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Games Industry Off Its Game
A Washington Post article explores the problems facing the games industry in this year of console generation turnover and lackluster PC game sales. From the article: "There are other potential problems. The new-generation consoles look best when plugged into high-definition TV sets -- and it is not clear how many people will buy a new television just for the latest version of the Madden football game. And the cost of the new gaming systems continues to rise. Perhaps no question haunts the industry more at the moment than the mystery of when Sony's PlayStation 3 will come out and how much it will cost."
There is no question about it, there will only be Revolution!
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
"how many people will buy a new television just for the latest version of the Madden football game."
Two of my coworkers have the XBox 360 and HD TV's and both have called the game a waste of money.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, deemed the industry's troubles to be "cyclical and entirely predictable." What's important is that gaming is growing in popularity, and consumers will continue spending as the industry works out its kinks, he said.
"The early adopters all know what's going on," he said. "They all expect the PlayStation 3 this year. That always tends to slow down purchases for the current platform, no matter how good the current games are. They're sitting on their dollars more than they will be a year or two from now."
2) I hate sports games, the major improvements stopped years ago, now its just the graphics, but aside from that, even if I did like sports games, I sure as hell wouldnt buy a HD tv or next/new generation console just to play fucking madden, I'd buy it so that Warhawk, Killzone 2, and all the other shitloads of sweet ass graphics games look even better... (but for now, I'll stick to my PC)
"And the cost of the new gaming systems continues to rise."
PS3's price continues to rise. A $300 Xbox360 is less (adjusted for inflation) than PS1 PS2 Xbox1 NES SNES and the N64.
Also hard to say the Industry is in trouble when they set records in sales and profit last year (console, not PC).
This statement has it all wrong: "The new-generation consoles look best when plugged into high-definition TV sets -- and it is not clear how many people will buy a new television just for the latest version of the Madden football game." HD TV owners (like myself) will only buy HD capable content. So, it is about reaching the current market with the most disposible income and least amount of impulse control (like myself).
All game developers released a sigh of releif when the new Phantom console was officially postponed. They were all shaking in their boots wondering how to cope with this new console that will destroy all other consoles. It's not fair to have this over their heads for all this time ond now only to postpone and have them all worrying for years to come. :)
Stay tuned for new sig...
Viva La Revolution!
Two of my coworkers have the XBox 360 and HD TV's and both have called the game a waste of money.
The 360 and HD doesn't compare to Doom3/Fear/CoD2 on a really nice monitor (like the NEC GX90^2).
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
... they're all playing World of Warcraft.
All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
The reason the games industry is in the toilet is because a huge market share (around 4.5 million people) have quit playing console games and have started playing WoW, making it a regular part of their daily activity.
If you take the million people that have abandoned their previous MMO (uo, daoc, swg and mxo (lol), eq, eq2, ao, planetside, tso, etc.) for WoW, plus the 4.5 million folks that have moved from single-player/console games, it adds up to the 5.5 million players that WoW currently has.
Is anyone else growing the slightest bit tired of all these redundant "games industry is teh s uck" articles which keep floating around, only to be intterupted every so often with a "omg games industry is teh b etter!" article?
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From the article:
"Sony President Ken Kutaragi has said that he expects the device to be "expensive." While game consoles have typically enjoyed a five-year lifespan, Sony has said it is shooting for 10 years this time out."
Are they kidding? They expect it to last ten years, fine, but are they trying to say that they will keep making new games for this platform? I remember the Super Nintendo, and that system rocked, yo. Pilot Wings, F-Zero, Final Fantasy VI were all gems, and had replay value. But after a while, new games stopped appearing, and I was seeing everyone purchase N64s, and playing Goldeneye with all thier friends. And all I had to offer was Mario Kart for thier multiplayer cravings.
Then the Playstation hit the scene, and my SNES got placed on the closet shelf of Eternity. When Microsoft comes out with the Xbox 720, will Sony stick with thier three year old platform? When Nintendo offers thier newest platform that jacks directly into your cyber-brain, with Sony continue to hock Silent Hill 12?
Game Platforms are supposed to have a longer life span then computers by definition. All they are are game systems. They don't do spreadsheets, they don't balance your taxes, they don't have hard drives...
Oh, wait, they do now. Well, strike that...start over...
With Game Platforms becoming more like home computers, thier Start-To-Trash date will grow shorter and shorter. Ten years is a pipe dream. It's 2006. Let's see, ten years ago...
