Life After the Videogame Crash

Clark Hall writes "Is it 1983 all over again? E3 is over and millions of gamers are realizing they can't afford a PS3, or an HDTV. Is it time for a steep and painful correction in the gaming market? Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming, with HDTV playing the role of Hydrogen." From the article: "There's going to be a lot of money lost the next few years, a lot of articles written, a lot of panic, a lot of changes. And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers. Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content. Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford. "

Comments

PC Gaming

[daitengu]

This could mean a huge boost in PC Gaming. I'm not willing to dish out $400-$500 for a console system and another couple grand for an HDTV, but I'm certainly willing to spend the money to upgrade my PC.

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

I think most people have the opposite opinion. I gave up on upgrading my PC to play the newest games, and I think many other people also prefer not to have to try and keep up.

With a console, you know that when you buy, you can play all the games for it.

And do you need an HDTV to play these new systems? I don't think any of them require it.

Re:PC Gaming

[interiot]

Also, the gaming market more diversified now than it was in 1983.... if PC gaming crashes, the MMORPG may well not crash... if consoles crash, handheld gaming may not crash... if all mainstream gaming crashes, web-based flash games and open-source concept games won't crash.

And, if I read it right, the 1983 crash was coincident with the introduction of a new gaming platform (the home computer) which destabilized the market a bit, whereas the gaming markets are largely stable now (unless handheld or cellphone gaming really takes off, or VR games become practical, but I don't see those happening).

Re:PC Gaming

[daveisfera]

Cause shelling out $400-500 just for a video card obviously makes a lot more sense.

Re:PC Gaming

[popeguilty]

My $1500 computer plays all the games from this generation (the occasional F.E.A.R. aside) and all the games of the previous generations- along with all the console games from previous generations. I guess I could pay $500 every five years for a new console that plays only a small selection of games, but that seems silly.

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

along with all the console games from previous generations.

If we are talking about illegal/questionable ROMz content, my $100 (used) Xbox with a $30 modchip can play all the console games from previous generations, also. Quite a bit cheaper than a $1500 PC.

The Nintendo Wii, which is supposed to be around $250 will also be able to play the games of the previous generations.

I guess I could pay $500 every five years for a new console that plays only a small selection of games, but that seems silly.

So, in 5 years, how much will you have invested in PC upgrades/new PC(s)?

Re:PC Gaming

[Hitto]

Because selling extensions to play "more advanced" games is a business practice that was never done before.

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

It's a business practice that failed, in the console world. The only company in the last 20 years to do it on any major scale was Sega, and look where THEY ended up.

The PS2 did have that hard drive add on, but it was only used for the game that it came with, as I recall - the Final Fantasy MMORPG.

Re:PC Gaming

[daitengu]

I'd rather shell out that much on a video card than pay for a console.
I paid $300 for my last video card 4 years ago, and I can still play most games that are out there now. Oblivion runs a bit slow at times, but it's playable. I bought an X-Box 3 years ago, and now there's games for the 360 out that I can't play.

Re:PC Gaming

[popeguilty]

Maybe a couple of hundred dollars for RAM. I favor laptops, which hurts a bit (since it's much, much easier to make incremental upgrades on a desktop than a laptop), but I also favor not buying a new system very often.

Re:PC Gaming

[C0R1D4N]

It's a lot easier to spend 1/200 dollars every 3 years than 600 dollars every 4 or 5

Re:PC Gaming

[Glonoinha]

I believe the Intellivision had a voice module available as a hardware extension, adding realistic voice to completely overwhelm your senses, adding to the 'suspension of disbelief' that made the games more than just games - almost lifelike. I mean when you heard 'Bandits, 12 o'clock' it was enough to make you sweat...

Ok, so maybe not that great, but it made buying a $600 console that used pixels the size of your thumb suck a little less.

Re:PC Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt it plays ps2, gamecube, and xbox games.

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

A friend in college actually had this. I think he used it to make samples for his band.

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

Well, if you are only planning to spend a couple hundred on RAM for your laptop in the next five years (how much more ram can you even put in it?), you are saying you don't expect to be able to play the newest, most demanding games in 3-4 years - or at least play them at (what an average gamer would call) acceptable framerates.

Re:PC Gaming

[blincoln]

And, if I read it right, the 1983 crash was coincident with the introduction of a new gaming platform (the home computer) which destabilized the market a bit

I remember the crash in the 80s, and I would argue that this was not the case. In fact, I think the author of TFA is correct.

Then, as now, there were new consoles coming on the market. They were too expensive, there were too many optional add-ons that not many games supported, there was a glut of mediocre games for the previous generation of consoles, and all of the manufacturers were caught up in a bad strategy to try and convince people that consoles were more than just game systems because you could turn them into a crappy toy computer with one of the expensive add-ons.

The main difference this time is that instead of the "it's a computer too!" angle, Sony and MS are trying to market their consoles as "media centers," when they don't even have the features of a cheap alternative like a modded Xbox.

I also think that they are leaning too far towards online gaming and micropayments to jack up the cost of games even more. There is certainly a market for those things, but it isn't the *majority* of gamers, and so it shouldn't be the main focus.

Re:PC Gaming

[popeguilty]

And I seriously doubt your XBOX plays anything but XBOX games.

Re:PC Gaming

[sites]

I've blown through 2 laptops and 1 desktop in the last 2 years playing PC games, due to overheating and video card /driver nightmares. Plus, to complicate matters, I live in a country where it's next to impossible to get high-end PCs, not to mention video cards. So, I've made the switch to console games out of necessity.

In many countries, especially developing countries, console games are still much more accessible to the masses. Most people have TV's, but not everyone has a computer. And even if they could find a video card, no one could install one in order to play the best PC games. As long as these companies are targeting the mass markets, I expect that console games will find many homes internationally and among the technically challenged.

Re:PC Gaming

[mausmalone]

No, none of them require HDTV. I think what the author is trying to say is that this new generation's "hook" is HD gaming, and you'll need an HDTV in order for that hook to get you to buy the system.

While I know he thinks that Nintendo is gonna fail with older gamers because older gamers don't have money to spend on their own games due to their kids... when they go to buy a console for their kids, I think the price will have an effect. Not a "Nintendo wins the console war" effect, but a "the Wii sells better than the Gamecube" effect.

The pricing for the PS3 really is crazy. I know people will still get it, and they'll be lined up on day one (because if you can afford $500 for a console, you can probably afford it on day one), but I see the X-Box 360 picking up a good ammount of market share in the US and Europe and the Wii picking up a good ammount of market share in Japan -- if for no other reason than some people can't afford a $500 console.

Re:PC Gaming

[tukkayoot]

Nintendo also sold a RAM upgrade pack for the N64, it was required to play Majora's Mask.

By and large though, you're right ... and when users have been asked to upgrade, it's traditionally been much cheaper and less painful in the console world than having to upgrade a graphics card or CPU (especially if this requires a motherboard upgrade).

Re:PC Gaming

[joshsisk]

I tend to agree with you. I, for one, won't buy the PS3 for $500/600. Not because I can't afford it, but because for those prices I could get a lot of other things that would be more enjoyable... and because I can't justify spending that big of achunk a cash on something I only have time to play maybe 10 hours a week anyway.

Re:PC Gaming

[geminidomino]

The PS2 did have that hard drive add on, but it was only used for the game that it came with, as I recall - the Final Fantasy MMORPG.

Also, "Resident Evil: Loading..." err.. "Outbreak" was pretty much unplayable without it.

won't be like this forever

[sk8dork]

HDTV will become the standard and wont cost as much in the (hopefully) near future. they're just now still overcharging for it. panic is for the impatient.

Re:won't be like this forever

[HunterZ]

HDTV will become the standard and wont cost as much in the (hopefully) near future. they're just now still overcharging for it. panic is for the impatient.

But that's what people have been saying for, what, five years now? The U.S. government has already pushed back plans to eliminate analog TV over-the-air broadcasts due to the fact that few people have found it worthwhile to HDTV so far.

In any case, the general consensus seems to be that Sony has made a bad gamble which may result in a DoA console out of the gate.

Re:won't be like this forever

[Slider451]

Exactly. The current high cost of HDTV is just a temporary barrier to entry for Joe six-pack.

How many people bought microcomputers (Apple, IBM) 30 years ago? Only the affluent and the geeks (who sacrificed other things like transportation and hygiene products to afford them). Now everybody can get a sufficiently powerful PC for peanuts.

Re:won't be like this forever

[generic-man]

The people who have spent a lot of money on HDTVs represent a large slice of the wealthy consumer base Sony and Microsoft want. People who have spent $1,000+ on a nice video monitor might be likely to spend $400-600 on a game system to take advantage of it. Watching standard DVDs on a nice DLP is under-utilization.

Re:won't be like this forever

[ZakuSage]

This just proves a very good point: It is the fault of the US government that HDTV isn't widely used.

Re:won't be like this forever

[Total_Wimp]

Would you buy a nice 32" LCD HDTV set for about $300? It's about the same size and price as the one in your living room, but it looks a lot better and it'll take up a heck of a lot less space. Plus, your current TV is a few years old and the color isn't quite what you had hoped. Certainly nothing like these 900:1 contrast ratio marvels they have at the Wal-Mart. You saw them playing Gladiator on Blu-Ray from a PS3 and it looked phenominal. It totaly blew away the experience you have with the same DVD at home.

$300 is not that much. Heck, it's about the same price as the PS3 that was driving it. Xmas for the LCD and the PS3 for your kids birthday in Feb? You could swing that, couldn't you?

Welcome to November 2008. How much would your 19" LCD have cost you in January 2004? What was the contrast ratio? What was the refresh rate?

How much would you have payed for a PS2 at launch? Isn't even $400 for an Xbox 360 ridiculous? I din't buy one. Me, and most of the guys at the Wal-Mart, won't be buying one until it hits far closer to $200. Same with the PS3. And When I do, cheap and plentiful HDTV will not be a problem.

TW

You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously, you can buy an HDTV for about $500 now if you look around, it will be $300 by Christmas 2007 or shortly thereafter, and you can even get a 1080p version right now for $500 (check out the NY Times electronic reviews a couple of weeks back, and in the Wall Street Journal two weekends ago in the Saturday issue).

And you can buy a Nintendo Wii by about Presidents Day 2007 for a reasonable price at Costco - maybe even by Christmas 2006.

The world isn't over. Your old TV works fine with a cable box, you don't need a 64 inch screen HDTV, you can settle for a 32 inch or 40 inch one.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[duffbeer703]

Most people live paycheck to paycheck in the US... expecting parents to dole out $1,000+ so they can shell out $70 for their kid to play videogames is a little absurd.

HDTV is a solution looking for a problem. TV was fine the way it is.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Pope]

People who live paycheque to paycheque shouldn't have kids.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[RapedByKateMorrow]

"HDTV is a solution looking for a problem. TV was fine the way it is."
Yes and no. HDTV provides better bandwidth usage, and clearer picture. The clearer picture is a benefit to the end user (however small.) The better bandwidth usage will be better for broadcasters / canle companies, etc.

HDTV is a luxury, but not worthless. It does lack the value for which I'd shell out my money, but that has as much to do with my personal values / finances as it does with the quality of HDTV.

The problem for most consumers is the impending phase - out of "plain-old" television. A required upgrade is problematic, especially for paycheck - to - paycheck consumers. Once HDTV becomes a condition without which no news views / no Matlock, many will complain. But they will also have relatives supply a new set, will find a supercheap version, or will find the HDTV / NTSC dumb-down device that someone will develop sooner or later.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

People live paycheck to paycheck because they had kids.

Expensive little monkeys...

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[interiot]

HDTV prices have been dropping, and in 10 years, they may well be affordable and commonplace, even in paycheck-to-paycheck households. Also, there are other reasons than gaming to buy an HDTV...

I mean, there *is* a lot of HDTV content out there... even 1970's movies have enough resolution to be scanned in in HD... PC games have been in "HD" for a long time now... and digital cameras have LONG gone beyond the 0.3 megapixels that SD TVs provide. These may well not be reasons to switch *now*, but if HDTV prices get down to $400-500 eventually, then all this HD content may be compelling enough at that point.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

but, while the new consoles do have HDTV output, they don't require HDTV, and cable networks expect to provide service for many people who don't have HDTV sets but want to watch HDTV on their digital (not the same thing) TV sets that they do have.

Thus, the decision point for buying HDTV is not, actually, in 2007 when all channels will switch over, it's somewhere around 2012 when service for non-HDTV sets is expected to cease.

By that point, HDTV sets will probably cost $100 (for a standard 24 inch or 30 inch set) and game consoles - like the PS3, xBox360, and Wii - will cost less than $100 as well.

I'm sure they'll have another new console or four by that point, of course ... so we can always wish we could buy something "better".

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[badasscat]

Most people live paycheck to paycheck in the US...

Two things:

a) This is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you ("median" being the key word, because it's not as skewed by rich folks as "average" income would be).

b) Even if it were true, the conditions for the industry now are still better than they were from 1977-1980, when video gaming first exploded in this country.

