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Gaming Industry Going Down?
Stefan Constantinescu wrote to mention an Inquirer article positing that the gaming industry is due for another crash. From the article: "Sadly, the gaming industry is in a self-imposed death spiral. Everyone is putting on a brave face, touting the latest v6 of a game that came out before most of it's audience was born. What was a fun hobby full of creative geniuses and their mad art has become a grey corporate parking lot. We are about to take that dive again, the industry is desperately trying to speed up the process with each passing day. Rather than take a step back, they are addicted to marketing plans and money men. It will kill them, and in a few years, good will arise from the ashes. It happened with arcades, it happened with the first wave of consoles, and is about to happen again. It is high time someone flushed the toilet that the games industry has become, it will do us all a world of good."
I cant remember a time that I've had MORE games on my system than today. The industry seems to be doing fine, although I will admit the signal to noise ratio does seem to be going up..
Thank you. Finally someone agrees with me on this.
People say, "Oh, well it was home consoles that killed arcades." Bullshit. That may have been a contributer, but it was mainly the fact that it now costs you a 75 cents a play for a game to kill you in under 2 minutes often times. Some arcades like Dave and Busters in st. louis are even worse.
When I look at the arcade today, I see two types of games. Games like tekken, where it costs 50 cents to play, and if you play against someone else, you will get about 1 minute 30 seconds enjoyment out of it. Then on the other side I see soul calibre. In one player mode, it is very common to see people play upwards of 10 or 15 minutes. Guess which one gets played?
They basically got greedy. Really greedy, and now it is a dead business.