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Games Industry To Shrink in 2006?
Gamedev.net reports on an analyst forecast for the game industry's 2006 health. A previous analysis that the industry would have continued growth through the year is 'out the window', with forecasters judging this to be a slow year for game purchasing. From the article: "Pachter notes that during the three-month period leading up to the heavily anticipated November 22 Xbox 360 launch, console and PC software sales in the US were down 21.6 percent. Believing that consumers were holding off on making current-generation purchases in favor of waiting for next-gen products, Pachter thinks it's a trend that could repeat itself, specifically when Sony announces a launch date for the PlayStation 3. Currently Pachter expects that system to arrive in October, meaning the industry's transitional slump could last until late 2006"
Sounds like a typical "correction" any industry would experience after such an exhuberant boom.
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I'm not surprised by the pre Xbox 360 sales dip as the 360 has limited backwards compatability. However the PS3 and Revolution don't have this issue, and current generation games are planned to play fine on them.
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Couldn't the slump in game sales simply be related to the lack a more great games? Here's two big reasons sales will spike in Spring: Kingdom Hearts II (PS2), Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC), Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360/PC). Three AAA title on three systems.... all of which could/would/should have been part of 2005 before delays. From the numbers I seen through neXtGen, Joystiq, etc, no one stopped buying GBA titles leading up to the DS/PSP. Reason? A slew of quality games.
When one of the three console manufactures, Microsoft and the 360, essentially flunks out of the market, you're gonna have some shrinkage.
If the gaming world can survive and prosper after the failures of the Dreamcast and Phantom, it will survive and thrive after the death of the 360.
After 2 years of night school and home remodeling I'm finnaly going to be able to play a video game again! Only 4 more months! woowho!
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"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
how can they expect to sell games for the 360 when you can't buy the 360? Maybe people were waiting and now they'll continue to wait.
Could this be the MMORPG effect. Many people play WoW, EQ(2), UO, et al. That means they're playing them, not necessarily buying new games.
I believe that people are disilusioned with "hard core", "realistic", 3d accelerated bullshit pushed on PC and latest consoles. They are just not fun. Period. And - as far as PCs are considered - you need an expensive update. Constantly.
OTOH, AFAIK, market for cellphone games flourish.
I just wish that some device like, I dunno, Zodiac (RIP), comes out of niche and becomes popular. I would dearly love to have a PDA, multimedia player, Internet appliance and a decent game console in one compact case. Yes, DS (especially new "lite" version) maybe comes close but it is being promoted as a game console only and PSP is just too big and games are no fun. Games, movies are too expensive too. And still it is not a PDA.
All in all, I somewhat miss the days when the games were designed and implemented by individuals or small enthusiastic teams, and not by suits-run corporations.
As far as I'm concerned, there are a lot of different reasons why the games industry will shrink, but honestly I think that it's no more than a normal correction.
No doubt that the 360 and anticipation for the PS3 and Revolution are major factors. Considering that the consoles are several hundred dollars, it's completely natural and should be expected that gamers will be holding onto their cash in order to get one of those sytems. Let's see -- start saving up at least $400 to get a console plus games adn accessories, or buy 8 $50 games for a current system that I might not play as much in less than a year, while still needing to come up with an additional $400 for the next console. I think the answer to that one is pretty obvious.
A lot of games have become almost parodies of themselves. Look at how many games came out that were cookie-cutter games to try to catch onto a "guaranteed" genre or are nothing but uninspired sequels to existing titles only to fizzle out. Then compare that with the surprisingly small number of completely original games. Even with sequel games, very few were really original and worth playing, even on the PC side of things.
When it comes to PCs, we're really starting to get fed up with games that (A) were released long before they should have been, (B) suffer from consolitis where the PC version is nothing more than a port from the console version, which turns a lot of PC gamers off, (C) are nothing more than variations on a theme, or (D) have some kind of "Big Brother" aspect to them that make even legal owners wonder if they're being treated as suspects.