The Atari VCS cost $249 when it was first launched. That's more than $800 in today's dollars. You were lucky to find a 19" TV set for $500 - about $1,500 in today's dollars. And that at a time when unemployment was more than 10%. Yet still, the industry flourished.

There is no economic reason whatsoever why the average American couldn't afford a $400 console and a $500 TV today if they could afford the equivalent of an $800 console and a $1,500 TV in 1977. All this bitching about price is just a lot of whining, nothing more.

I'm not saying everyone can afford it, but if you can't, then you've got bigger problems to solve anyway. There's no use crying about game consoles - work on getting some food on your table and a roof over your head first if you're poor enough that $1,000 for five years or more worth of entertainment is unaffordable. (Remember, TV's can entertain just fine even without a game console hooked up...)

The only difference between now and 1977 is that there is more competition for our disposable income. But why is this something to bitch and moan about? So because you just bought a $300 cell phone or a $1,000 laptop PC or a stack of DVD movies, the electronics and video game industries have to lower their prices for you? To a large extent, they have - adjusted for inflation, everything game-related is cheaper than it used to be (including games). But there's only so far they can go.

I'm not being elitist - I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases. They act like it's the manufacturers' responsibility to just make everything so cheap that they can afford to buy everything they'd ever want. And those that really don't have the money really need to be concentrating on things other than game consoles anyway.

I don't see any cost parallel between now and 1983. Cost wasn't the reason for the crash anyway - in 1983, there were systems at every price point from about $75 up to $275. And in fact, one of the main reasons for the crash was the exodus from game consoles to more expensive computers that played more advanced games. People would have rather paid $400 for a C64 or $800 for an Apple II than $100 for an Intellivision or $150 for a Coleco Vision. So I don't see that affordability really has anything to do with either era, or anything to do with any possible crash, past or present.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Dis*abstraction]

Actually, people have kids because they live paycheck to paycheck. Basic evolutionary biology, people.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Good assessment. Mod parent up.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[ChaosDiscord]

Yes, you can get an HDTV for $300. But for $300 (or, say $340), I can get a giant 32 inch television. This isn't carefully hunting for a sale; this walking into Best Buy or Circuit City with $340 (plus tax) and walking out with a big television. We're (mostly) Americans here. Bigger is better. I like having a big television. For 32 inches of HD I'm paying $700 or more. I've been promised cheap HDTVs for years now, but they keep failing to arrive. HD is nice, but given that most of my signals are SD (vast majority of cable channels, all of my DVDs, all of my current generation video game systems) it's not really worth doubling how much I spent on my television. My existing 30" television (5 years old, $300 off the shelf without a special sale at Best Buy) serves me well.

HDTV is coming. But it's going to be a slow, painful transition. Lots of SD televisions are going to linger on for a long, long time. When the mandatory cut over occurs there will be mostly ED televisions until HD prices fall much, much further. For most people HDTV still remains in the unclear future.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[SatanicPuppy]

The only big problem is most people don't really care how sharp their tv is, and most people aren't keen on upgrading their entrie dvd collection, and while they can afford it, it doesn't follow that they will rush out and buy it.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[irablum]

in fact I would go so far as saying that HDTV is not only a solution, but its a way of pushing certain "independent" channels off the air by making it more expensive to provide content. Producing TV shows has gotten ridiculously cheap nowadays, and with 200+ channels on cable and on satellite, its finally possible for people to have a choice of what to watch based on their own interests. So, bird-watchers can watch the bird-watching channel and science buffs can watch the science channel and the like. But HDTV pushes that back 20 years by making it too expensive to produce all these TV shows, so more people have to watch network broadcasts, thereby pushing more money into network broadcasts.

The only problem is that it doesn't work. TV's aren't breaking and people don't NEED to replace them with HDTV's. Until the ONLY TV's sold in stores are HD-ready, and have been so for at least a year, then and only then can they start to phase out normal television.

From the standpoint of gaming, well.... MMORPG's have started to catch up to adventure games for the console. Obviously the solution will be to put MMORPG's ON consoles, like FFXI on the 360. I'd buy a PS-3 if it played WOW, if I'm still playing it next year, and I have the money.

Ira

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

Yes, you can get an HDTV for $300. But for $300 (or, say $340 [circuitcity.com]), I can get a giant 32 inch television. This isn't carefully hunting for a sale; this walking into Best Buy or Circuit City with $340 (plus tax) and walking out with a big television. We're (mostly) Americans here. Bigger is better. I like having a big television. For 32 inches of HD I'm paying $700 [circuitcity.com] or more.

Valid point. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, cable systems will provide a converter to allow you to display broadcast HDTV channels on a digital TV (which is what you described). Additionally, all three consoles - PS3, xBox360, Wii - will work with a digital TV.

Again, you have the choice - you can shell out $2000 last year for HDTV, $1000 this year around Thanksgiving (when the new consoles release), or wait until the larger HDTVs drop in price, as electronics always do. Console prices will also drop if you wait.

Me, I'll buy around President's Day, when both consoles and HDTV will have started to flatten out the price curve and have dropped the most. You can wait if you wish.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Feanturi]

Well, they can't eat them, and you can't force them to get sterilized, so what would you suggest?

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[joshsisk]

Even 1930s movies (or earlier) have enough resolution to be scanned in HD, I would imagine (and if you could find a good enough print). Films today use the same 35mm film format that has been is use since the 1890s (though the chemistry HAS been improved to make a better image, and there have been innovations such as sound-on-film, color and so forth). Actually, 70mm used to be more prevalant, which has even more detail.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[mcvos]

Most people live paycheck to paycheck in the US.

In another discussion, someone pointed out that most Americans have lots of surplus income to waste on videogames. Which is it?

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[dasunt]

Just because I have a $1,000 in the bank doesn't mean I'm willing to spend $1,000 on a game system setup.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[ivan256]

I'm not being elitist - I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.

They just don't prioritize them the same way you do.

HDTV isn't a priority for most people with perfectly functional SD sets already in their living room. The problem is worse for gamers, because a signifigant percentage of consoles are likely connected to hand-me-down sets that used to be a family's main set.

The industry needed to go HD at some point, but HD gaming will be irrelevant this generation other than as laying the groundwork for when a signifigant percentage of TVs are HD... perhaps 6 years from now?

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Chandon Seldon]

HDTVs will get cheaper, as volume goes up and sunk manufacturing costs get recouped, but the price of game consoles isn't going anywhere. You can expect to pay $300+ for game consoles for quite a while yet.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Chandon Seldon]

Uhh, why would it be more expensive to provide HDTV content?

HD cameras cost the same now that decent SD cameras cost 10 years ago. Mostly it's just that we get free resolution for transitioning to digital data storage and letting moore's law run for 10 years.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

a) This is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you ("median" being the key word, because it's not as skewed by rich folks as "average" income would be).

Being unable to afford a TV has nothing to do with income level and is entirely based on how much money people have become used to spending. In North America the average person's savings is -2% (meaning that people spend 2% more per year than they earn); this means that at the end of the day people have spent all of their money and their only option to buy what they want is to go further into debt. While this means that some people have a new TV and larger debt most will hold off purchasing one until they need to replace their existing TV.

As a side note, this massive running up of debts has recently been possible because realestate prices have been rising at unusual levels for several years; people have used the equity in their houses to consolidate their debt at a lower interest rate and not curb out of control spending. Most analysts anticipate that the US is heading towards a recession and (possibly) see a massive drop in realestate value across the country; this could result in a lot of people having more debt than assets.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[irablum]

you are comparing HD cameras cost to SD cameras cost 10 years ago. what you should be comparing is HD cameras cost to SD cameras cost TODAY. When any dude with a pickup can make his own TV show, then the competition is higher. And contrary to popular belief, 300,000,000 Americans can actually produce a few decent TV shows without the 10 Network excutives deciding whether the show is good or not.

Ira

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

But I don't pay $300 for a game console. I pay $99 or $129 for them. Again, the market retail price will eventually drop, just as it did for the original consoles. As it will for HDTV.

As it did for my $500 laptop which cost $2600 only slightly more than one year before I bought it.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Chandon Seldon]

The cost of a camera or three isn't what's going to hold back any random film projects. Even if you go to best buy and pay $1500 each for HD camcorders.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you intend to watch all the collective works of 299,999,993 untalented people to decide what you like best? No? Then I guess you do need someone else to filter out what is good and what is bad.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[porcupine8]

work on getting some food on your table and a roof over your head first if you're poor enough that $1,000 for five years or more worth of entertainment is unaffordable.

Uh, maybe spread out over those five years. However, if I were going to drop $1000 on anything at once (whether it's a computer or a HDTV and console), it's going to take some saving up. I have no problem keeping a roof over my head, but I also don't have $1000 sitting there with no strings attached ready to be spent. Which leads to...

I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.

Out of context, this is one of the truest things ever said on Slashdot. In context, it is one of the silliest.

Maybe their priorities just don't include these items. I have no desire for an HDTV. I'd eventually like to replace my little 13" with something like a 30" (maybe even one with more than just coax input), but even that is low on my list of priorities. Sure, I *could* save up for an HDTV and PS3 in a few months, but right now that money is going into savings for travel, a house, pet care, a new laptop, among other things that are higher on my priority list than these.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people live paycheck to paycheck in the US..." ...

a) This is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you ("median" being the key word, because it's not as skewed by rich folks as "average" income would be).


I think you're completely wrong. While the median income in the US is probably around the $40k mark, that doesn't mean that most people aren't living paycheck to paycheck.

If it's any indicator, look at quickly payday loan businesses have sprouted up. 10 Years ago they were relatively rare, now most cities have at least 1 per 10,000 citizens. People are living paycheck-to-paycheck more than ever, precisely because of things like HDTVs. Credit card usage and bankruptcy filings are at all-time highs, and you say that most people aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck? You're obviously not living in the same world as the median american.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[soleblaze]

Last time I checked decent HDTV wasn't being shot on $1500 DV Cameras that are highly compressed. They're being shot on $100-500k HD Digital Cameras. Sure, the $1500 is great for your home movies and maybe a real low budget film, but it's not going to cut it for a majority of HD entertainment.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Atari VCS cost $249 when it was first launched. That's more than $800 in today's dollars."

I hate these statements, look at things like wage increases and compare them to "adjusted" dollars, there is simply no way my parents were making 4x the amount of money in 1980 then they were today, their wages have remained relatively flat since that time, so I guess they are making 4x less money? Notice how the price of games has remained betwen 35-60us, 40-70CDN. And they've been that way since 1987!! Games still cost $50-60 and that was almost 20 years ago.

Think about it this way: They have to price games at a level where people will afford them, and inflation does not apply everywhere equally.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[nomadic]

In another discussion, someone pointed out that most Americans have lots of surplus income to waste on videogames. Which is it?

Well they're mutually exclusive propositions, I'll grant, but they were also made by two different people.

So basically you're asking him which he thinks is more accurate, his assertion, or the assertion made by an anonymous stranger in another conversation? Do you really need him to answer that?

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[vitaflo]

I'm not saying everyone can afford it, but if you can't, then you've got bigger problems to solve anyway.

Actually, if I can't afford it, it's the video game companies that have the problem, not me.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[StikyPad]

My thoughts exactly. A "correction" in hardware prices would imply that they're overpriced (or underpriced, I suppose), but expensive != overpriced, and prices are a function of what the market will bear. As long as millions of parents will fork out the cash for little Johnny, we can expect to see high prices for consoles. In fact, the success of the 360 indicates that, if anything, prices could probably stand to go a little higher.

On the other hand, HD displays are expensive because of research into new technologies, the relatively low scale production, and the costs of producing new components. As time passes, as technology matures, and as economies of scale increase, displays will naturally come down in price. Plasma screens, for example, have gone from upwards of $10,000 for all models to around $1,500 for many models. That's a pretty healthy drop.

I'm no economist (obviously), but there's no getting around supply and demand, and I don't see demand dwindling in the near future. According to the Consumer Expendature Index, spending for entertainment rivaled that of healthcare in 2004, the last year for which statistics are currently available. Granted, external pressures such as rising energy costs and natural disasters may well limit spending on entertainment, but the gaming market appears otherwise healthy, at least from my perspective.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[StikyPad]

I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.

Out of context, this is one of the truest things ever said on Slashdot. In context, it is one of the silliest.

Maybe their priorities just don't include these items. I have no desire for an HDTV. I'd eventually like to replace my little 13" with something like a 30" (maybe even one with more than just coax input), but even that is low on my list of priorities. Sure, I *could* save up for an HDTV and PS3 in a few months, but right now that money is going into savings for travel, a house, pet care, a new laptop, among other things that are higher on my priority list than these.

It's still true in context, because the context is a response to people who DO want a console, complaining that console/HDTV prices are too high. If you're not one of those people, then you're obviously prioritizing just fine.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[StikyPad]

Oops, I closed the italics early.. only the last paragraph is mine.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Grishnakh]

Most analysts anticipate that the US is heading towards a recession and (possibly) see a massive drop in realestate value across the country; this could result in a lot of people having more debt than assets.

Seems to me that if this happens, it won't just be a recession, it'll be an all-out economic collapse.

