Teens Losing Interest In Gaming?

Survey firm Piper Jaffrey has results saying that teenagers are losing interest in videogaming. From the Gamasutra article: "Interestingly, almost 80 percent of teens indicated that they intend to spend less time playing video games in 2006 and nearly 70 percent indicated that their interest in playing video games is decreasing." What do you think could be causing this drop in interest from young people? Sequels? Mature themes? Sequels?

Comments

BS?

[moochfish]

Interestingly, almost 80 percent of teens indicated that they intend to spend less time playing video games in 2006 and nearly 70 percent indicated that their interest in playing video games is decreasing.

Why does this sound strikingly similar to what smokers say about quitting?

Hmmm... let's see

[phorm]

Cost of gas: up
Cost of housing: up
Cost of utilities: up

Minimum wages up with living costs: nope

Cost of a tricked out gaming machine $2000+

Cost of the newest consoles: $300-700
Cost of games, addons, etc... well, you get the idea.

Could it be that modern teens just can't afford to cost of gaming given that it is expensive and the cost of everything else has jumped too?

Well here's an idea:

[Sippan]

Could it have anything to do with the fact that modern games SUCK!? Honestly, I call myself a hardcore gamer, I've owned and still own every console in the book and I've loved playing games since before I could speak - there used to be some great games. Once upon a time, games were mainly made by people who were fulfilling their childhood dreams of becoming game programmers. (Well, those and obsessive-compulsive Japanese who are almost as good at it.) Nowadays you can be educated into the game industry by the school system. Gaming companies have hundreds of people working on their games and only five of them at best are fulfilling their childhood dreams of becoming game programmers. The others are fulfilling their teenage dreams of swimming in a tub filled with hundred dollar bills.
As time goes by, this is what happens to games:

• The graphics improve - nobody knows quite why, because still today many people play and love games that don't have bleeding edge graphics, and extremely few games actually need modern graphics to be fun.
• The budgets increase - which obviously doesn't help.
• The games become shorter - I've played Nethack for years without ascending, when I was a kid it took me weeks or months to finish Super Mario or Maniac Mansion. Today I have yet to see a game I don't play through in a day or two.
• The games become easier - see above. The puzzles in adventure games are becoming simpler by the minute. (By the way, what happened to the LucasArts-type adventure games? They were more fun than a barrel of Roquefort and they sold like water int he desert, why doesn't anyone make them anymore?)
• The games become more similar to each other - because everyone is now 99% about the profit and 1% about fulfilling the childhood dream, instead of inventing fun stuff, people look at what other games sell and why - and copy it into their own games. The result is that with the occasional exception, most games are just gray mindless clones of each other.
• The games suck more and more.

I could count the number of really good games released in the psat five years on one hand. But what I wonder is what will break the circle and when. I can't wait to play some really good games again. Someone please hear me.