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Video Game Trends In 2008

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-enough-brrraaaiiiiinnnssss dept.

Gamasutra is running a feature looking at some of the most important trends that have cropped up or become popular over last year in the gaming industry. Gamers' outrage over the DRM controversy built up a great deal of steam over the past year, and will likely remain strong in 2009. This year also saw downloadable content being used for new and varied purposes, and many developers are banking more heavily on user-generated content, as in LittleBigPlanet. They point out the increase in retro and neo-retro gaming after the success of Mega Man 9 and anticipation for the new Bionic Commando. What trends do you expect to see more of in the next year?

2 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:netcraft confirms it: by RichPowers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, those 11 million WoW players don't count. In THE YEAR 2009!!!1 they'll all use WINE to play WoW in Ubuntu :rollseyes:

    The Orange Box sold very well on the PC, according to Valve's Doug Lombardi, surpassing 360 sales. I'm sure Valve wishes they never wasted money on that whole Steam thing; it's clearly going nowhere...

    And I'm sure StarCraft II and Diablo 3 will flop. Blizzard may as well throw in the towel.

    Someone better tell Stardock that making PC games is a bad idea.

    I also heard that Dawn of War II and Empire Total War are being canceled and removed from Steam in anticipation of the great Linux migration of '09.

    FYI: PC games would cease being made if they were unprofitable.

    But I agree: idiotic DRM needs to go and publishers need to stop blaming piracy for their inability to make good games. I own a 360, Wii, and gaming PC (that dual-boots Ubuntu) and have plenty of great games for each platform. You're missing out if you write-off PC gaming.

  2. Trends 2009 by contra_mundi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What trends do you expect to see more of in the next year?

    More DRM, more publishers strong arming the used games market.
    More angry comsumers switching to consoles as a result.
    Online registrations for console games because they are sold used more than PC games.
    More buggy releases for consoles, justified with downloadable content (patches) once you have registered online (see above sentence).

    Once consoles really catch on, they will experience the same hardships as PC gaming.