Yeah, I think I'm going to go boot up my old 486 and log into World of Warcraft. I'll let you know how it goes in a week when the program finally loads.
To sum up, a ten year old gaming platform would be like still playing Final Fatasy Mystic Quest, and saying how graphicly stunning it is. Not Gonna Happen.
There are no gods but ourselves.
"And the cost of the new gaming systems continues to rise."
Huh? Since when? The new systems cost $399 at launch, which is far less than the old school Atari systems that cost somewhere around $800. The Nintendo and Super Nintendo were priced cheaper, though in that era many games cost $60+ and the industry was far less competitive (slower development cycles, less demand). We have been paying $50 for games for well over a decade. Not even factoring in inflation or the fact that today's systems are also media players, the costs have remained the same. I don't have any solid figures on development or production costs, but I am presuming they too have remained relatively flat. The cost of game development has indeed continued to rise, but that was not what was stated and a journalist writing about games should know the difference.
Anyone who really believes that the PS3 is not going to be priced the same as the 360 when it is released probably has an agenda. Sony is a big smart company, they are not going to just throw in the towel by overpricing their system. This article gets no digg.
I could have told you that and I've never played sports video games.
The new-generation consoles look best when plugged into high-definition TV sets
Can't they just add a friggin' VGA connector to them? Sheesh.
This is hardly news.
On the other hand, I think more and more we're reaching the goals of what gamers want their games to look like, and falling short on games playing how gamers want them to play. Instant action, game balance, getting enough game for your dollar, ease of use, originality - a lot of these concepts are simple but get lost in the wayside of "but it draw 4.2 trillion pixels per second! Look how detailed his nose is!"
The games industry in general isn't in trouble, but designers that want to stay competitive would do well to sit down and play pong for a week, then go back and look at what's really important in making a game. There are so many disappointments to be found on the 50 dollar rack these days it's not at all funny.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
What's happening is that everyone's going crazy about the next-gen consoles and instead of porting games from the PC to the console, they're doing the reverse and it shows.
Even Red Storm has been bit by this, as is evident from RS:Lockdown. It's a straight port from the console to the PC and so watered down that they're losing their entire IP on the PC side.
I'd be happy to hear that the decline in the sales of videogames and consoles were offset by a rise in the sales of books and exercise equipment, but somehow I doubt it.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
I bought WoW in last November and have not bought a game since. WoW is like crack ( and it does bother me )so I have not gone out and purchased a game every couple of months like I have historically done. Ironically, I don't believe I am spending less on gaming, it just that all the money goes to Blizzard in the form of subscription fees. Now multiply me by the 5.5 million subscribers out there and I can undertsand why the gaming industry as a whole is slumping.
Interesting that this news comes following an announcement that the video games industry is expected to double by 2011. I think analysts look at a sales slump that is most likely due to the fact that consumers are waiting to see where things lie in the next-gen battle, and extrapolate that slump forever. Just because sales are down now, doesn't mean they will be next year, next month, or even tomorrow.
If video games are created by teams of designers and artists, how are they not art??? www.skylarscaling.com
Nintendo said they where going to leaving out HDTV as well a lot of the market doesn't own one and to add HDTV support would cost something like $50usd extra a unit. Nintendo is getting away from the high end art (Like they have had it in a long time) and going for play. The problem is games started selling for looks, so everyone jumped on board and until they start taking an even harder it to find out gamers want a game they don't beat in a day, Sales will keep dropping. This is just like mmorpgs EQ went for the kiddie factor and every game since then pvp has sucked long live UO 1997 Style R.I.P
1) PC gaming continues to shrink as a market - with the exception of MMORPGs. The five years of decline shows no sign of ever recovering.
2) The Xbox 360 has pretty much self destructed - inventory is showing up in retail stores going unsold. It appears only the absolutely most hardcore of Xbox fans are showing any interest in the console.
The games market as a whole will survive on PS2 sales for a few more months and then it will skyrocket when the next gen consoles arrive after E3. The only thing of note for this brief downturn is there are probably a lot of 360 games/ports getting shelved. The 360 just isn't looking like it will be a viable platform.
This shouldn't be funny. It's pretty accurate. People playing MMOGs are far less likely to buy other games because: (1) MMOGs are addictive, (2) They need a lot of time investment to achieve "success" (or to "win" the game) and (3) MMOG game experience for many far surpasses boring single player experiences. This has been known for years now.
