Video game market could collapse according to this article.

[TonyTheTiger]

I'm not defending anyone's interests. I'm simply explaining why your theory that games are too expensive to make is ridiculous and why there is no impending collapse as various pundits have speculated about for the past decade or more. A business is solely in existence for the purpose of making money. If a business has no such interest, there are other avenues they can take such as becoming a non-profit or simply providing their product for free. Nobody is being forced to sell games for a living just like nobody is being forced to buy them.

But it's not my theory. As you can see, people actually making the games are the ones who keep saying it. I'm not going to claim that I understand the game market better than the people in the industry. But when those people keep complaining that they have no money it makes me wonder just how much they really do understand it. For people who supposedly understand the business so well, they sure do complain about money a lot. Why are their financial woes our problem? That's what it boils down to. They're bitching that the realities of the world (used games being just one example) make their current business model unsustainable but instead of adapting like businesses usually do, decide that they should change reality.

Capitalism is not inherently adversarial, at least not when it comes to the relationship between customers and businesses. Businesses that are responsive to consumer demands typically do better than those that don't, but it's not the obligation of any business to be in either a cooperative or an adversarial relationship with its customers or the marketplace.

Sure it is. "Adversarial" doesn't have to mean unfriendly. It just means two parties having independent interests and there's a sweet spot where both parties are happy. But that doesn't mean they aren't adversaries within the context of the transaction.

I won't dispute that big budget games are becoming more and more expensive to make. I also won't dispute that things like DLC, trying to control used sales, season passes and other means of generating revenue are being used by publishers to offset some of those production costs. That doesn't necessarily mean that games are too expensive to make or that the growth in budgets is a bad thing. It simply means that charging a consumer $60 for a new big budget game may not produce sufficient profit in and of itself to satisfy the investors and shareholders in big publishers. If consumers decide that games are too expensive or that they won't buy DLC, then publishers may be faced with the crisis you seem so concerned about. Until that happens, this is just the same exact speculation that has been happening for the past decade or more.

When Cliffy B. goes on Twitter to say that budgets have gone higher than the current state of the market will allow and requires some big change on the consumer end to maintain, that's not me fearing a crisis. That's an industry insider confirming one.