People with overvalued houses they can't afford aren't just going to keep carrying that debt: they'll simply default on their loans, and let the banks repossess the houses and try to sell them. It's not a problem when a small number of people have their houses repossessed, especially if the bank can sell them off at a decent amount. But if real estate values fall greatly, the banks won't be able to recoup their money with all these repossessed houses. Lots of banks losing that much money means economic disaster.

Of course, IANAE (economist), but from what I've seen in my lifetime I seriously doubt economists really know that much about economics, at least with any ability to forecast the economic future, or else we'd have people in government who'd keep things running better than the way they are.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Grishnakh]

and you can't force them to get sterilized

Why not? They do that in some countries. If people can't act responsibly, it becomes the State's responsibility to take care of them.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

"HDTV is a solution looking for a problem. TV was fine the way it is."

TV is far from fine: just look at its content.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[mcvos]

So basically you're asking him which he thinks is more accurate, his assertion, or the assertion made by an anonymous stranger in another conversation? Do you really need him to answer that?

I'm just as happy with your opinion on this issue. I've got no idea whether the average American is poor or rich. In fact, I don't even know if the average Dutchman lives paycheck to paycheck or is rich enough to go skiing in the Alps in winter.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[mgabrys_sf]

Bang on. When I look at the featurespec of the PS3 and my Mac Mini, compared - I don't see a lot of wiggle room for Sony. Particularly considering the PS3 will eat the Mini for lunch. Now - are we going to NEED all those features in the first year - or even see them used at all? Hard to say. My first-gen PS2 still has firewireports on it which never got used, and a hard drive port that keeps spiders happy. but the console got a lot more use in 6 years than the entertainment return on - say - a flight and hotel stay in Europe. No one bitches about that very much - because those that can afford a trip appreciate them regardless.

Considering the cost-per year, the thing's cheap enough for me. Hell, if I apply it to my place of business as an entertainment device (there is a line-item for this in the tax code) for employees at the office in the break area, it's just another worthwhile deduction that I can garner some fun out of.

The real question I guess is how many "early adopters" shouldn't BE early adopters and should be saving, getting a better education, getting a better job. With the demographics of this business getting older I'd actually be seriously curious what that percentage might be.

One last muse, I wonder how many lame - "man mugged for PS3 console" headlines we'll see at launch time. By idiots who can't resist getting their "bling" one way or another.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[nomadic]

America has moved back to the good old days with a vanishing middle class and wealth concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. But even if the majority of Americans can't afford it (which I'd say is probably true) there are still enough of the core demographic with money to make it worth Sony's while if they market it effectively. But they won't be getting anywhere near the numbers they had on the PS2.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[cluke]

People who live paycheque to paycheque shouldn't have kids.

Hey man! When I read you saying stuff like that, it makes me think you're not really the Pope at all!

(Anyway, what's the next step? People who can't afford food should starve?)

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is a steaming pile and you're as nuts as the guy above you giving his kids $400 birthday presents.

1. Christmas 2007 is a year and a half away.

2. This mythical $300 is $100 more than I've spent for my two previous quality name brand CRTs...and they don't enforce Draconian Restrictions Management.

3. Those $500 HDTVs don't really exist. You're rounding down, counting rebates, treating 720i the same as 1080p, comparing small inch models (13-24), etc. Oh, and let's not forget these are Sorny, Magnetbox, and Panaphonics sets.

The fact that the switchover is being government mandated (and semi-subsidized under some "plans") against our will is going to KEEP PRICES HIGH, just like it did for car insurance and emissions testing in Pennsylvania and just like it's going to do for healh insurance in Massachessetts.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[poot_rootbeer]

[Most people live paycheck to paycheck in the US] is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you

Median income alone isn't enough information to prove or disprove that claim; one also has to look at other factors such as cost of living, purchasing power, etc.

There is no economic reason whatsoever why the average American couldn't afford a $400 console and a $500 TV today if they could afford the equivalent of an $800 console and a $1,500 TV in 1977

No ECONOMIC reason, no. But you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the consumer's PERCEPTION of value based on looking at the numerals themselves. $600 in 2006 dollars SEEMS like a lot more than $250 in 1977 dollars, especially to those gamers who were too young or unborn in 1977 to comprehend the economic situation then (which covers most of us).

There's no use crying about game consoles - work on getting some food on your table and a roof over your head first if you're poor enough that $1,000 for five years or more worth of entertainment is unaffordable.

You're still thinking in terms of COST, not in terms of VALUE. If I have $1000 available in my budget to spend on entertainment over the next 5 years, am I going to spend it on an HDTV and a PS3 and no content for it, or am I going to buy a less expensive console and a bunch of titles? Or maybe I could buy some CDs, or books, or some other thing I'm interested in.

Each person has their own perception of value, and it's awfully arrogant of you to dismiss those who don't think the PS3 offers them a good value as "whiners".

I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.

And I'm saying that most people DO know how to prioritize their purchases, and finding room in their budgets for a $600 gaming console isn't a high priority for most people.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Jace of Fuse!]

Sure, I *could* save up for an HDTV and PS3 in a few months, but right now that money is going into savings for travel, a house, pet care, a new laptop, among other things that are higher on my priority list than these.

In other words, a new Mac and a Nintendo Wii are more important than a new HDTV and a PS3?

Yeah, I think a lot of us feel the same way. *snicker*

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we can afford to shell out that kind of money, is it worth it? That kind of money can pay the rent... entertainment is waaay to expensive, the markup is way too much.

Look at nintendo Wii, the price point on that baby is going to allow it to gain a huge advantage over the overpriced ps3 and xbox360.

Lower price = more units in more homes. Watch how it effects the market for nintendo games.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[prockcore]

you can even get a 1080p version right now for $500

That's nothing! You can get a 15" computer monitor that has no problem displaying 1080p for $60... that doesn't mean anything.

I'm not going to replace my 35" TV for a 15" computer monitor.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

starting in 2007, all TV channels will be broadcasting only in HDTV.

if you live in the US.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[porcupine8]

Considering that my husband and I will be living separately next year and we only have one functioning computer, yeah, a new computer is a priority in the next few months.

Who said I was getting a Wii? At least, this year. I just got a GameCube, I'm good til the price drops to $100. I only got the GC because I was finally running out of games on my SNES. I may be a fangirl, but I'm a cheapass fangirl.

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[prockcore]

starting in 2007, all TV channels will be broadcasting only in HDTV.

NO they will not. They will be dropping analog over the air broadcasting it has nothing to do with HDTV, and it won't affect most people (do you have rabbit ears on your TV?)

Re:You can afford HDTV and video consoles

[WillAffleckUW]

They will be dropping analog over the air broadcasting it has nothing to do with HDTV, and it won't affect most people (do you have rabbit ears on your TV?)

My viewing habits, and whether or not I watch the Playboy Channel, are none of your concern.

But I do have gerbils on my TV.

No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Araxen]

With Nintendo being the cheapest system and it doesn't require you to get a HDTV. I firmly believe they will be the console that comes out on top this generation of systems. PS3 will not be #1 this time around and will sink to #3.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[scolby]

None of them require you to get an HDTV. The 360 still looks damn good on regular TV, and I'm sure the PS3 will too.

A new crash? I don't think so. For Sony (because of their prohibitive pricing) perhaps, but MS will do fine (my jury's still out on Nintendo).

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Miniluv]

"The 360 still looks damn good on regular TV"

Hell yes it does. Despite owning an hdtv, I hooked my 360 up to an SDTV first (just this weekend in fact, since I bought it Saturday past) and LOVED how it looked. It blew me away compared to the xbox sitting next to it. I was even comparing a game on both platforms (Burnout: Revenge) and it was stunningly better.

Then I took it up to my LCD and played at 1080i and got blown away again.

Besides which, HDTV prices continue to fall and will for quite a while to come. HDTV is an inevitable reality, and so console makers who AREN'T supporting it now will suffer when it becomes the norm (18-24 months is my guess).

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[rjung2k]

"None of them require you to get an HDTV. The 360 still looks damn good on regular TV, and I'm sure the PS3 will too."

Sure, but since Sony's justification for the PS3's price tag is the inclusion of the Blu-Ray player, hooking up a PS3 to a non-HDTV makes as much sense as paying $50 to eat a Big Mac.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[AuMatar]

So you think 50%+ of the US is going to run out and buy a new TV in the next 2 years? Umm, no.

It may well become the majority of new sets sold in 2 years (especially if you limit it to bigger sets). But that doesn't even begin to touch the huge existing install base of normal TVs. 5 years minimum for it to dent that significantly, 7 more likely. WHich will be just in time for the generation after this.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with ya. I won't buy a HD Tv until they are the same price as regular TVs I don't watch it enough to justify buying one. As the for "Well there are $500 dollar ones out there" Why the hell do I want a $500 Dollar 25" tv when I can buy almost a 40" normal TV for that price? Out of all of this I see Nintendo making a comeback. I haven't bought a new system since the Nintendo 64. I just havn't wanted to spend the cash for them when they came out. I'd rather have a better comp. But I believe I will buy a Wii when they come out just because the remote and the games catch my attention and if I wanted to buy another system I'd have to shellout almost twice the cost more than likley.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Miniluv]

I'm not terribly concerned with the majority of the population, but instead the majority of the console gaming population. I suspect that well over 50% of them will in fact acquire HD sets in the next 2 years.

I expect in the general population that HD ownership will be at around 30% in 2 years time.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[AuMatar]

So you're expecting it to more than triple in 2 years time? Thats still unrealistic.

THe HD even for console gamers is unrealistic as well. Hardcore gamers, maybe. But they're a minority. No kid/teenager is going to be playing on an HDTV, they'll be playing on the cheap TV in their bedroom. Thats about 1/3 of the market there. No college kid is going to be playing on HD, its just too damn expensive. Hell, I barely afforded a tiny little one, and if I had money to make payments on something it would have been a car. THats another 1/4 to 1/3 the market. And of the adults, only the very hardcore gamers or the videophilles is going to buy an HDTV on purpose, the rest only will if their primary TV goes down. ANd even that portion isn't going to rush out and buy. Take my parents- their TV broke this weekend. THey called the repairman instead- $300 to fix it, vs $3000 to get a new one of the same size.

Any expectation of huge inroads by HDTV just aren't based on the numbers. Even many of the videophilles are backing off, the interface change that fucked over early adapters is scaring them off.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Miniluv]

Considering you can now buy an HDTV for under $500 USD, and that price continues to fall regularly, I'm thinking you're really exagerating what folks won't buy.

The industry, and their associated analysts, are predicting significantly larger growth than I'm talking about. I think my middle of the road prediction is fairly safe.

I do think the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray fight is going to slow adoption somewhat, but with the FCC unlikely to back off again on the deadline for switching to HD broadcasts, and with HD channels rolling out at the speed they are, I do believe a significant swing over the next 24 months into the HD camp is inevitable.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[AuMatar]

People aren't going to run out and buy a new TV before they need to. People don't run out and spend half a grand without cause. THe early adaptors have bought it, and now its a replacement market. Its sort of like operating systems- very few people bought a copy of XP, they got it on their next computer. Only TVs last longer than computers. And with a price difference of several hundred dollars between HD and non-HD for decent size TVs, many will chose to go low def.

As for the FCC- they'll push it back again because they'll have to. THey aren't going to break 90% of the TVs in America. It'll be pushed back to '09, and then most likely pushed back again in 09.

ANd HD channeles rolling out- the big cable companies have them. Most others don't. And only on their premium packages, basic service tends to have few to none. You're basing your opinions off your obvious love of HD, but the vast majority of America doesn't particularly care for it. We'll take it, but we don't want to pay for it, and we'll hold off on it until we have to.

Re:No Crash, Nintendo will be the #1 Console

[Miniluv]

No, I'm basing my commentary off analyst data from the big firms, all of whom are projecting HUGE HD set deployment in 2006 and into 2007.

I was actually highly skeptical of HD before acquiring a set that was HD capable, though that wasn't my primary consideration when buying it. I bought LCD due to space constraints, and bought HD because it didn't make sense to me to save $100 and get one of the very few EDTV LCDs I could find.

I also find it difficult to believe that the FCC will push the date, but instead that you'll see all of the set-top boxes downsampling to 480i for SDTV sets. EDTV is going to get completely ignored, as it deserves to.

Crash?

[Carlbunn]

What videogame crash? I can certainly afford an under 300usd Wii. Oh wait, you mean sony? They'll just have a wonderful future building cameras, and slapping rootkits on the wrong places

And this is why...

[d3ac0n]

I'm sticking with PC gaming.

I just can't justify spending all that money on a game console, and then on top of that, having to shell out THOUSANDS for an HDTV set just so I can see Solid Snake in Hi-Def? Ummm.. NO.

I'm sticking with my old-fashioned Tube T.V. as long as I possibly can, and I'm not buying any new HD or Blue-ray DVD players until the format war is good and over and prices come down to something reasonable. Which means I won't be getting an HD TV or DVD players for probably 5-10 years.

I'm sure I won't miss it either.

Re:And this is why...

[generic-man]

You could also hook up a next-gen console to that awesome monitor you bought for PC gaming so you can play games in HDTV. (HDMI-to-DVI converters are available, though you lose the content protection required for some Blu-Ray discs made by companies other than Sony.) You already play games in 1280x720 or higher, right?

