Video game market could collapse according to this article.

[Rickstilwell1]

Therein lies your problem. The industry is too big to fail, but it's also not too big enough to fail as it's existing now. What needs to be done is enough people from the new blood, and much of the older (25+yrs) to just say no. The industry really has no right to be demanding more money off a full price game, but we allow it. If people would fight back to remain profitable they'd have to adopt a whole new design in game development, production, release and solid pricing on a project to sustain and then those lame DLC bits would purely have to be extras or get burned for it.

It's a huge IF, but if it did happen it would fix the problem.

Well, I'm playing my part. I rarely ever buy any new games and when I do it's usually from Nintendo who aren't really a part of the problem here. Did you hear that even though the new consoles are out the Wii U is still getting more sales than them? It says a lot about who is developing games with a good model for content. DLC on Wii U and 3DS is probably less rampant because they focus more on selling actual complete full titles digitally.

[Bojay1997]

Well, I'm playing my part. I rarely ever buy any new games and when I do it's usually from Nintendo who aren't really a part of the problem here. Did you hear that even though the new consoles are out the Wii U is still getting more sales than them? It says a lot about who is developing games with a good model for content. DLC on Wii U and 3DS is probably less rampant because they focus more on selling actual complete full titles digitally.

I'm sorry, but where are you getting your information? Microsoft and Sony each sold 2 million of their new consoles within a little over two weeks of launch. In that same period, Nintendo only sold 220K WiiUs. Indeed, this past year, Nintendo has sold less than 1 million WiiUs which means they were outsold by both the Xbox One and the PS4 on their respective launch days. Even great games like Super Mario World 3D only did a little over 100K units in the first week. Those are horrible numbers and a reflection of a failing console, not something to be pointing to as an example of success.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain...n-from-launch/

[camarotuner]

No such thing as "too big to fail" guys.

[Rickstilwell1]

I'm sorry, but where are you getting your information? Microsoft and Sony each sold 2 million of their new consoles within a little over two weeks of launch. In that same period, Nintendo only sold 220K WiiUs. Indeed, this past year, Nintendo has sold less than 1 million WiiUs which means they were outsold by both the Xbox One and the PS4 on their respective launch days. Even great games like Super Mario World 3D only did a little over 100K units in the first week. Those are horrible numbers and a reflection of a failing console, not something to be pointing to as an example of success.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain...n-from-launch/

Some website a member on Atariage posted from.

[Greg2600]

Wii U has sold under 4 million consoles worldwide in one year's time, while Sony and Microsoft consoles have reached half that total in less than one month. I compare gaming to movies, neither are going anywhere because the big players are all run down to the penny by lawyers and accountants. They won't get too far out of their element, but that also limits creativity.

[TonyTheTiger]

Thing is, we have to define "collapse." I don't think anyone is arguing that the likely outcome will be as catastrophic as no games ever again! That's not quite what happened during the crash of '83, either. People are just arguing that if things keep going the way they are then at some point it's going to trip over itself enough so that there's going to be a mass cleaning and restructuring that will see more studio closings (seriously, tons have fallen this past generation) and the smart publishers and developers adapting to the changing landscape. This article is about a different but tangentially related issue and makes some great points on the subject.

[Bojay1997]

Thing is, we have to define "collapse." I don't think anyone is arguing that the likely outcome will be as catastrophic as no games ever again! That's not quite what happened during the crash of '83, either. People are just arguing that if things keep going the way they are then at some point it's going to trip over itself enough so that there's going to be a mass cleaning and restructuring that will see more studio closings (seriously, tons have fallen this past generation) and the smart publishers and developers adapting to the changing landscape. This article is about a different but tangentially related issue and makes some great points on the subject.

In theory though, if the big publishers take the advice of many of these articles and focus on more niche and lower budget approaches to game making, it's possible the large numbers of gamers who like the bigger budget games could become bored and simply move on to some other form of entertainment. The big publishers could in fact face financial collapse by doing the very thing you are advocating as the overall video game market could contract as a result of a lack of compelling big budget content.

To your other point, I personally see studio closings as a good thing as it tends to weed out those that release mediocre title after mediocre title and the most talented members of those teams go somewhere else, hopefully to create the great games they are capable of creating. Compelling IP ends up getting resold or licensed to others and again the cream rises.

[TonyTheTiger]

Who says it has to be all or nothing? There's no reason why Grand Theft Auto can't be an enormous undertaking. The point of contention is that not every game can do it. And most have proven that they shouldn't. If you want to put up Grand Theft Auto numbers you have to be Grand Theft Auto. We've seen that even popular IPs like Tomb Raider can't hit those numbers. But they don't seem to care. They keep overbudgeting these projects that have no hope of hitting their targets and then, when the games inevitably fall short, instead of looking at the obvious causes for their financial troubles they blame everything else under the sun like piracy and GameStop and look to squeeze out revenue through all kinds of other (arguably abusive) means. And it's causing more problems than its solving.