There also seems to be a growing unfriendliness to something that a lot of gamers like - multiplay with bots, even in a LAN environment. This used to be a staple of the network gaming industry, and now it's not even considered under the guise of being "too difficult to implement", which I don't buy for a second. If the enemy can work in single-player with one target (the player), how is it so unbelievably difficult to implement the same algoritm for multiple players, and why has it become so difficult only in the past few years?
When you put all of these together and then realize that the prices of games are still quite high, especially when more games don't even come with decent manuals any more, is it any wonder that the games industry is shrinking?
But that also brings to mind a question -- is shrinkage about the gaming industry as a whole or just the gaming industry by the big boys (EA, Vivendi, etc.)? It seems to be that independent games are getting a lot of press and fans lately. The games industry might be shrinking for the major players, but I think that the industry is ripe for a growth explosion in the independent gaming sector.
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The market may be ready to go through what I tend to call a 'culling phase.' Much like any biological system, you have entities in a system which are not as effective as they could be and when enough of these entities exist the overall effectiveness of the system drops; soon you will have another set of entities enter the system (virus, predator, etc.) which prey heavily on the weaker entities and (by eliminating the waste) produce a more effective system.
Now, in the games industry there are tons of bad developers who are producing a lower quality product at a massive cost; large companies (like google) could come into the industry (possibly by buying developers) and push developers out of the industry, the Revolution can allow existing Developers to produce more interesting games which can push boring developers out of the industry, and the emerging indie-download services offered by console developers allows small players to enter the system.
Then WoW launched and showed everyone wrong. There was a market out there, just that no-one had managed to tap it.
I think the same is true for the entire game industry. The market isn't saturerated what is saturated is peoples taste for mediocre games that just don't deliver. SOE has had to realize that EQ and EQ2 and SWG and Planetside can't blame their low populations on lack of interest in MMORPG games. This left only the shocking possibility that the games were to hard (the real reason was that to many people just didn't want to deal with endless bugs and boring grinds).
Same is true for the entire industry. Do I really want another dumb FPS with lousy AI scriptkiddy multiplay and ever shorter clichec story line?
No.
The last few years just have been poor for gaming. Yet the few noteworthy titles did still sell and break records. It is just that the endless drivel of mediocre games are selling less and less. There are to many of them and we got other things to spend our money on.
Game industry, focus on quality not quantity. Oh and stop it with the clones.
Recently I was a bit shocked to find a comment in another story about how there would be 200 releases this year for the old x-box. I was about to comment how stupid a mistake this was as they probably meant that the 200th title would be released. I was wrong. 200 x-box titles this year alone. More then 700 already launched. Can you say saturation?
I am not sure this is true but I have had the idea in the past that there were more PC game releases then Hollywood movie releases. Certainly if I read a mag like PC gamer I got far more reviews in the olden days then movie reviews.
There are just to many games being launched that just aren't worth it. Scrap half your titles in developement and concentrate on making the rest fun games that are worth buying.
2005 was a lousy year. I blame it on the quality of the games.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The gaming industry has been pulling an Atari. There are a number of good games, and there's a huge overflowing pile of crap. Unless you have ADD, you probably don't play nearly as many games a year as the guys at Penny Arcade. You have a few games you really like and you play them in your free time. You're probably not going to pick up ten different types of DDR and eight different WW II shooters. One of the "strengths" of the current console industry "there are hundreds of games!" is really just a sign of Atari syndrome.
Does this mean the next doom will be released on floppies?
Everyone is playing WoW. Who needs to buy an HugeBox360 when their gaming time is already spoken for?
Just goto www.3dgamers.com and you'll see why the market is going down. Aside from the next Hitman and Halflife installments I have little interest in what's going on out there.
