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Current Console Transition Far Worse Than Previous
A report released yesterday indicates that this console transition is far worse than previous hardware iterations. From the Gamasutra article: "This console transition, he said, is 'far worse' than that seen from the years 1999 through 2001. Additionally, Lowell points fingers at the increased popularity of online games, a general lack of creativity in game development, and 'no Halo or Grand Theft Auto-type blowout titles launched in 2005,' echoing the sentiments of many other analysts." Next Generation has an analysis of what makes this transition so bad. (this last piece is satire)
This article is a joke.
It blames the Germans.
It blames companies (Nintendo) and consoles (the PSP).
It lists developers at number five.
Can't we just admit that there's been a severe lack of imagination in video game design recently? We have no one to blame but the people who envision the games--and even then, we can't really blame them for not coming up with the latest and greatest concept.
Maybe we should be encouraging developers to think outside the box and have them attend liberal arts colleges instead of 2 year technical colleges where they only learn how to make clones out of already existing games?
My work here is dung.
It has been said probably a thousand times around why the transition isn't going well, and lack of a must-have title is just part of it. Over the years i've owned probably half a dozen consoles, From the NES to a PS2 and a bunch of stuff in the middle. In that time i've played dozens if not hundreds of games. And while Marios, Final Fantasies, and all the rest of the bunch are fun, how many times can i buy something with the same basic formula doing the same basic things. Its been 20 years, give me something new already, because i'm not paying $400 for a new XBox360 to play the same tired genres. I've shot enough people and jumped over enough stuff, that i want something new, and the developers are refusing to give it to me. So i won't give them my money. End of story. There is a reason the video game industry took a dive once before. Too much crap that no one wanted. Looks like some people never learn.
Does it really take an analyst to realize that "impending" means that the next generation of consoles isn't out yet. Of course there won't be a base of users installed with the next generation of gear...
Maybe these analysts should wait for the PS3 and the Revolution to come out before they make these reports.
The PS2 came out in the US in October 2000. GTA3 did not come out until the October after the PS2 launched, in 2001. Of course, neither did Halo, which came out with the Xbox November of 2001. But for nearly an entire the year, the bright shining stars of the lot were Onimusha (oooo!) and Madden (yawn). The PS2 was plagued with hardware shortages, then memory card shortages, and then people realized that setting the PS2 on its side and leaving the disc in scratched the disc to hell.
This is March, a mere 5 months after the so-called transition to the next generation, and they're calling it?
Business people turn everything into shit. We've got people who don't understand a thing about what they're selling making all the decisions. They're not engineers or designer who rose through the ranks, having intimate knowledge of what the company does. They're a bunch of suits with MBA degrees hired specifically to run the company. They're driven by one thing and its not producing a quality product, nor is it changing the market, nor is it innovation; they're driven by money.
And if they don't show healthy growth within the next few months the stock market reacts negatively. All these jerks want money in their pockets right now, instead of looking at the long-term health of a company.
Certainly the reality is a lot more complicated than that, but I think this is one of the core problems. It's why we see garbage coming from the game industry, and this problem is reflected in other industries.