Re:And this is why...

[d3ac0n]

Maybe, but why would I want to spend somewhere between $200 - $600 US on a gaming-only machine, When I could spend that same amount on an upgraded video card, and an Athlon X2 Processor. Then I can play the latest PC games, AND word-process, spreadsheet, surf, e-mail, Dual-boot with the latest Linux Distro, run a few virtual machines with VM-Ware, Photoshop or Gimp some artwork, etc.

The point is, with the cost of HD TV's and these new consoles combined, there just isn't the justification to buy one. Many of the better games for the consoles are also out for the PC, and the PC is just so much more versatile that it makes console gaming nothing more than a waste of money.

Re:And this is why...

[scot4875]

Many of the better games for the consoles are also out for the PC

There are tons of examples from other consoles as well, but I'll stick with Gamecube games since I'm most familiar with them:

Metroid Prime
Resident Evil 4
Zelda: Wind Waker
Super Smash Brothers
Super Monkey Ball
Paper Mario
F-Zero GX
Animal Crossing

None of these excellent games are available on the PC, and this is just a few 'Cube games and by no means an exhaustive list. If they don't float your boat, then don't buy a Gamecube. If you don't understand why they're fun, well, then that's your loss. But to go so far as to say that there's no justification to buy one is incredibly narrow-minded.

You probably don't like golf or bridge either, but those are two of my favorite games. Should I give those up just because you don't see the justification? I probably don't like half of what you like either, but I'm not going to try to justify my own preferences by saying yours are useless.

And, to top it all off -- I've already spent upwards of $6000 on my HDTV/HT setup. Why the fuck wouldn't I want to plug in to that to enjoy my games as well, when it's such a marginal additional cost? I have a PC for PC games and consoles for everything else. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?

--Jeremy

Re:And this is why...

[FloodSpectre]

This list is the exact reason I'm a PC gamer with a Gamecube, but no PS2 and no Xbox.

Re:And this is why...

[d3ac0n]

Well Jeremy, you managed to COMPLETELY miss the point of my post. Wow.

Fine YOU have spent over $6000.00 on a fancy HDTV setup. Guess what? MOST PEOPLE CAN'T AFFORD THAT! Or they can afford it, but have other priorities, so a fancy HDTV setup isn't really a smart option.

Obviously, I wasn't speaking to individuals such as yourself, who have the disposable income to spend on a big-ticket item like that. For those that do not already HAVE an HDTV setup, the prospect of spending that kind of cash is rather daunting, and not something to be taken lightly.

Did you consider that perhaps, just maybe, while those game-cube only games might be very fine indeed, The idea of dropping some serious coin on an HD setup just to play those games might not be something most people want to do? Especially if they have already invested a significant amount of money in a PC platform?

Lastly, Where do you get off putting words in my mouth saying that I think you should give up a game just because I don't want to buy it? I am speaking about persons such as myself, who have a mortgage, car payment, 2 kids, credit card bills, and a job that just barely covers it all with almost nothing left to spare at the end of the month.

Maybe a snotty rude big shot like yourself with more money than sense can afford to waste money on a fancy 6-grand HDTV setup and all the console toys to go with it, but the rest of us peons have families and lives to pay for, and aren't about to waste money on an overpriced console that, with the current HD wars, stands a better than average chance of becoming an expensive White Elephant.

Jerk.

Re:And this is why...

[hmccabe]

The thing is, if I pay $600 for an XBox 360 now, I'll be getting in early in the console's life. That $600 means I can play any of the coolest console games (which is more than enough gaming between school and work) for about four or five years, on average. Like a lot of people here, I already have a computer to do that other stuff. I recently purchased a laptop, which handles all of my computing needs and I probably will be happy with this computer for several years as well. The Xbox offers me roughly the same gaming experience for less money than a gaming PC, I don't have to upgrade the video card ever and the accessories are nice.

Re:And this is why...

[jkmullins]

How many of those things you mentioned actually require more power than you have now? Maybe the extra VM-Ware sessions and a speed boost for Photoshop. Are you really trying to say you need the latest greatest to run Openoffice and Firefox? The reality is the only reason 99% of computer owners outside of the server market upgrades these days is to play games, and it's hard to argue for the economics of a computer upgrade based on that.

To upgrade my system now, I'd need a new motherboard, CPU, and video card at a minimum. That would easily cost me over $500, and that would only be for gaming. I have no other reason to do so, because my current system can easily run multiple instances of everything else I use it for, at once. I browse the web, do light wordprocessing, print and edit picture, etc.

Don't try to go on and on about the requirement for an HDTV either, because it simply isn't. I have an HDTV and it looks remarkable, but I have played my 360 on SDTV's and it's far and away better than anything in the previous generation, and, just to use your argument, my HDTV can be used for other things. I can even watch TV and movies on it.

As for your final point, that versitility comes at a price. With a console, I know that when I buy they game, it will just play. No fiddling with settings or dealing with choppy framerates or poor performance because my PC isn't quite up to spec, or, even worse, the spec on the box is too low. I just put the disc in and play.

Re:And this is why...

[ClamIAm]

Um, yeah. Spending $300-500 for an uber-3D videocard every 3 years is MUCH different than spending the same amount for a console.

Re:And this is why...

[tabby]

my issue is that in 12 months you will probably need to speed as much again to keep playing the very latest games with the best visuals at their best performance.

With a console you spend it once about every 5 years

Myopic

[ObligatoryUserName]

I read this article earlier today, and the author just writes off the Wii completly. What he's not grokking, is that the Japanese game market already crashed a few years back. Microsoft and Sony were able to use the ever growing US market to write that off as an anomoly, but Nintendo took it to heart and came out with the DS and now the Wii in response.

So, yes, it's reasonable to say that Sony and Microsoft (and all their 3rd party developers) are in for a harsh awakening, but Nintendo is already on the other side of the crash and things are looking better than ever.

Re:Myopic

[badasscat]

What he's not grokking, is that the Japanese game market already crashed a few years back.

It didn't "crash". It had a downturn. That's not the same thing.

Some people, especially those that are too young to remember it, don't realize what 1984 was really like. Consider the fact that there were no game consoles on the market. None. (At least not in the US.) That seems impossible now, until you remember that the Atari 2600 hit in 1977 and most people had never heard of video gaming before that. So it was assumed at the time that video games had been a fad whose time had past... and every single company involved in the industry pulled out.

That did not happen in Japan, not even close. For one thing, their downturn was relatively mild compared to the US crash in 1984 - many Japanese companies continued making money through it, and games continued to sell (although there was close to a 50% drop over a few years). In the US, nobody was profitable, and game sales almost literally stopped in the span of about six months. They then did stop completely once stock was cleared off store shelves in early 1984.

The crash was dramatic. Any talk of a future "crash" is hyperbole unless the prediction is for something just as dramatic. I mean, every industry has its ups and downs - there's no news there. Consolidations, downturns, "transition periods" - this is not the same thing as a crash. At least not the crash of 1984, when video game purchases in this country literally ended, at least for one year.

Re:Myopic

[ObligatoryUserName]

You're right, "crash" is overstating it. I was under 10 in 1984, and I don't even remember the interruption between playing Atari games and getting a NES. I guess I vaguly remember that games got really cheap at some point and we picked up a bunch of cartridges we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, but heck - I actually liked the ET game. :)

Anyway, the XBox 360 has already sold more than 3 million consoles, so it's not like the market will completly go away, though it might not be able to sustain today's production budgets.

Re:Myopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the important thing to consider is that the market continued its downturn until the DS came onto the market and started to reverse the trend. What many people forget is that this is typical of all entertainment formats, but the Gaming industry is not mature enough to see what is really happening.

Whether you're talking about Music, Movies or Videogames there is this boom and bust cycle that is based on the originality of the content that is being produced; as people get tired of one format that has been exausted (Rap Music, "Epic" movies, First Person Shooters) they move onto the next style of entertainment (Funk, "Indie" movies, MMORPGs) [all are examples, not to be thought of seriously]. The reason for the downturn is simple, with entertainment industries people are motivated by wanting to be entertained (how unexpected) but repetition of musical style/ story / gameplay leads towards boredom. Now as the downturn begins those companies that refuse to see the writing on the wall end up losing a lot of money, whereas the companies that anticipate the change make a fortune.

Re:Myopic

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a forgotten videogame generation in between the 2600 & the NES--8 bit home computing. As someone who turned 12 in 1984, I know firsthand that videogames didn't die; computers just filled in where the underpowered consoles left off.

You have to understand the period: computers were still the big "unknown" back then by the vast majority of society. People were fascinated with the potential of computers (rightly so, considering all that has come afterward). All of a sudden a person could by a home computer for the same price as a game console, and the computer had better graphics and sound.

Computers such as the C64 and the Atari XL line were marketed to parents thusly: why buy your children a $200 game system that can only play games when you can buy them a C64 and disk drive for $350 and insure their future well being by giving them real computer experience?

All of my friends just transitioned from our 2600's to our Commodores, and the games just kept on coming.

Re:Myopic

[mwvdlee]

Then again, the whole Japanese downturn might just have been people saving money in anticipation of the new consoles.

Re:Myopic

[Anonymous Coward]

this.parent++

I was 11 in '84 and was programming my own little games in basic.. that was sweeet.. i didn't miss consoles at all

(c64 sucks :-)

Re:Myopic

[B0red At W0rk]

I think it's time you read this, fanboy:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/fanboy.h tml

Re:Myopic

[Quino]

your comment brought back memories -- I was 10 in 1984, too young to know what was happening in the "real world", but I do have vague memories of picking up new 2600 cartridges at the mall for ridiculous amounts (1 dollar bins, etc.), the $49.99 "new" 2600 (I remember a jingle of "Under 50 bucks! 50 Bucks!"), and then the NES.

For me it was a continuous experience -- I didn't realize I was buying from an old library of games (it was so vast there always seemed to be new 2600 games I could pick up).

Crash

[Hylis]

You can play for free or spend hundreds of hours with the same online games. Thanks to the PC. 60 euros for a 10 hours time of play is over. Add the limited number of console and you have the crash.

Only the Nintendo situation is good: make toy, funny games and... money.

Nintendo - save us! again!

[techstar25]

"And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers. Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content. Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford. "
So it's the Nintendo Wii.

Re:Nintendo - save us! again!

[RapedByKateMorrow]

You might look at Second Life. It has many of the features you mentioned as desirable. It's not the only MMORPG microcosm, but it is one of them. There is lots of room for content development (design your own house, creature, script your own game, et al.) and there is a great deal of variety in exchanges. One or more colleges use it as a teaching tool. There are live tutorials on content creation. Both SL and RL politics, religion, and family values are debated.

One large problem with allowing for user - created content is accepting some user - created content.
You'll see as much pixellated pornography there as you want. There are cyber - rides, sider slides, cyber - bikes and cyber sluts. You will find people who are paid to have cyber sex with you, if you want. Not everything will be unrepulsive to you. Sex - related events are heavily represented on the event board.

Picture of one million dolars bogus.

[tempest69]

Its a nitpick, but that big pile of cash is way over one million bucks. each bundle of 100 should be $10000, leaving 100 bundles as one million. a stack 4 deep, 5 across and 5 high (or any other combo that meets the size requirement).

Otherwise it would be a monster to make any kind of cash on a good bank heist. You would need to hire day laborers just to get all the cash into your rental truck..

Storm

Re:Picture of one million dolars bogus.

[honkycat]

I agree -- I thought the same thing. A million in hundreds would fit comfortably in a briefcase without arousing suspicion. In twenties, it'd still fit in a carry-on suitcase.

Re:Picture of one million dolars bogus.

[jeffmeden]

Each wrap is probably only 20 bills (remember, money paper is thick) and at that rate it would be 500 wraps. It is probably also stacked in such a way as to make it look as large as possible. I would suggest, to all those who think they know how much a million in hundreds is physically, to go withdraw it from their bank account, and see.

Anyway, That picture is of an alleged million dollars on display at Binion's Horseshoe, a casino in Las Vegas. Here is a witness account: http://www.amitgoel.com/vegas2002/image2.html

Re:Picture of one million dolars bogus.

[stienman]

You would need to hire day laborers just to get all the cash into your rental truck.

And you just know they'll stiff you!

-Adam

Re:Picture of one million dolars bogus.

[Anonymous Coward]

The faces are benjamins, that makes them 100 each, the first row is 14 X 6 or 840k, 16 stacks left to fill the picture..

Bah...

[Richard Steiner]

Just relax, pull out that old copy of UT or TA or NFS III or Madden 2001, and ignore all of the gnashing of teeth by the hardware vendors. If it's fun, it's good. Who says it also has to be high tech?

Re:Bah...

[dewboy]

> If it's fun, it's good. Who says it also has to be high tech?

Holy crap, finally someone out there who agrees with me. I still play my SNES all the time. If it's fun, play it!

Re:Bah...

[Locke03]

Of course, anyone who knows anything knows that the SNES was the pinnacle of video gaming bliss.

Re:Bah...