Am I alone on this? There hasn't been any new games to catch my eye. I also have no real interest in the console market... Infact in the past month it's been nothing but CS:S, Alice (for about the 12th time) and (ha!) Telengard... Seriously, it's been that discouraging lately.
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It only takes a journalist with half a brain to do a little bit of research: 2005 was bad because 2004 was great, especially the fourth quarter. Think of it: Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas, World of Warcraft, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, not to mention The Sims series. And the first three all came out at the end of Q4 2004.
Another effect, especially on the fourth quarter, is EA buying out the NFL and Players Inc. killing off Sega's NFL2K series. The result? In 2004, Madden '05 sold approximately 4.1MM units for the PS2 and Xbox (2.9 and 1.2 respectively). In 2004, NFL2K5 sold about 2.5MM units (albeit at a lower price). In 2005, Madden '06 sold somewhere around 4MM units, more or less, basically letting EA shoot the video game industry in the foot.
Who knows if the negative media attention on video games had anything to do with it? I don't think it prompted any changes among Slashdot (or, say, Penny Arcade) readers, but who knows if some parents maybe cut out some purchases and tried to go a more wholesome route this year?
And why doesn't anyone talk about multi-year trends. It seems a bit ridiculous to forecast some sort of overall collapse based on a single quarter's results.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
This is the reason for the Revolution and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the DS. The videogame industry simply can't support the growth it's had in the last several years.
There aren't enough new people picking up controllers to support it. Some kids are getting into it, but obviously not at a volume to offset the people neglecting their consoles for MMOs, or the people getting fed up with the shortage of well-made/innovative/actually FUN games, the people who simply can't afford to stay current, or the people who were hardcore in high school/college, but are moving on to actual employment and not having the time to game like they used to.
Plus, kids are having a harder time getting into it, as system/game costs are high, and more and more parents are figuring out that standard Playstation 2/3 and Xbox/360 fare isn't for kids. And since the kids can't have those, they settle for insulting Nickelodeon-branded crap that just isn't fun enough to really whet their appetites for gaming.
Sony and Microsoft are, for all intents and purposes, the driving force behind this. No real innovation, just cranking up the system specs. We add more complex controllers and more complicated games, while the next-gen systems are so prohibitively priced. Sony and Microsoft cater to the hardcore market, and do a decent job at it, but it's simply not a situation that looks welcoming to new customers.
Nintendo's whole "Blue Ocean" strategy is a direct response to the state of the gaming industry. Get new people in. Scooping up the junior market has always been their forté. This is why Pokémon and the Game Boy line have been such massive sellers: they're aimed squarely at an audience that the rest of the industry isn't taking seriously enough. It can be argued that this works a little too well, which is why Nintendo gets branded the kiddy system, but eh.
The whole idea of the Revolution's simplified, innovative interface is make interesting new games that anybody can pick up and get into. More new customers. The DS is their testing ground for this sort of thing - look at Nintendogs. What you think of the "game" is irrelevant; it's got people picking up Nintendogs (and the hardware to play it on) in volume.
People want new gaming experiences, and an innovative concept CAN bring in new customers. Looking at the DS as a test case for the Revolution, I'd guess that Rev has a somewhat slow start, but when the games start coming out and it gets a killer app that brings in an innovative experience that makes perfect use of the hardware (Nintendog Revolution?), it'll gain surprising ground on Sony and Microsoft.
I'm sure we'll see a slump in hardware sales as the man-on-the-street finds out about the Revolution and PS3 coming out this year.
However, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no reason why those awaiting these two new consoles would stop buying games. The Revolution is backwards compatible with all Gamecube games, and I believe the same goes for the PS3-PS2 relationship (though I don't keep up on Playstation news, so I could be wrong.) In fact, it could cause a spur, as people who haven't owned a Gamecube but plan on getting a Revolution will start buying Gamecube games in anticipation (same for PS3-intents that don't have a PS2.)