Just look at the massive amount of people playing these games.
I'm not paying more than $150 Dollars for a Console and I'm certainly no longer interested paying for packaging when electronic media can now be delivered via availible high speed networks. My buck stops here.
-Fiend-
And the cost of the new gaming systems continues to rise.
That's because consoles are slowly becoming more what the PC game machine is. You can't argue that PCs have a big advantage in getting the latest hardware specs before consoles do.
As consoles try to compete for the greatest hardware, their prices rise up.
I can't speak for everyone, but one thing that I've come to realize is that all these game companies are slowly turning us into selling points. Example: when is the last time you saw a multiplayer game that didn't advertise its awesome PVP play? Or when was the last time a single player game was released? I'm not one of the many many people who enjoy such things as PVP and forced social networking. I went in search of a MMO that didn't advertise PVP as it's main attraction, and came up severely disappointed.
So after that search turned up nothing, I ventured into the other types of Multiplayer games, 4-16 people type games. Unless I want to duke it out with pistols and bazookas with other people, I'd be disappointed here as well. RPG type games have all but dried up, the only ones remaining are old classics like warcraft and diablo. The rest don't do anything to set a up a new rung on the ladder.
If your search takes you further than this, you'll find yourself at the end of the road. Unless you want to build a rollercoaster park or your neighborhood reputation, then of course you've got a bit more to wade through.
Anyone else tired of trying to play games where you're forced to compete with people who have too much free time and not enough education? The l33t are dominating any non social aspect of every game. Where do the rest of us go?
So what is up with Korea by the way? I have been watching the Olympics with an interest in true sporting events like the Alpine Skiing events, Hockey (sorry Canada, Russia Rules!), the Cross Country events and the truly impressive Snowboarding events.
But I've discovered that Korea is, and apparently has been for many years, obsessed with short track speed skating. I mean WTF! That is the absolute gayest event ever. It is in fact scientifically gayer than ice dancing, and even demonstrably gayer than the Summer Olympic event of synchronized swimming.
Good (hand) job Korea in becoming the gayest country on earth.
is most highly correlated with the chance that I can buy a widescreen HDTV set for less than $500 that works with all my toys.
And, to be frank, there's no incentive for me to do that before 2009.
Even after that point, since I have a digital TV, I can get service via my cable provider.
But if I just wait until 2009, when the mass market drops the price even lower, I can get a bug-free, tons-of-features, cheaper HDTV for half as much as if I bought it in 2008.
Besides, I want to buy it after Bush leaves office, to help rebuild the country under a wise President, instead of making it look like he has anything positive to do with our US economy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The reason the industry is suffering is because forthcoming games and consoles will cost you an arm and a leg to buy, will look dandy on hardware you can't afford, and otherwise suck because nobody is making anything good save for a rare little nugget of fun here and there. Meanwhile interest in gaming is rising among consumers, but only until they realize that they can't afford a console, and once they can, that it was a waste of money. Inevitably, this will change, but for now gamers are stuck with shitty games they can't afford anyway.
Here's the real solution. Cheaper, funner games, and consoles that won't punch a hole in my bank account. (Though I suppose the 360 could be considered a cost effective appliance option, considering that it can double as a space heater, a toaster oven, and a hot plate while you become ever increasingly disappointed with just how lame and generic Project Gotham Racing and Perfect Dark Zero are.)
Sales are down because Game Industry is out of new game ideas. Every other game release now a days is a clone of some previous one and the hype is created through media as id they are the next "big" thing. :))
by the way i do not like consoles at all! PC games rulez!!
Online gaming services. My own crystal ball version of the future indicates that we're going to see the collapse of computer game stores. Instead, consoles will probably be sold through conventional electronics retailers. Most games will be sold online and most of them will be going through conventional gaming services.
The MMORPGs will be only some of what is available through your online gaming service. Being able to log onto a server and play your favorite MMORPG or a networked FPS or even solo games and so on will become the thing of the future. Game publishers will transform into online game services, and the game development companies will push their stuff through the services. That will transform the PC gaming industry.
Turn based strategy is still alive and kicking - and still way better on a PC than on a console. See Civ 4 and Galciv 2 for recent examples of good sales and PC only...
I quite liked the 'sequal' to Dungeon Siege. :)
Then again, I was only looking for a romp similar to Diablo II
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