[Flyboy Connor]

In TFA this issue is discussed: most people are not entertained by games they have already played, or even games LIKE they have already played. Constant innovation is needed, and the innovation in the graphics area is at an end. That is one of the reasons why the author predicts the crash.

Personally, I still like to drag out my C64 every few years, but I admit thatr is mainly nostalghia.

Re:Bah...

[sirinek]

Are you kidding me?! I still love a good game of Crazy Taxi or Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (yes, TWO) on my Dreamcast.

And the three games I play the most (still!) on my PC are GTA 3, Railroad Tycoon 2, and Age of Kings (AoE II)

Re:Bah...

[DrCode]

But lots of older PC games have a high replay value, like the Ultima and Wing Commander games. Even adventure games, like Sam'n'Max or Monkey Island, can be replayed after a few years, in the same way you can enjoy an old movie.

Re:Bah...

[Richard Steiner]

Depends entirely on the game and the player.

Some games have so many mods these days that I question whether or not it's even POSSIBLE to thoroughly experience them all. Quake 1, for example, covered everything from aircraft combat (via AirQuake) to Rally racing (via QuakeRally) to highly team-oriented stuff with multiple classes (TF) to very different multiclass deathmatch variants (FvF and/or GENClasses).

I still get a kick out of playing certain levels in Doom Legacy, actually. :-)

Moronic article

[interiot]

This article is so full of statements that are a big stretch that's it's difficult to even discuss the core issue...

• all Wii games are going to do very poorly. Why is none of the other gaming press writing about this, why has only this guy has seen the light?
• the Wii controller is a cheap gimmick... true innovation won't come until we have sensory suits or neural inputs. True, but gamers aren't going to stop playing games just because the stuff we see on TV can't be bought right this instant.
• console hardware loses money. Yeah? And they make money back through royalties on each game sold.
• point #3: movies are more immersive than games. Huh?? And even if this is true, why has it not been constantly true, why does it mean that the gaming industry was doing well a couple years ago, but will crash any day now?

Re:Moronic article

[genuwinehammer21]

Well the Wii is a good gaming device, and as far as PCs go, a lot of them have screens that can double as television (widescreen or HD if you have a really expensive one) so you can play consoles on the screen or PC. Also a lot of TVs can be used as PC monitors, so you have no real problems. Back to the Wii, because it is not HD it can be used with any TV, making it the most versatile for taking anywhere, and the fact that it is always online is a major plus.

Re:Moronic article

[ADRA]

"all Wii games are going to do very poorly"

He said the couple non-kiddie-type games looked weak. The article's author seemed indifferent about if the Wii would be successful or not. He did say MS/Sony would bleed though.

"the Wii controller is a cheap gimmick..."

Sadly, the Wii controller 'could' turn into a cheap gimmick. We've seen them before and we'll see them well into the future. We just have time to discover if the controller's gimmick or a useful innovation.

"console hardware loses money. Yeah? And they make money back through royalties on each game sold."
I think xbox was the first platform to never break even on their hardware. Just because thats the going trend doesn't mean it can be sustained.

There'll be a tipping point where bleeding your apponent means taking losses that could potentially ruin you. Maybe Nintendo's less aggressive with the pixel pushing this cycle so that they actually turn a profit instead of just decapitate their foes. If Nintendo spend load of R&D on the system and it flops horribly it could end the company. MS/Sony have the safety net of a gigantic larger company to fall back on.

"point #3..."
The industry may not crash, but there'll be adjustments certainly. Devs and publishers will come and go.

Re:Moronic article

[AuMatar]

Nintendo turned a huge profit off the gamecube. THere was a brief time their profits dipped, but they were always in the black. I don't have numbers, but when you combine always selling the Cube for a profit with selling so many 1st party games, they made nearly as much as Sony.

Here we go again...

[Jarlsberg]

Another blogger thinks the game market is heading for a crash. Please come up with some more original ideas. This topic comes up every few weeks, it seems, with nothing new added to the table ("PS3 going to be soo exepensive, teh market will crash for sure" -- uh, yeah. We still have inexpensive PCs, the moderately expensive Xbox360 and the probably cheap Wii).

Looking at market trends, it's difficult to see just why there will be a big crash. Xbox360 keeps selling, massive turnout for E3, Nintendo is still selling shitloads of Nintendogs, and PS3 will definitely turn heads, no matter the price. Seriously, are these *really* signs pointing to a crash?

Re:Here we go again...

[nate nice]

I agree mainly. If I'm going to discuss a crash it would be more along the lines of:

Microsoft and Sony and engaged in a "winner take all" style war neither can win. They both have the resources to lose money non these systems but the questions remains, how much is too much? Who will flinch first? Who will come in to compete when one falls off forcing the "winner" to still throw money into the pit?

Companies are in business to make money. Any money they have lost and are losing is a calculated risk, but if they find they are only going to lose money and these systems are not the product virus they hope they will be, they will pull out. I mean, the .com era showed us a product has to actually make money eventually.

Then I would move on to discussing how much it is costing to make games and how this has, oddly enough, stifled innovation as companies cannot afford to risk a huge loss. So, they pump out the same game over and over and eventually people are going to recognize it's all the same. He touches on this, but doesn't explore it much.

Much of the videogame market is based on potential growth right so it's really high risk, high reward. If it doesn't grow like expected then a domino effect can start.

All in all he sounds more like a person who just is getting old and doesn't enjoy games as much. I agree, there hasn't been much that's impressed me of late but I still have friends that don't mind playing these same games over and over.

I'm not sure if there will be a crash, but I do see potential change. The industry is in dangerous waters right now, taking a lot of risks and relying on a lot of things.

This is a software issue

[Cthefuture]

Seriously, I would buy a $1000 game console if it had games worth playing. I might even pay more than that considering a console lifespan is 5+ years (ie. generally longer than the $2000+ computer I am using).

Todays games are just barely even worth a $200 console let alone 3 times that price. As the summary mentions, the current crop of games are lacking that certain something that makes you want to play them because they traded it away for fancy graphics and sound.

It's all about wage compression

[Monkelectric]

These companies that want us to buy expensive TV's, movies, and the like are the *SAME* companies outsourcing anything that looks like a decent job to "low cost regions". Which means their customers (US workers) can hardly afford these things, which means the companies will now have to cut costs more agressively (more outsourcing).

The circle is now complete

What video game crash...?

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't think video games will crash (unless you're running Windows). I think Sony and Microsoft will be hurting for a while since they're introducing very expensive consoles that don't offer a significant bang per buck at a time where people are more conscience of prices because of energy costs. I think more people will probably wait for the prices on the consoles and the video games to drop significantly before buying.

My friends and I are not paying $500+ USD for either Sony or Micrsoft. The jury is still out on the Wii (Nintendo had to screw up the name). I'm waiting for the next Castlevania game for the DS to come out before I get a DS Lite.

Re:What video game crash...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. I could understand if you didn't want to buy a car with a silly name, or wear a branded shirt made by The Doofus Corporation, but why would the name of a machine that sits in your home, unseen by more than maybe 3 dozen people in its lifetime, have any effect on whether you purchased it or not?

That seems like perhaps the least convincing argument ever.

Also, more to the point, I am almost positive the Sony's pricing mechanism is geared towards not having the Xbox360 problem of demand exceeding supply. I predict Spring or Summer 07 we'll see a $100 reduction in price of both models.

Re:What video game crash...?

[__aaclcg7560]

The only fatal flaw I see with the Nintendo Wii (so far) is the name. Revolution was the perfect name but Nintendo had to screwed it up by finding something cute and meaningless. This doesn't mean I won't buy it; I just don't have a solid reason at this time to be drooling all over it. I'm not planning to get a Nintendo DS Lite until there is a game I really want to play (i.e., Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow in October).

Re:What video game crash...?

[Evangelion]

You do know that Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow was released in October 2005, don't you?

Re:What video game crash...?

[__aaclcg7560]

Opps... wrong title. I meant Portrait of Ruin. However, with Dawn of Sorrow being available, I might get a DS Lite sooner than expected. :P

Dupe

[mgabrys_sf]

It's the same article he posted on the industry crashing with some minor tweaks. Just another click-whore, move along.

maybe it wasn't the Hydrogen

[kisrael]

Maybe it wasn't the Hydrogen but the coating on the fabric... personally I think that disaster has given Hydrogen an undeserved bad rep when it comes to nextgen fuel options.
(hell, if someone described how dangerous the stuff we fill our cars with now can be to us for a new fuel, it would never get adopted.)

Re:maybe it wasn't the Hydrogen

[Pope]

Nah, HDTV is the Hydrogen that will lift the consoles to ever greater heights!

Hmm...

Re:maybe it wasn't the Hydrogen

[ClamIAm]

I find it funny that your sig is "DEALING WITH MORTALITY".

Don't take away my hookers!!

[JofCoRe]

There's going to be a lot of money lost the next few years, a lot of articles written, a lot of panic, a lot of changes. And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers.

That's all well and good, and I really couldn't care less if something like that happened (which I'm kind of skeptical of anyway). But if they create something "different and innovative", I sure hope they they don't take away my blood, guts, and hookers!!! I for one like blood, guts and hookers. Who wouldn't? :)

Re:Don't take away my hookers!!

[Indefinite, Ephemera]

'Concerned parents'?

Re:Don't take away my hookers!!

[JofCoRe]

'Concerned parents'?

eh, that's ok, because if they really are "concerned parents", then they can pay attention to their kids' lives, and monitor the games and entertainment that their kids partake of. And since they are concerned and involved in their kids' lives, then they wouldn't be buying the same games that I am with the blood, guts, and hookers, right? :)

Crap Article

[paullyjunge]

Authors thoughts:

1. Make thesis.
2. Make realization that thesis cannot be supported.
3. Twist random facts, pull information out of context, and hope enough morons who lack logic will agree.
4. Send retarded article to Zonk, and twist fingers for #3.

Re:Crap Article

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed:

5. ...
6. Profit!

What idiocy is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck kind of shit is this person spouting?! This is ridiculous! Just because the CONSOLE industry is taking a huge hit by no means indicates that the ENTIRE industry will be taking a hit. There are plenty of amazing advents that are being made that will push the PC gaming industry from its slump in the past few years. PPUs are going to push the boundaries of PC games far beyond what we can currently see, and if the response to Half-Life 2's astounding physics are any indication, the result of functioning PPU's is going to be RIDICULOUS. These units are already spreading into the Industry, and when they are available for sale to the general public in a relatively short time, games are going to be made to take full advantage of them.

A great example is a game that was shown at E3 this year (unfortunately I didn't have the time to attend and my last look at the game was several months ago so I have no name for you). This game featured one of the PPU's in a Deathmatch style environment where the player wielded various weapons and psionic abilities. One of the weapons was a grenade that pulled thousands of interactive objects together and then exploded sending each one on it's own independent path. There was NO frame lag during this. The fact that games will be able to support so many interactive objects without slowing down gameplay means that entirely new concepts are going to be creatable. And this is only one chunk of change going on in the industry. Genre's are blending themselves together and becoming more innovative and interesting. Graphical capability is skyrocketing (go look down a bit for the John Carmack explanation of Mega-texturing) and along with that how much more enveloped players are becoming.

It doesn't matter if these major companies take hits based on their technolgy, there are so many things within the industry that are going to keep it flying. And that's just WITHIN the industry! Sony and Microsoft are massive companies with plenty of other sources of income. So what if Microsoft lost 4 billion on the XBox? They're making so much more in the grand scope of things.

So no, the game industry won't crash. The mere thought is ridiculous.

Re:What idiocy is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi there the game is called Cell Factor. Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSeW9NejxLo

Re:What idiocy is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the one! Thank you for posting this.

Re:What idiocy is this?

[SanityInAnarchy]

You lost a bit of credibility when you mentioned PPUs, as they really seem to be nothing more than a processor with a different architecture which happens to be good at the kind of calculations we need for physics. We'll be able to brute force a lot of that simply with a second or third core, and the PS3 already has multiple processors which are designed with exactly this kind of specialization in mind.

I agree -- the game industry won't crash. But I don't think PPUs will have anything to do with that.

Re:What idiocy is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst you realize the PS3 has a PPU, right?

not only that but...HDTV is not LCD or Plasma

[PortWineBoy]

It seems that every reviewer with this angle says the same thing...you can't get a good HDTV for under $1000. That's all well and good, but as you've pointed out, untrue. Not only that but every reviewer seems to confuse HDTV and LCD/Plasma.

I have a beautiful Sony Wega 32" HDTV (up to 1080i) with a TUBE. Yes, the antiquated and unloved tube...but let me tell ya, that thing has an amazing picture, will outlast (probably) any LCD or Plasma and even with the giant footprint (weight alone was 165lbs) it still fit into my budget ($800) and my apartment.

HDTV is the next big thing, people will switch once the content is there.

The author's comments on the 2600 and ET are also off base...ET failed because it was buggy and it just plain sucked!

TAGS: firezonk plonkzonk

[Anonymous Coward]

firezonk plonkzonk

The Sky is Falling!

