Is the Gaming Industry Dying?

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I wanted to bring up this topic and hear your thoughts as video game sales are down 30% over last year.

Here are a few points I want to make that bring this topic to light.

1. Mobile gaming- This isnt to say that people are jumping ship from consoles to play on their smart phones or tablets, but the price structure of micro transactions to get fulfilling games like Angry Birds at either Free - $2.99 price range is causing the $60.00 price tag to look very steep.

Sometimes when looking at the PSN store, there are some really cool games I see at $14.99- $19.99 but in the back of my head I am thinking, Ill wait for the price drop. SONY and MICROSOFT need to adjust their thinking on the pricing of their back catalogue.

2. CALL OF DUTY is eating its own. The good and bad of the bazillion copies of COD that sell every year is it canniblizes the industry. For example, my stepson used to play alot of different games, and now with his COD addiction I dont have to spend nearly as much as I used to because its in his PS3 24/7. I know not all gamers play COD, but for those who are addicted, its the only thing they play.

3. How Big is it?!?!? No, I am not talking about your package, but the big budgets these games are getting these days and all the big sequels that get millions of dollars on a sure thing. It seems companies will spend 50million on game development just to make 1-2 million dollars on a game. If it whiffs and tanks, it can literally put a game developer out of business in one fell swoop. This is why less variety and development goes towards new IPS.

4. How Long is it??!? - Part of the decline is the life cycle of the next gen consoles. We are well into the 7th and 8th years of the PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware. We have seen all these machines can do and alreay hear developers say they need more power for more action on the screen. I am not a graphics whore by any means, but 8 years is a long time without a new shiny box under my TV.

5. Digital Content- This really is the part that pisses me off! (which I like to think is an intelligent game consumer) Digital downloads being priced $59.99! The exact same price for a physical copy from a store so I cant sell it back to Gamestop and get some money for it! Do they think we are stupid!??! If they would drop digital downloads by 10.00-15.00 they would see a large increase in downloaded content. People know part of the retail cost is the shipping and delivery and packaging, so why charge us the same price as the overhead costs? Really insulting!!!

These are just a few points that I have noticed that are crippling the gaming industry. I really would like to hear your opinon on some of these topics as I love to talk video games and the industry as a whole.

O~

[HeroicJayneCobb]

right now everyone and everything is dying economically. From Twinkies to the United States Postal Service, even road construction. However, by comparison the Gaming Industry is still the only one doing well all things considered. With more and more people unemployed, gaming is the only thing they have left to do.

While each of these is valid points i dont feel they are contributing to the downfall. Mobile gaming is just that, mobile. i play angry birds when im at work, or solitaire or whatever; and when i come home i play Sly Copper, Burnout Paradise, Call Of Duty, ect.

Call of duty is great, however any game can be an addiction; SOCOM, Battlefield, FORZA, ect ect. to say that only COD is the only addictive game is just false. People need variety, we will always want to play more than one, or even one type of, game.

(skipping other points)

why do we need a shiny new box? we have games on both consoles so high def and realistic graphic wise that gamers are suffering from PTSD. Anyone remember computer gaming? This past june i replaced a 10 year old computer with a stock 40 gig hard drive..... i played many many many games over the years on that machine. Theres no reason that the consoles available today cant, and shouldn't continue to give us what we have. PS3 now offers 3D gaming, the ONLY next logical step is Virtual Reality gaming which isnt too far from the Wii, Kinect, and PS3 Move that we have no. With a few software tweaks and a pair of VR glasses, we could do that with the PS3 of today, perhaps not the Xbox, i am actually unfamiliar with how powerful the current Xbox model is, just the PS3 and its processing powers. IF anything at all, i would like better cooling systems for these things. my PS3 gets damn close to overheating until i stuck a USB fan next to it to compensate. but those can be acquired aftermarket

[[mXm] kotaco]

I'd say it's evolving myself, growing up in strange times and growing up pretty fast as all technology does. I don't think the economy has much impact on it or the games wouldn't cost 60 bucks a pop still (as demand drops so does price) and Black Ops wouldn't have super record breaking releases.

I'd also like to throw in some developers have gone on record as saying we haven't seen the full potential of the PS3 yet, something about it having a complicated design that had a really high learning curve for developers who would just develop at the easiest level intially finally being explored further, making good points about how the best games for the system typically come at the end of it's life cycle.