Nobody is saying you can't have your GTAs and CoDs. I want them just as much as the next guy. But there has to be some rationality. As much as people say the market is growing, it's not growing enough for games to regularly move 10 million units. Really, the creativity comes in with figuring out how to make a game under a reasonable budget without making it look like it was a reasonable budget. Spend where you need, cut where you can.

[Bojay1997]

Who says it has to be all or nothing? There's no reason why Grand Theft Auto can't be an enormous undertaking. The point of contention is that not every game can do it. And most have proven that they shouldn't. If you want to put up Grand Theft Auto numbers you have to be Grand Theft Auto. We've seen that even popular IPs like Tomb Raider can't hit those numbers. But they don't seem to care. They keep overbudgeting these projects that have no hope of hitting their targets and then, when the games inevitably fall short, instead of looking at the obvious causes for their financial troubles they blame everything else under the sun like piracy and GameStop and look to squeeze out revenue through all kinds of other (arguably abusive) means. And it's causing more problems than its solving.

Nobody is saying you can't have your GTAs and CoDs. I want them just as much as the next guy. But there has to be some rationality. As much as people say the market is growing, it's not growing enough for games to regularly move 10 million units. Really, the creativity comes in with figuring out how to make a game under a reasonable budget without making it look like it was a reasonable budget. Spend where you need, cut where you can.

Well, I'm not sure what specific publisher you are talking about in your theoretical examples, but all of the big ones like Activision, Ubisoft, EA and Take Two already take this approach to budgeting. They don't set unrealistic targets and spend crazy amounts of money because they like the risk, they do so because they have some feeling based on data, marketing research and sometimes gut instinct that a particular IP and game will be a massive success. Sometimes they get it wrong. Most of the time they get it right which is why Activision, Ubisoft, EA and Take Two are massively profitable with the occasional bad quarter or year. What you perceive as "overbudgeting" is pure hindsight analysis and what it means is that next time, there either won't be a new Tomb Raider, or it will be a more modest budgeted game. Show me the publisher that repeatedly "overbudgets" the same IP sequel after sequel and I'll concede the point. Frankly, I don't think such a publisher exists.

As for the DLC and other stuff, I'm not sure what that has to do with some impending market collapse. It's just the same as every other entertainment business where the publishers are looking for one more way to charge the consumer more money and unfortunately, people are only too happy to pay. It's why 3D and IMAX continue to play heavily in marketing materials even for movies where it adds little to the experience and why studios love to sell consumers five different versions of the same movie as a bundle (DVD, Blu Ray, Ultraviolet, etc...) when the reality is that many consumers will just play it on a single format. It's also why cable and satellite continue to be sold as bundles when most consumers only watch a small selection of channels. As much as I dislike DLC and other similar revenue streams, I can understand why publishers continue to pursue it as I know many gamers that eagerly buy it without fail for every new game released.

[jefis]

That article IMHO was bullshit. Speculations and thats it

[MarioMania]

Microtransactions feels lazy

What happened to earning it in games, Like going to try to get 1st like in GT6 and getting the Cash in Game to get the car

[Rickstilwell1]

In theory though, if the big publishers take the advice of many of these articles and focus on more niche and lower budget approaches to game making, it's possible the large numbers of gamers who like the bigger budget games could become bored and simply move on to some other form of entertainment. The big publishers could in fact face financial collapse by doing the very thing you are advocating as the overall video game market could contract as a result of a lack of compelling big budget content.

To your other point, I personally see studio closings as a good thing as it tends to weed out those that release mediocre title after mediocre title and the most talented members of those teams go somewhere else, hopefully to create the great games they are capable of creating. Compelling IP ends up getting resold or licensed to others and again the cream rises.

Then what they need to do is make some of both so everyone gets what they want. I would buy SNES/PS1 style console RPGs every time one comes out.

[Bojay1997]

Then what they need to do is make some of both so everyone gets what they want. I would buy SNES/PS1 style console RPGs every time one comes out.

Do you have a PSP or Vita? There are tons of SNES/PS1 style RPGs available on both platforms. In fact, that seems to be one niche that is well filled.

[PreZZ]

Then what they need to do is make some of both so everyone gets what they want. I would buy SNES/PS1 style console RPGs every time one comes out.

Nintendo DS and 3ds are loaded of these 16-bit 32 bit era rpg's