[AcheronHades]

This guy gets half his facts wrong and the other half he completely makes up. He talks like the video game industry crash of the early 80s like it was some inexplicable cataclismic event that no one could explain. At that time, literally ANYONE could make a game for the Atari, and there was no governing body that certified a game was acceptable. A LOT of crap was released. Then along came Nintendo, requiring all games released for their system to be "Liscenced by Nintendo". And whats with the "...Sony plans to take a $400 to $500 loss on every single damned PS3 they sell for the first few years." Is he just making stuff up?? The article he sites doesn't make a statement even remotely close to that. Yes I realize that Sony will be taking a loss per machine, but he is pulling numbers out of the air. Then he goes on to argue that people play games because they are looking for novel graphical experiences, comparing Golden Eye, to Red Faction 2. i.e. We are all graphics whores. Yes graphics are a key selling point for games, but thats not what makes a good game. People will always pick up the shiniest pebble, but so long that gamers enjoy the games they play, they wont stop playing regardless of whether or not the graphics are three times better than last years title. This article is completely bogus, the game industry is far from crashing.

Re:The Sky is Falling!

[Oswald]

The article he sites doesn't make a statement even remotely close to that.

Well, the article cited does say "Estimates have been $900 per console, according to Merrill Lynch analysts..." Let's see, $499 retail, minus $900 production cost equals...a good bit more than $400 per machine lost when you consider that Sony only gets about half of the retail price.

What article were you reading?

Thank god for the Wii

[Wyrd01]

Almost all the doom and gloom proposed in the summary is solved by the Wii. Did the writer honestly not know:

Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming, with HDTV playing the role of Hydrogen.
> That bodes well for the console that does not care about HDTV and will work great on any screen.

And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers.
> Pretty much exactly what the Nintendo executives have been saying for months now. Instead of going the "small improvement in graphics" route they redesigned the UI. From the reports I've read it is quite innovative to use.

Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content.
> Nintendo's online service could possibly be used to download 3rd party games, and indie developers should love the freedom of creativity a motion-sensing controller allows, while the dev kits are easy to use, cheap, well-established (from the time of Game Cube) and no HD visuals means they don't need a warehouse of artists designing highly detailed textures.

Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford.
> The highest I can imagine this will come out at is $250. At best I'd guess $200. Considered by itself that is still a decent chuck of change for a stand-alone game player, if playing games isn't that important to you (I've heard rumors people like that are out there), but when put next to the other 2 game playing options it looks like a steal.

Pricing strategy: why is PS3 $600?

[iisan7]

360 could have made Microsoft a _lot_ more money if they sold the first units they had for $600. Then there wouldn't have been a shortage; everyone who could afford one, gets one. A month later when they've sold all they can to the Lik-Sang crowd, it drops $200.

Sony may have just learned from the 360 release that they can charge a lot more to the early adopters by releasing a limited supply and then drop the price soon after. I hate Sony too (having to do with their tech support, not the products, which are generally solid), but I see the logic here. It's about avoiding a shortage on the release date.

Re:Pricing strategy: why is PS3 $600?

[revlayle]

As much as I think the PS3 is a ludicrous piece of tech I am not planning to buy for quite some time. This may be what Sony is shooting for: Get it out, and really knock them dead in sales in 6 months to a year after hardware prices drop and better games are available (and granted, the BluRay is anywhere near a success). However, will the 3rd party devs wait around that long?

HDTV the Great Swindle

[blavallee]

All the marketing hype behind HDTV has duped the general public into believing that a higher definition actually makes a difference. Unless you sit eighteen inch's away from your sixty inch screen, there is no difference between a traditional television and an HDTV.

Let me break it down into some examples most people can understand:

Remember French painter Georges Seurat and his dots? Offset printing used in print media today still uses his technique. You do not notice that the pictures in your newspapers and magazines are made up of tiny little dots, unless you pull out the magnifying glass. The 35mm film projector typically displays at 24 frames-per-second. This is because the human eye can not detect a difference at higher speeds.

Would you buy a projector that can display at 96 frames-per-second because it is 'supposed' to provide higher detail? Don't forget it would take four times the amount of film to show a movie.

So what does HDTV really give you? Six times the number of dots and twice the number of frames-per-second. At an optimum viewing distance, your brain can not detect a difference.

Yes, a higher resolution does make a difference when you are sitting within two feet of a computer screen. But not when you are comfortably across the room on your couch watching [adult swim].

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[egomaniac]

All the marketing hype behind HDTV has duped the general public into believing that a higher definition actually makes a difference. Unless you sit eighteen inch's away from your sixty inch screen, there is no difference between a traditional television and an HDTV.

I'm being completely serious: if you can't tell the difference between HDTV and standard def, you need to see an optometrist.

I sit about 12' away from my 50" plasma, and I can easily see a dramatic difference between HD content and standard-definition content. At one point I accidently set my cable box for 480p output, and for the next day or two happened to be watching only standard-definition programming so of course I didn't notice anything wrong. Then I tried to watch a high-definition show, and within five seconds I was hunting through the settings trying to figure out why the picture looked so blurry. It really is that dramatic. I also have a smaller plasma which is farther away from the viewing position (42" at 18') and I can easily tell on that one as well.

Have you actually seen HDTV and standard-definition on the same TV set? I doubt it, or you wouldn't be making claims like this. Or perhaps the set you were comparing on was marked "HDTV compatible" or something equivalent, which just means that it can accept a high-definition signal, but can't actually display it at its full resolution -- typical "EDTV" sets have 480 lines of vertical resolution just like standard-definition TVs do.

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[generic-man]

I have lousy eyesight and even I can tell the difference between standard and high definition TV. I dare you to sit ten feet away from an old SDTV 60" screen and a new HDTV 60" screen and to tell me that they look the same when showing high definition content.

Adult Swim is all standard definition, so it's not a good example. 12 Oz. Mouse looks just as crude on a $10,000 television as it does on a $50 one. Flip over to ESPN-HD and notice how craggy Joe Morgan's face really is when he does Sunday Night Baseball. (It is seriously jarring the first time you see it.)

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[metamatic]

You're smoking crack. I watch a ton of [adult swim], and I just upgraded from a CRT to an LCD HDTV. One of the first things I noticed was how much better all the cartoons were--richer, more saturated colors without any color bleed, better contrast, no irritating flicker or scan lines. And that's just with upscaled regular TV!

Stick in a DVD and you can see your favorite movies all over again, and make out details you never saw before. It can be problematic, in fact--suddenly I could see fingerprints on the glass in the rotating pen scene in "2001".

And then there's actual HD. 720p looks like a well encoded DVD. 1080, even downscaled to my TV's native 720p, is amazing--but there's nothing worth watching in 1080, unfortunately.

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[Anonymous Coward]

High Definition Crap is still going to be crap

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[Anonymous Coward]

The 35mm film projector typically displays at 24 frames-per-second. This is because the human eye can not detect a difference at higher speeds.

No, it's because the frames have motion blur.

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[blavallee]

Let me rephrase! Of course there is an obvious and detectable difference between standard and high definition. But it does not make a difference to the viewer UNLESS you are actively trying to determine the resolution of the screen.

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[Jearil]

Very true. It's also been studied by the US Airforce that pilots can make out the details of an image flashed at 1/240th of a second. It's not that the human eye cannot detect anything above 24fps, it's just with motion blur added into film that it looks acceptable.

For a quick test on if you can notice a difference, find yourself a good CRT somewhere (work, your own, friend.. etc). Set the refresh rate as low as it can go, usually that's 60Hz. 60Hz is 60 refreshes per second which is 60fps in essence. Look at a completely white screen with that. Most people will notice it flickering. You may not realize that what you're seeing is "flickering", but it really does give off that headache effect. Now change the refresh rate to 100Hz (if you can). See a difference? If not, see an eye doctor.

The human eye can capture quite a bit of detail at a really quick rate. The parent is correct in that the reason that 24fps looks "good" to you is because of motion blur. If you were to freeze the image and look at a single frame the detail is quite low and, in a lot of action scenes, will look blurry. Your brain is pretty good at piecing together this information into a solid image however, but the detail level can be brought up a notch.

I'd like to also note the difference of the resultion to the grandparent. Please set your monitor to 640x480 and maybe play a game with a bunch of text on it like an RPG or something. That's 480p (which is still better than standard TV, but your monitor isn't made for interlaced images). Now change your monitor resolution to 1280x720 (or if you can, 1925x1080) and play the same game. Look at the text especially. Notice that while it's smaller and you can see more of it on the screen that it still looks clear? That's 720p and 1080p respectively. If you can't notice a difference when sitting back and looking at 640x480 compared to 1925x1080.. please don't drive anywhere.

Re:HDTV the Great Swindle

[Baldrake]

It's also been studied by the US Airforce that pilots can make out the details of an image flashed at 1/240th of a second.

I've seen this claimed over and over and over again on different web sites, usually as a justification for why games "need" to run at 200 fps. But I have never found anyone who could provide a reference to the original study. Since I know you wouldn't dream of just repeating hearsay on slashdot, any chance can you give me a pointer to where this was published?

The solution: part 1

[Nesetril]

I am pretty sure I can get a free PS3 from any one of the ubiquitous "click the monkey to win a free PS3" ads. So, I am basically waiting for the "free HDTV" ads to appear, and then I am all set.

Is the PS3 really more expensive?

[dada21]

A reader at my forum posted a question regarding the PS3 and if it is really more expensive than the PS2. In 2000, the PS2 sold for US$299. In 2006, the PS3 will sell for $599. Over the past 6 years, the dollar has fallen in value by about 50% in many areas of the market (not just gasoline or housing). Things haven't really gotten more expensive, the dollar has just become more worthless. You can thank Greenspan and Bernanke for their inflationary monetary policy.

For many households, their incomes have nearly doubled in the past 10 years, if not 6 years. I know my income is up nearly 300% in 7 years. For me, the PS3 is cheaper versus the true cost of living than the PS2 was, and I'm 32, not 25. Considering I was 26 when the PS2 came out, I am already past the "I can't afford XYZ" phase of my life.

Maybe things are coming to a head in the economy entirely, where people are earning more and more dollars, but those dollars are constantly worth less and less to a global market. For a guy like me living on a personal gold standard, most prices have been falling over the last 5 years, not rising. For those of us who see our paychecks going up every year, the PS3's reported initial price shouldn't see that outrageous, especially considering many of us aren't doing much more than we were doing 6 years ago, so getting a raise seems pointless.

At least the PS3 has many new features to show for the dollar price increase. What is the Euro price of the PS3? The dollar fell against the Euro almost 50% in that same time.

For me, I won't buy it anyway, since it's a Sony product and I'm through with them. I was a Sony fanboy for a decade, but not now with their junk and their consumer manipulations. They can go suck it. Even still, the PS3 seems comparble to the PS2 in actual value rather than dollar price.

Re:Is the PS3 really more expensive?

[killbill!]

Good point. I agree, the current commodity bull run has as much to do with rising demand as with the dollar depreciating. Whoever modded the parent troll needs to get out from under their own bridge.

The PS3 is launching at EUR 500/600, just like in the US. However, the PS2 launched at EUR 450. What a difference a few years make!

(FYI, advertized prices include VAT/sales tax in Europe, which usually runs in the 15-20% range. So the "EUR 1 = USD 1" rate retailers are using today is about right. Ask the British instead if you want to hear about genuine exchange rate rape! ;))

Re:Is the PS3 really more expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely true. The dollar has lost almost half it's value over the
past 5 years. By the end of the year it could hit 75%. The fed is printing
trillions in cash and iran oil bourse is set to open soon. Both of these things
will make the dollar worth less. This is part of the reason why gas is so high.

How is that offtopic?

[SanityInAnarchy]

We're talking about whether there will be a major gaming-industry crash, due to people not being able to afford new consoles. But someone offers a theory for why new consoles aren't affordable, and it gets slammed -1 Offtopic?

Re:How is that offtopic?

[Monkelectric]

I don't know why I even bother. Thanks for the support.

Re:How is that offtopic?

[Flyboy Connor]

I agree that your parent's post is not offtopic. But yours is.

Dammit, mine too.

Great article..right on the money...

[Digital_Mercenary]

I agree with most of it, especially the MMORPG trend. Recently "City of Heroes" has been my affliction... It's comic book style combat in real time! Thats where I'm betting consoles will hit the wall. Playing a MMORPG on a big screen TV is just a Novelty.

A few words about the "hard core gamers":
Madden Football 2002 had a feature that allowed you to setup an online league. A windows based Madden Football League Server. You could connect over the net to run a draft, trade players and check injury reports. It was buggy and seemed to crash all the time but It was the best feature of a PC game I ever saw. I became a hard core Madden Football fan because of it. I could run a league of my own! With my friends, with strangers, with anyone! Some charged membership fees and played for a cash prizes. The hard core gamer had full control.

EA promptly removed the feature the following year saying it was to difficult to mantain and not enough gamers used the feature. Promptly built a buggy online server of their own and charged for access.

We few Hard Core Gamers were not enough to keep the best feature Madden Football ever created. Game companies are after the mass market. The mass market is all about novelty. Discount bins full of Madden 2006 are the result.

"HARD CORE GAMER FOREVER!"
-DML337ira

Re:Great article..right on the money...

