the mainstream can't maintain the industry and that the industry can't grow enough. Think about it. The vast majority of people who don't play video games are from generations that did not have them when they were young. People who are set in there ways generally don't want to learn new things. That doesn't matter though because those generations have already been written off by the game industry. That group is just expected to buy the occasional game for their children/grandchildren. What does matter is that those groups are now shrinking while the generations born in the era of videogames is growing. As more and more gamers grow older they'll expose their children thus increasing the market.
Popularity, the mainstream, and things like that are ruining games for us........or at least me. The same things ruin about every entertainment medium, but sales figures sure are happy.
It was. ou see, when an industry grows it becomes more competitive, so the costs rise constantly, even if the profits dont grow at all. Thats called speculation When the speculation hits the roof, the whole system collapses due to the high cost and low income. Basically, that was the cause of the Great Depression. And internet and mouth-to-mouth may work for you, me and all of the guys in this forum, but the people that hardly talks about videogames (so they dont look like geeks) can reely only in tv ads to be aware of new games. I dont see any scenario where the hardware costs doesnt matter. Think how expensive a license has to be to cover part of the whole X360 project. If the console is expensive, then the license to release games on it has to be expensive as well. That was an hipothetical situation, if you read again youll understand what i mean. And sorry but age and disponibility isnt the real obstacle to play games (a 81 years old granny has the world record in Q*bert) Games require a lot of concentration: you just cant sit there and watch, you have to think, to make a decision and make it fast. Everybody compares games with movies, but I compare them with books. When you read a book you need to concentrate on the storyline. If you dont, you cant see the plot. In movies no matter how dumb you are you just need a minimum of concentration to see what its happening. Thats why everybody goes to the movies but the number of ppl that read books its decreasing. You know why GTA had such success? Becos you dont really need to play the mission to do "something". You can kill a cop, take his gun and go on to kill more ppl. Theres a lot of guys out there that havent won any GTA yet, but they buy them to do the kind of shit you cant do on any other videogame.