Aside from that, I'm sure Nintendo is pshawing this 'news'. They have a few choice AAA titles coming out before the Revolution (release Twilight Princess, damn you!), and are still going hot with the DS. The new DS Lite announcement might cause a small slump in DS hardware sales, but I doubt it will be a large chunk, especially since there's been no mention of a U.S. release (I'm sure we'll get it, but when is anyone's guess.)
I doubt we will see any changes in the AAA sector. Development is so expensive that stuff HAS to sell, thus new ideas don't get a chance. There are a few exceptions, the only ones I can remind of right now are Escape From Butcher Bay and Unreal Tournament 2004, both games surprised me - not necessarily because of the tech (although EFBB is very impressive technically), but because its a hell of a lot of fun to play them. I regularly catch myself playing old 2D point-and-click adventures and amiga games like Deuteros (the virtually unknown Millennium sequel, and one of the few sequels that are really superior to the first one), and I start thinking why no one does this marvelous gameplay with today's technology. (Then reality kicks in again and I remember the costs issue.)
:)
Yeah, the next big hit will be the casual games and the indie games IMO. Slowly, tech is becoming "good enough" (unless you are a graphics whore). Its still a lot of work to get a decent-looking game done, but free gaming engines are becoming better and better (although most still lack decent toolchains), and if you look at projects like the FS2 source project (Freespace2 with vastly improved gameplay and graphics) or the Babylon 5 game, it becomes clear that indie games aren't necessarily doomed to have crappy looks anymore. It is impressive how far you can get with a Radeon9600-class hardware (again, see EFBB), the industry just doesn't make full use of it because of the tight time schedule - it is easier to force the customers to buy new hardware....
I hope Nintendo's move takes off and indie gamers make a successful return. The garage developer is back, ladies!
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If the game industry shrinks this year, I don't think it will be for lack of demand. Trends show guys 18-35 are spending more and more time gaming and less time watching sports.
The problem seems sooner to be a lack of new titles, and/or a lack of diversity in the new games that do come out. I go by GameStop (and similar places) all the time looking for new releases and used titles that I haven't played before. What do they have? 90 sports titles, 5 anime titles, 3 FPS, and maybe 1-2 games that have story lines. Unfortunately, I find all but the latter tedious. Cross that with trying to find titles that have story lines and allow for more than one player (my girlfriend and I both like to play cooperative mode games), and the pool shrinks even further.
TFA blames the Xbox 360 or PS3 anticipation for the slowdown. But really, if the games coming out for those platforms aren't different from what's already out there, who cares? Yes, the graphics on the 360 are amazingly sharp. But their racing game is still just a racing game.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
during the three-month period leading up to the heavily anticipated November 22 Xbox 360 launch, console and PC software sales in the US were down 21.6 percent
Slump? Correction? BZZT! Wrong answer! Come on guys, isn't it obvious? Software sales dropped over 20% because the @#*%ing Xbox360 cost $400 (plus another $100 for a couple games), so all the hardcore gamers were saving their nickels and dimes instead of buying software!
Must... think up... something... clever!
the death of Xbox platform. NDS, PSP are growing while Xbox 1 and Xbox 360 are sinking. Xbox 360 will be the last Xbox.
There's a simpler explaination out there;
There's too many good games that aren't old yet ATM.
I have a reasonably high-end system, and I buy maybe 2-3 games a year. But it takes me awhile to get through them, and there's been a backlog of games and too little time to enjoy them all. I know I'll be looking for new stuff in the fall or winter, but that's a long way off. Many of the crop of games don't take full advantage of the current generation hardware.
I got Quake 4 for Xmas, and it's still sitting on top of the PC in the shrink wrap.
The only game I'm really anxious for is TOCA3, because EA has gone a horrible job with the F1 franchise games that they should hang their head in shame. It's been awhile since a cutting-edge open-wheel racing simulator has come out.. it's also been awhile since a cutting edge fighter sim has come out, too.
..don't panic