[AdamThirteenth]

Those bastards at EA did the same thing to me so many years ago.

The game was Motor City Online. It was the funnest game I've ever played in my entire gaming life. And one day they turned off the servers and gave us a free copy of The Sims Online as an apology...

if anything

[Truekaiser]

is going to crash the gaming industry it is the mistaken belife that graphics=gameplay & story. why buy ut2k7/8/9 etc when it's the same as the previous game but better graphics and new models throwen in. also consider oblivion, the story is weak, the game takes no chances. it's morrowind with better graphics and less choices.

Now wait a minute...!

[Jugalator]

Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming

Hey hey, now wait a minute here... HDTV is still a new technology, and the discs and standalone players are barely even out yet. How can they be so sure HDTV will *still* not fall in price like basically any other maturing technology in time? And what's this about PS3 too expensive? Console gaming != PS3. There's that smash hit Wii from Nintendo according to E3 reporters, and of course the Xbox 360.

I call rubbish, and find console gaming more interesting to keep an eye on than ever before. Some upcoming games have me wondering if it's cinematic trailer or in-game footage. And the amazing part is that they're priced for the home segment; well, possibly besides this PS3 then.

Here's what I see

[mythandros]

I see consoles getting more and more expensive and decent gaming PC's getting cheaper and cheaper. When the price of one gets close to the price of the other, how can there not be a confrontation?

interesting choice of words

[Anonymous Coward]

"eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers."

So does this mean Duke Nukem is going to come out this year?

lenses have improved too

[interiot]

I presume lenses have gotten slightly better over time too? For instance, Metropolis from 1927 seems somewhat blurry (or maybe it has some purple fringing or something?), and probably wouldn't have much extra useful resolution if scanned in to HD.

Re:lenses have improved too

[netswine]

Most of the early pictures were filmed using a cellulose nitrate film base which decomposes rather easily. Perhaps this is why those early flicks look blurry and tinted.

I liked the ET game too...

[hackwrench]

I think the people who are dissing it expected it to resemble the movie more than it did.

Brilliant article

[garylian]

I think the author of TFA got it just right.

I'm almost 40 years old, now. My wife and I just had our first child last week. I barely have time to log into here to catch the news, much less any inclination for paying that much money for a console to play inferior games to what you get on the PC.

The console market is in trouble, but they don't really want us to know it. They want to hope for a perfect storm of entertainment, and unfortunately for the, the holy grail is realistic and affordable VR gaming. As the author said, we thought we'd have that by now, and we are still a decade or more away.

Life catches up to you, and while game makers talk about the target demographic being 18-35 male, most of them are H.S. and college kids. Those kids don't have a ton of disposable income. Once they hit the real world, they don't have the time to devote. The more involved in the real world they get (you know, girls, work, girls, hobbies, girls, sex, girls) the less they devote to games.

When H.S. and college guys can afford the game systems and the games, then you might have something. With the PS3, that isn't going to be the case for a majority. That's a problem.

Re:Brilliant article

[chlo310]

I think the author of TFA got it just right.
I'm almost 40 years old, now. My wife and I just had our first child last week. I barely have time to log into here to catch the news, much less any inclination for paying that much money for a console to play inferior games to what you get on the PC.

Good point, but wait 7-10 years, and you'll see yourself buying a PS6/Xbox2520/Nintendo Cowabunga.

Children and college kids don't have money, but their parents sure do...

Right on!

[Fantastic Lad]

It's amazing how it can take seventy years before people figure out that false assumptions were made about big, news-shaping events like the Hindenburg disaster. --Even more amazing is that now, when the data is freely available, nobody cares enough to restructure their belief systems. It's like the mythology of an event becomes more important than reality. Or maybe people are just un-curious. I don't know.

I wonder what other big, recent disasters might have been given a false spin with the general public. . ? It's easy enough to do. People like to be told simple answers which fit easily with their current beliefs, no matter how flawed or limited those beliefs might happen to be.

-FL

But what if you bought an HD TV

[Lonath]

And you wanted a "content appliance" to go with it that let you download things off the 'net and even let you do some things like web browsing and email and such on it.

Nintendo is making a game console (I think) but the PS3 and XBOX 360 are heading toward becoming "content appliances" like I've described. I don't think it's a stupid gamble on the part of MS and Sony. They care about the games, but they care more about people downloading movies and music and such (for a fee) from the MS and Sony networks.

Not quite...

[Undefined Parameter]

For what it's worth, hydrogen has been proven not to have been the cause of the Hindenburg catastrophe -- a new formula for the outer shell coating ("exterior paint," if you will) that turned out to essentially be solid rocket fuel, and lightning caused the disaster. Granted, the Hyrdogen probably didn't help matters much, but it wasn't the cause.

As for the topic at hand, I think the article author is overstating things. I doubt the gaming market will decline -- on the contrary, I expect it to prosper. As the hardware becomes more expensive, the software will become more of the focus. This should allow the smaller game development houses to get their feet in the door, because they haven't been focusing on the "shiny graphics" factor, and won't have to re-gear their business model.

I will not, however, be surprised if the PS3 is the last for Sony, or if Microsoft delays the development and launch of the 3rd Xbox for some time in order to recoup as much as possible via game (software) sales.

~UP

Long awaited

[TLouden]

Nearly 5 years ago an article was written in Game Developers Mag. claiming that the same certain something was missing from most games and that it was here that small developers had a chance. Here we are and the same focus on graphics instead of content prevails with few small developers. Is this really the end before things get back on track?
I say, muds have always (i know that's not true) existed and always will so let the graphics have their fun. The two worlds have yet to merge and until total emersion becomes possible it just won't matter.

Misconceptions about 1983

[Keen Anthony]

Nobody was more surprised than Atari, who in 1983 spent millions bringing their biggest title to market, a game based on the movie ET...

I hear this a lot from people who think they know more about the crash of '83 than they actually do. ET did not contribute to the crash, nor did it spark it.

ET was a failure before it left the factory. It had an impossibly short development schedule (almost 7 weeks). Howard S. Warshaw, who wrote Yar's Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, had to rush the project in order to get it out in time for the Christmas shopping season. The rush job left the code base so buggy that sometimes, bugs that surfaced made it impossible for player's to complete the game's tasks. Gameplay itself left a lot to be desired.

Atari's mistake was not in being optimistic about the stength of the ET brand in pushing sales; the mistake was in assuming that the strength of the movie license was enough to compensate for the game's design problems. It, of course, wasn't. Atari's bankruptcy was due in part to the failure of ET in light of the company's financial expectations; however, a bankrupt Atari would not have collapsed an entire industry. There was still Intellivision and several other companies.

By 1982 the video game market was so saturated with games, consoles, and arcades that one could twirl blind through any American suburb and end up in front of a Pac-Man machine. I remember the impact the glut would have on some of my favorite arcades like Pirate's Cove (Monterey Park, CA). It wasn't easy to make money on new arcade cabinets because they were everywhere; and everyone who wanted a console pretty much had one.

Companies were releasing too many derivative game designs. Business customers had only so much room for arcade cabinets in their businesses. Players matured and demanded more innovative gameplay - "simulation" became the new hot trend. C64, Amiga, and other computers began offering more value to players.

No other console became popular in its place, not for years.

Somewhat correct, but Intellivsion continued to sell up until the early 90s, and Nintendo arguably had the mindshare of the 90s generation.

The author's basic thesis is that video gaming is a novelty. He suggests that the Crash of '83 was due, at least in part, to the novelty of video games. Were we discussing Magnovox and Ralph Baer, I'd willingly toss around the word "novelty"; but by the time the home consoles were big in the '82, video gaming was past being a novelty.

I think the PS3 is a gamble for Sony considering the company's dependency on Playstation for profits, but I don't think a crash is inevitable for a couple of reasons: 1) the technological state each console on the market means it is possible to produce unique, immersive gaming experiences that will be very satisfying to players; and 2) gaming has long since past being a novelty. It's not even an occasional diversion anymore. Video gaming is as incidental to recreation as television viewing. I just can't take this guy seriously.

There's a problem with a Video Game Industry crash

[Daimando]

Is America really ready for one? In my view, I dunno if they're ready. Even if the industry is strong(And Nintendo is crowned the number one next-gen), I question the rest of America. Higher security standards, unemployment, The War in Iraq, DMCA, companies exporting jobs overseas, Hurricane Katrina. Not to mention rising gas prices. In my view, the crash of the video game industry could be bad for America's economy, if it does happen.

I'm tempted

[Hakubi_Washu]

I bought the original PS when I could get it, completely modded, for 150DM, I've skipped the second generation completely so far, but I'm tempted (especially since I'm moving to an all-free-software PC) to try the third. So, Wii, XBoX360 and PS3 are my options:

Wii It has a crappy name, but looks halfway decent. The price seems to be ok (I'm not that much of a video gamer, as you might have concluded by now), but I'll probably not be happy with the game choices (I never had a thing for Nintendo titles, which is why I didn't even own a GameBoy back then). Also: Why have a wireless controller and attach a second doohickey to it by cable? The Nunchuk is pretty dumb, I'd say, give me two wireless controllers instead, so I can move my arms apart... XBoX360 Aside from my near-universal contempt for Microsoft (They have only made two products I didn't find utterly crappy, QB4.5 (which still had some stupid memory-limits) and the original Intellimouse Explorer (three of which died in a two-year period), which was finally a mouse big enough for my paws) and the well known problems (noise, overheating)? Maybe I'm not that interested in a PC-in-disguise and don't want a miserable online-shop? PS3 Damn, that thing is expensive and ugly as hell. Did those designers watch too many 50s space operas? Ugh. In addition to that, I don't trust anything Sony after the Rootkit-shit and have not bought a single Sony product since then. But on the other hand, it'll probably feature the most interesting games (mainly japanese rpgs, though Nintendo also had a few gems there...)

So, what am I to do? Enlighten me! :-P

Re:I'm tempted

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you hate MS and Sony, and you don't like Nintendo games, the only option you have is to get Nintendo hardware and play 3rd-party games.
A gamecube is probably your best option, you can get all the usual suspects for it: Soul Calibur, Timesplitters, Need for Speed, Monkey Ball, Burnout (not the most recent ones, but not much has changed), Resident Evil. Not so many RPGs, but there's Crystal Chronicles... Sony basically has the genre all to itself, though the GBA has quite a few too. You can play gamecube games on a Wii if you want.

Or you could game on PC. You can get an OK graphics card for $50 or so. Lots of FPS, RTS and (MMO)RPG games, some racers, lots and lots of classic stuff. I got Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Cop and Sonic R in a compliation for $6!

We Didn't Start The Fire!

[payndz]

Higher security standards, unemployment, The War in Iraq, DMCA, companies exporting jobs overseas, Hurricane Katrina.

I don't think this new Billy Joel remix scans as well as the original...

The moral of the story...

[petrus4]

The last console I owned was a CBS Colecovision. Before you begin laughing, my younger brothers have owned every other console since the SNES, while we were living in the same house.

I would have bought a SNES myself if I had been moving out at the time; I'm not prepared however to say that I'd put money down for any other console that's been produced that I've seen. I know there have been a number of rants written about how the SNES was the holy grail of consoles; I agree with them.

A few other reasons though:-

1. Versatility.(This is the main point) A console plays games. A PC plays games, surfs the net, does LAN stuff, plays multimedia, and does office work. (Printing, spreadsheets, etc) I can also run different operating systems as well as just Windows.
To me, advocating the purchase of a PS2 to someone who already has a 2 Ghz+ PC is like suggesting they buy a pushbike when they already own an aircraft carrier. ;-)

2. Cost. I can spend around $400 AUD for a used xbox, and presumably close to twice that for the new 360. Or if I've already got a PC, I can spend the same amount (or marginally even less) on a high-end graphics card for said PC that will be *much* more powerful than the one I'd get inside a console, which I can then also use for other applications (like say, 3D graphic editing) as well.

3. Horrible TV resolution. Although yes, I'm hearing that HD-TV will rectify that problem.

The single refutation to these that I've heard before is that you can't get the same range of games with a PC. If you care about that and have the money, then for you that might justify getting a console...but for me, personally, it doesn't. I have WoW, War3, GTA: San Andreas, the Sims 2, Simcity 4, UT2004, and XCom, and they're already far more than I've got time to play.

Granted, the above is only part of the equation. It is also true I believe that the gaming industry has relied way too much on teenage male sociopathy to sell games, and said practice has now come back to haunt them. The other problem is when the only companies that are apparently able to survive are staffed with amoral, soulless bean counters who insist purely on uninspired sequels, and to whom the phrase "artistic integrity" is entirely unheard of. (EA, I'm talking to you. Valve have also sold their souls in this direction, IMHO)

The demoniac bean counters have to go, the stuff that provides grist for the mills of the Jack Thompsons of the world has to go, and the truly creative people (the Will Wrights, Richard Garriots, and Peter Molyneuxs) need to be put firmly back in charge. Unfortunately however, I'm not sufficiently naive to believe that that's going to happen. The aforementioned demoniac bean counters currently rule the roost, and for them, things are going just fine, thank you very much...and in their minds, as long as they keep making billions of dollars, the rest of us can go screw ourselves.

