The Rise and Fall of an Industry

[Jay]

It wouldn't be the first videogame crash. If it happens because of consumer apathy in the face of creative drought and mediocrity, then so be it. Like Nintendo rising from the ashes in the early eighties, some pioneering company will come along and revolutionise the industry, and get the punters interested again. I wouldn't worry about it.

Jay

[Baroque]

The way things are going right now, within five years many of todays game developers won't exist in the form which we know them now, if they even exist at all.

Some people are reading too much into the so called "record profits"; as is typical in console life cycles last year was the big boom year (For PS2), next year is the start of the decline year, where sales of systems start dropping off over time.

You do have a point, that the industry is balanced on the fact that Microsoft is nudging Sony along, but the louder the next gen din starts to become, the fewer units of the current generation will sell and you'll see a lot of companies post some awful results when their revenue base just erodes from under them.

People make the mistake of assuming that the games industry is like the music business, or film business when in fact it isn't, or at least it isn't to me.

It sorta reminds me of the book business, since you have razor thin profits on titles which do well, losses on most of the stuff out there, and the odd multi-million selling book keeping publishing houses afloat and the system spinning.

And just like the book business, while the film industry try's to pick hits to make, the music industry builds bands & musicians to sell to a demographic, the games industry is so hit and miss that it's hard to gauge what will turn a profit so you throw a lot of the s-h-1-t at a wall, pray it sticks and then fling more at a spot if any of it does.

Even when you do that there's usually some under funded breakout hit which smacks publishers upside the head when it goes on to sell a million, then there are the giant flops which if they happened as often as they do in the movie industry, could sink entire studios.

[Ady]

I agree with a lot of your points, Che. I also see the industry as merely coasting along, and predict another crash if the current industry model isn't revised.

Your point about console generations is also a good one, as it seems that as soon as a new machine is out, its company is already hyping the next one.

The emphasis should be on quality content, but it seems to be next-gen hype, pie-in-the-sky stats, and wet dreams of photorealism. It's almost as if the console world is starting to mirror the PC market, in that a machine is practically obsolete as soon as its released.

Personally, I really hope there is a crash as this industry really needs to wake up and take stock of where its going.

[Che Musashi]

Personally I don't want it to happen, but when the Console Warsare geting covered and all the talk is how everything is positioning for the next gen. It really makes me wonder why are they wasting our time.

Maybe crash isn't the right word, but hemmorage is too graphic. Right now we got some minor bleeding.