Slashdot Mirror
Games Industry Downturn is a Myth
Gamers with Jobs has a piece on the supposed industry downturn, stating plainly that any problems are figments in the minds of analysts. From the article: "I concede, things are not bright sunshine and frolicking puppies for the gaming industry at the moment. There's a less-than-stellar Xbox 360 launch, a lot of very proficient people pocketing pale pink slips, a disappointing sales sheet from the most recent holiday season, and a lot of industry insiders wailing and gnashing their teeth. Now is the winter of our discombobulation. In short, gaming seems to be at its own throat lately, and from the cheap seats, watching happily, cackle the pundits, cheering the bloodletting ... It's baloney. What isn't being talked about is the fact that consumers are buying more games than they ever have. They are just spreading the money out a bit more, putting dollars into the used market, into handheld devices, into services like Live Arcade, and into direct downloads. The handheld market alone, which just cracked into the billion dollar range in 2004, soared 62% to 1.6 billion for 2005 on the backs of the ever sturdy GBA, the largely successful launch of the PSP, and the coming of age of the DS."
Times are tight for many people, including gamers, and we are more discriminating with our money. When you consider that many outstanding game titles get little or no marketing (two of my favorite examples are Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil for the XBOX) while the tired sequels get the lion's share of advertising dollars, it's not surprising that gamers are spending less.
My general impression in the GBA market is that they have a solid install base, a wider variety of titles, development costs are lower, and retail pricing is lower. These factors may explain why there has been a strong upswing in GBA game sales while console & PC gaming seems rather lackluster.
I can tell you exactly why the holiday season 'sucked':
1) XBox 360 is crap and was hard-to-stock
Despite how much I dislike it, I worked on the retail side during the 360 launch, and the demand was there. I don't know if it was a large demand, in terms of other launches, but it certainly exceeded the units we received (which only happened twice while I worked there, and both times they were small shipments.) As most know, the story was similar just about everywhere.
I think Microsoft is mainly to blame for this: while something may have gone wrong with their manufacturer, they seemed to know the demand the system would elicit, but neglected to consider that when comensing production. I think they should have known that the capacity they had wouldn't meet demands (and I think they even said as such,) and increased production in some fashion. Certainly, there would have been a far larger number of 360s available under Christmas trees had their been sufficient inventory.
Also, problems that ran around the social circles soon afterwards probably turned off some of those who hadn't yet got one but were still interested, until that point. (Look, I can boil an egg on my power unit!)
2) Lack of new hit games
While I'm certain there were some gems, there were no "must have AAA games" that I can think of that were released around the time (and, again, I worked in electronics retail at the time, so I had an idea of what was "must have".) So there was no rush to get this game or that game.
The only game I can think of that would have been THE title of the season is Twilight Princess, and we know they moved that back to [April|June|November] (depending on where you get your information.) (Curse you, Nintendo!)
3) New Systems
We've already touched that the XBox 360 lacked the quantity to fill demand, but the demand for two yet-produceds system also slowed sales. People who already knew about the PS3 and Revolution (and, now, DS Lite) but didn't have a PS2 or Gamecube (or DS), respectively, most likely decided to save their money for the "new system right around the corner". With waivering release dates, most people were thinking mid-year. A six month wait to get the latest and greatest as opposed to getting now what will by then be old beans? They could wait.
Also, the release of Twilight Princess would have created a large surge of new Gamecube owners. I've talked to many who said they would get a GCN when Twilight Princess came out; now most are saying that they'll wait for the Revolution.
So, yes, the game industry is indeed throttling itself. Sequals of the Day and Cookie Cutter FPSes aren't helping, either.
I'll admit it: I'm a bottom-feeder.
I typically only buy one game a year. I would buy more, but I have a wife, kids, part-time school, a nice job, dogs, a house, a family and I use most of my remaining "free time" tinkering with code and other creations. In other words, I more-or-less grew out of the "new game" market.
I can usually pick up a two-year-old, highly-replayable hit for about $15 new. (I still haven't opened the box for WC3:TFT.) I'm sure that doesn't make any money for anyone, but it does kill off any remaining desire to purchase any new game.
MMORGS look interesting but I did enough of that more than a decade ago when MUDS were popular. Furthermore, the monthly charges are a no-go. (I took a quick look at "Minions of Might" because it doesn't have monthly charges, but I got plenty of play time just doing the demo.)
I guess I do most of my game-playing in between flights at airports. Even there, I'm drawn to MAME emulators because you don't exactly want to put on headphones in an airport (think flight changes) and old arcade games lend themselves well to the high levels of background noise in the terminals.
You abstract the games too much. At that level of abstraction Bridge is just a Poker clone (or the other way around).
Genres are a way of summing up certain traits of a game in order to classify it and understand it better (because the mind can handle categorized data much better). Demanding a new genre to be created is pretty hard when we've got genres as broad as "3d Action".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.