Re:The moral of the story...

[GaryPatterson]

Good post, but $400 AUD for a *used* X-Box? They're about $100 AUD tops. I bought one brand new two years ago for $280 AUD.

you DONT need HDTV for XBOX 360

[jonwil]

My brother has a 360 and it looks just fine on a 51cm CRT TV.

More about the Kitten console.

[dwalsh]

"Who am I? I am the creator of a certain video game console. I don't want to toot my own horn, but let's just say that profits from this machine were four billion dollars higher than the Microsoft XBox.

My console consisted of a plastic milk crate with a kitten placed inside. The controller was a wooden rod that could be used to poke the kitten."

I have some more info.
Games included:

• Poke The Kitten
• Hurt The Kitten
• Bye Bye Kitten

Consumers found the console unplayable after just one session of game number 3. This caused some major class action suits.

Another reason that the console made no money was it mysteriously failed among the cuddly kitten-loving demographic. Initially some bought them just to extract the kitten component (ala Rio CF drive), however they were scolded by their peers for giving money to that sick twisted fuck.

This is...

[Todo Proudfoot]

...one reason why I posted last week that I think Nintendo hit a home-run: http://tgtf.com/blogs/holt/archive/2006/05/12/7445 .aspx They are doing something very different from everybody else.

Not only is this a DUPE....

[Wampus Aurelius]

...but it had the exact same headline last time.

consoles vs pc

[sirinek]

For $600-$800 I can get a good PC and play games on it.

One example... GTA 3 looks 1000x times better on my PC than any version did on the PS2 and a TV set. The same can be said for a great many games. Now I don't know about the new Xbox360 or PS3, but I don't want to have to buy an HDTV and a $600 console to approach what I already have on the computer and nice 21" CRT.

David Wong has no clue.

[d!rtyboy]

It is obvious to any gamer that this guy, David Wong, has absolutely no concept of video gaming and the market thereof. Judging from this article I doubt he is even a gamer at all. He even admits he, "games for the novelty." I don't think a good portion of us do. To him, games are just as good as their graphics, which is not the reason your average gamer plays them. Only morons like this guy. Not only is he a casual wannabe gamer he has no right to comment and critisize an industry he cares and knows nothing of.

The video crash of 1983 was NOT caused by everyone being suddenly bored of video games. It had everything to do with an oversaturated market of unliscenced games. That's one reason Nintendo's system was such a breakthrough. Because its marketing system forced quality control on the publishers. This point along renders his entire article a giant pile of jibberish.

BTW, what is this article doing on slashdot? I'm new here but I had expected higher quality articles rather than this two bit dribble that isn't fit to wipe my ass with.

Re:David Wong has no clue.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because its marketing system forced quality control on the publishers."

To some extent, yes. But I think all you had to do was pay for the license; the quality control was minimal (indeed there were some really bad NES games). What may have been key was this limited quantity; keeping the market from becoming oversaturated again was important.

You're observations are a bit skewed

[WebCowboy]

a) This is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you ("median" being the key word, because it's not as skewed by rich folks as "average" income would be).

Median (or any other measure of "average" income) has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a family lives paycheque to paycheque. The grandparent post is actually bang on, especially in North America but also in the rest of the 1st world too. This is for several reasons:

1) Wages in most 1st world countries have almost, BUT NOT QUITE, kept pace with inflation, so employed people are making more dollars but must spend even more dollars to make ends meet.

2) People are trying to "keep up to the Jones'" again at a pace not seen since Ronald Regan ran the US. Overall "average" families are buying larger homes, driving bigger vehicles, eating more food and so on.

3) Tax load is higher--in the US the gov't has to pay for all those military operations and has a crushing debt. Income taxes are relatively low but the US consumer is nickel-and-dimed to death by state and local taxes and service fees. Sales taxes are particularly bad because they are "regressive" so those who have to spend more of ther income to live effectively pay a higher tax rate (the poorer you are the higher your tax rate basically). Canadians are even more heavily taxed, although most of it comes right off your paycheque.

4) As a result of the above household debt is at a record high--on average US household debt load is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of disposable income! Basically this means that if you add up the value of all the assets (house, cars, investments, etc) then subtract liabilities (mortgage, credit cards, loans, etc) that the average family is IN THE NEGATIVE by the same amount as their combined annual after-tax income!

The Atari VCS cost $249 when it was first launched. That's more than $800 in today's dollars. You were lucky to find a 19" TV set for $500 - about $1,500 in today's dollars.

Early adopters tended to be upper-middle class or even rich. $800 is still not that much today for them. What is different today is that the Atari was exciting, new and different from anything before--until 1978 basically all you could get was pong and Oddysey (hardwired to play one or a handful of very simple games). The "Fairchild Channel F" was the only cart-based console until the VCS and it was hard to find and had a small library of crappy games. Also The VCS situation was very different from the XBox360 or Wii or PS3. Back then going from pong to being able to play Space Invaders and Breakout (the hottest arcade games of the time) right in your home was amazing. What do we get now with these expensive new machines? Umm...well I guess I can play NFL football 2006 instead of NFL football 2005 and umm..you can see the players sweating and the picture will be clearer...if you buy a new HDTV. There isn't much there motivating average people to run out any buy these next-gen consoles yet. These new consoles are a bit like the Intellivision situation--when the Intellivision II came out it gathered dust on the store shelves because owners of the original Intellivision didn't see anything compelling about it (it looked prettier and talked if you had one of the handful of games that supported it--and the original intellivision could talk too if you got an add-on).

As for the TV, almost nobody had to buy a new one to take advantage of the VCS' capabilities--WAY more people owned 19" colour console sets in 1978 than currently own full-resolution HDTV sets today, and not many people will spend twice the money just to get a TV that makes their console look nice--and besides that crisper image there isn't much out there yet to get excited about.

I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.

Maybe they DO know how to prioritise--in fact maybe better than they did in the late 70's and early 80's. As you mentioned there is also

Difference between now and 1983

[CrazyJim1]

In 1983 we didn't have any option but Atari2600/Intellivision/TI99. Now we have all the emulated games we can ever want. Innovation may be dying, but we have 20 years of games where it wasn't quite dead.

Still don't see a compelling reason...

[WebCowboy]

...to get a console

That $600 means I can play any of the coolest console games

Except there aren't any cool games for these new consoles. Only one of the consoles is even released, and I haven't seen any XBox360 titles that make me want to go out and get a 360. In fact, I've never seen an XBox title of any kind that made me want to go out and get an XBox. Halo? There is a PC version. Halo II or III? I'm not a huge FPS player and it seems more of the same to me. So far, despite the silly name, I think that the Nintendo Wii is the most innovative offering if not the most powerful.

The Xbox offers me roughly the same gaming experience for less money than a gaming PC

You can find a PC for the very same $600 that is quite capable of playing a lot of good games, plus it'll meet all your computing needs too. I think the console makers sense this because when asked to justify their high price, MS and Sony speak a lot about how their machines are so much more than mere game consoles and suggest implicitly that they could be replacements for video players, multimedia PCs and so on. Their software offerings, however, suggest they are not yet serious about anything beyond games just yet. They'd better pay attention to that though, or they might hit a 1983-like patch of trouble.

I don't have to upgrade the video card ever and the accessories are nice.

There are some pretty sweet PC accessories out there, and you most often aren't tied to your PC vendor like you are with console vendors. I haven't upgraded my video card in a few years and I haven't had a problem with the games I've bought. Windows Vista might require an upgrade but it's looking less and less like I'll ever get Vista anyways--My main home computer is Linux and I have an older secondary machine that came with XP already installed which is mostly used by my girlfriend (I may play the odd game).

I'm not sure if others have found the same thing, but it seems as I get older that my interest in new videogames has diminished drastically, but I still quite enjoy some older games, or simpler games in the style of older games. I couldn't care less about Halo III--don't think I'd play it if someone paid me to take a 360 and a copy of the game. However, I'll fire up MAME and play Centipede or Pepper II (was there ever a Pepper I?) or Mr. Do. I might play Quake to get out agression or play Sim City because it seems like a "constructive" waste of time. Maybe that is why none of these new consoles hasn't impressed me at all--they offer nothing to people with my tastes.

What about AI?

[S3D]

Advanced AI and dynamic story mangment can really change the gaming expirience. Of cause ther is now such AI in the existence, and some would argue it's not possible on existing hardware. However there is also practically no research going in that area. Devlopment of natrual languadge interface stopped several years ago, due loss of interest. All that remain is Elisa -like bots. However crisis in game market could really revive interest in the game AI. Bethsoft's Oblivion for example have AI considerably improved, comparing with previous installments of Elder Scroll.

Is a circle a 6-faced 3-dimensional solid?

[DragonWriter]

Is it 1983 all over again?

Massive proliferation of competing consoles (plus a myriad of incompatible, with each other or the consoles, "home computers", sometimes from the same manufacturers, also competing for the game-players dollar) forcing prices down to the point where no one can sell most of them for a profit, coupled with a recession, driving most of the players in the businesses and taking out most of the consoles (and "home computers") on the market?

Um, no, its nothing like that at all. Why would anyone ask such a stupid question?

People don't really want innovation

[Das Modell]

TFA:

There's going to be a lot of money lost the next few years, a lot of articles written, a lot of panic, a lot of changes. And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers. Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content. Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford.

People always complain about "lack of innovation" yet can't exactly explain what kind of games we should be getting from developers. Adventure games, graphical and non-graphical, pretty much died out. Traditional roleplaying games are few and far between. Simulators are a distant memory. Non-realtime strategy games are rare. I can only assume that those genres faded away or became marginal because people weren't interested anymore, yet now everyone is crying and moaning about repetitive and unoriginal FPS and GTA-esque games, and demanding innovation from developers. I think people are just getting exactly what they ordered, so I don't understand where all the complaining is coming from. "Innovation," as I understand it, refers to quirky and strange games that are clearly out of the ordinary, like Katamari Damacy. But is a game fun just because it's innovative? No. Innovation for innovation's sake doesn't guarantee a good game.

Another thing in TFA: independent developers. Does this refer to small groups and solo projects? If so, independent developers can fuck right off, because if I want independent games, I'll surf to the nearest flash portal or download shareware games. Are people really suggesting that they'd rather use their shiny new PS3 to play some lame flash games instead of Metal Gear Solid 4, or are they trying to stick it up to the man in a rebellious fit of anti-consumerism rage?

Digital TV != HDTV

[tepples]

The U.S. government has already pushed back plans to eliminate analog TV over-the-air broadcasts due to the fact that few people have found it worthwhile to HDTV so far.

Then why are SDTV (480i) sets, not even EDTV (progressive) sets, the only affordable digital TV sets at Wal-Mart?

Wii fully supports SDTV and EDTV.

Multiplayer on one PC?

[tepples]

Sure, you can play. But if friends come over to your house, how many of them can play on your PC at once?

Tripling in 24 months

[tepples]

So you're expecting it to more than triple in 2 years time? Thats still unrealistic.

Moore observed transistor density increasing 3.9% per month (that is, doubling every 18 months). The estimate for HDTV growth that you allege is unrealistic is 4.7% per month (that is, tripling in 24 months).

only the very hardcore gamers or the videophilles is going to buy an HDTV on purpose, the rest only will if their primary TV goes down.

Primary TV will go down after Super Bowl XLIII. The forced obsolescence of analog TV through FCC regulations will push DTV into the marketplace as well, and not just digital SDTV if the big-box stores are as good as upselling HDTV sets as I'm predicting.

Why I'm Not Buying a Console

[carcosa30]

I'm not buying consoles because their games tend to be vapid and very weak. They're simplistic, lowest-common-denominator games that don't last me more than a day for the best of them. They're not moddable. They aren't strategically deep, 99% of them. And I was reared on AppleII games which, while they were simple, tried to be thought-provoking and challenging on a deeper level than twitch reflexes.

I just don't like the console format.

And I'm buying fewer PC games now than ever. I can't remember what the last one I bought was. It might have been the first Dawn of War, which was... OK.

The next one I'm going to buy will likely be Supreme Commander, which I trust will be excellent.

Games magazines are not trustworthy. Almost all of them are either on the take or infected with hype fanboyism.

Game companies are not trustworthy. They lie incessantly about hardware requirements, features and everything else, while releasing the same warmedover shit again and again.

Software stores are not trustworthy, and collude with the above two groups. Their pig-in-a-poke sales scheme-- overpriced games and no return policy-- has burned me more times than I care to mention.

Like so many others, the entire games industry from previews through production through reviews all the way to the bargain bin, is driven increasingly by marketing. Rather than release good product, companies use unethical marketing tactics to sell their shit, in the name of short-term profits.

The only good large house is EA. At least they give the appearance of giving a damn.

In many ways, all this is similar to the business model of the MPAA and the RIAA. After this latest crash, expect the game companies to blame their shortfalls on piracy, and go after high school kids who decide to pirate Duke Nukem MCXXVIII rather than spend $50 on entertainment that won't last them a day.

Game Industry: I know you guys read this kind of thing. You people need to listen to us, your decades-loyal supporters, before you lose us to other forms of entertainment.