The Next Video Game Market Crash

1983, anyone?

Okay, what I'm getting at is we've seen for the last few years games quality has been on a general decline. Studios have been axed, fans have gotten enraged at poor quality content, and the few games that managed to shine above the supposed 'crap' (Even though many many games are very high quality in their own right, and very enjoyable), none of these games can meet expectations.

Sony and Microsoft are having a rough time, not just Nintendo. We are steadily seeing less and less major release titles every E3 convention (or at least the quality of E3 hasn't been the same in a while. Last one was the best in many years imho). Games look great when they're advertised, then fall short of expectations. Sim City 2013 anyone? Two years later and they're still trying to sort it all out. Diablo III also made many people mad by DRM only, and a bloated market system for the in game blizzard store.

Last generation did an excellent job. The games and customers I think created an all time high since the 1983 market crash, but this generation, the PS4 is struggling, and the Xbox One, and Wii U are failing. The XB1 is in a humbly positioned second place I think...but anyway -

I'm not sure what to expect. Some games break even, and among those many lack in particular content. As I said, its not dead yet - there are a few good games, but the industry is slowly dying I believe. Indy games are doing well - or some are at least. I'm not sure what the future holds. Another market crash might be what the industry needs though. There are a lot of stale titles.

Zelda, Metroid, Battlefield, Halo, are all old stale titles. Release after release of sequels that are becoming less and less frequent are causing the powerhouse titles to slowly die. I dunno. What do you guys think? Keep in mind, this is my opinion, but I'm predicting another crash is coming - albeit slowly.

I've never been one to keep an eye on the bigger picture, frankly, so I can only speak from experience, but I'd like to disagree. I think interest in games is going too strong for there to be a market-wide crash. And I think, though the quality of some titles may be poor/not meeting consumer standards, I think there's still enough out there to keep gamers happy. The ones that are falling in quality are probably the ones that aren't listening to their fanbase enough.

Also, keep in mind that people tend to be more vocal about negative things. Just because the majority of talk out there may be about lackluster games doesn't indicate the majority of games are lackluster.

Also, in my opinion, the reason the newer consoles aren't doing well isn't the fault of the market. Poor marketing and poor decision making have had a huge hand in it. I remember when I was confused about the Wii U being a completely separate console from the Wii. I also remember that huge internet backdraft about the Xbone's 'features'. And I, for one, am hugely disappointed that the PS4 is the first one in the Playstation family to not support backwards compatibility right off the bat (I know they took it out of the later model PS3s first, but they started off with the right idea).

So, yeah, I think a lot of things aren't really being done right, but at the same time, think about how life works. There are ups and downs, highs and lows, It's the same for the gaming industry. Right now they're just in a lull after the crest that was last generation.


Oh, and Zelda becoming a stale title? I'd like you to look into Hyrule Warriors (not a core Zelda game, but still a fantastic piece of variety to the series) and the upcoming Zelda title for Wii U, which, IIRC, Eiji Aonuma specifically stated that the team wanted to break away from the formula that had gotten so ingrained in the series and return to something more similar to the first game.

Ahem.

PC MASTER RACE!!!

But seriously, many people I know would rater own or do own a Pc and like the Pc games (Steam) More than others. Additionally, steam games go on sale twice a year (On big name games like Skyrim and GTA) for 80%off! When in gamestop is that going to happen?

Nyaha, when I meant a stale title, I meant all games that release once in a while that are titles existing from close to or around 20 years ago or more. I mean, we eagerly await the next zelda or metroid title...and those are old games. no new content anymore. that's what I mean.

I will keep responses brief today. lots of studying to be done.

I'm with dragon808tr on this.
Also, Metroid, Zelda, etc. are old titles, but whenever they DO get a sequel people love it (Even Other M. Even all the "bad" attention was still attention and meant people were playing it). So I've been of the opinion for a while now that to get the Wii U back in business, for example, they should release a new awesome Metroid game.
It's not that a market crash is inevitably creeping up on us - those AAA studios simply need to TRY to make good games like they used to.
Also, the market is changing as it has been for a while: it used to be a few big companies in charge of making all the games, but with every passing year the indies eat up a larger chunk of the market. My most heavily played games currently are Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, and the Portal series (which isn't indie, yes, but Valve isn't exactly the same size as Microsoft). So my prediction is that the market isn't going to crash (even if the big companies start saying it's crashing) so much as shift over to a new paradigm.

The good games that are made (and there are still quite a bit of good games) don't pay well enough. They get such a huge amount of revenue, yet, it doesn't seem to cover the costs.

I can see the indie titles taking all the money from the AAA titles and crashing them out of business, actually, but I still see that games are going down hill not by quality, but the economical side of it is waaaaay out of whack. Its very complicated, and very messed up.

Personally I'm pretty sure the industry is going to a crash. Not such a huge one as 83 but there are a few vicious circles that are going on that are quickly making parts of the video game industry more and more unsustainable.

Above all the cost of productions are becoming ever more and more inflated for little increased quality in return.
Worse, because the sum of money involved is becoming so enormous, it makes developers terrified of messing up, leading to a market saturated by many overly "safe" and, sadly, uncreative, bland games that are taking the least amount of risk possible. And the big problem is many of those games are not selling well enough to justify their costs.

We can add to that increasingly greedy tactics from publishers such as abusive DLCs, DMCA etc They are good to secure a quick short term profit. But on long term ? they build distrust and defiance among consumers. Many of them who will turn instead to small indies games who, in opposite, have very low production costs and thus are free to be creatives and uniques as well as cheap.

The question for the industry is : does it manages to reform itself ? Because quite clearly it can't go on forever in its current form. Something will have to give sooner or later and I'm guessing that could happens under the form of a couple huge names going bust in the next few years.

Thats why Indie Games are more and more prominent. Games like Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy's, The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat boy, Terraria, everyone has heard of at least some of those. Indie game developers are growing everywhere, producing games that back in the days had triple A game developers behind them.

Retro games such as the old Zelda games are highly sought after, even 20 or more years after their creation.


I think you guys are looking too much at the triple A industry. In my eyes, the video game market will not crash at all, but evolve and split up. More "Pay what you want" models such as League of Legends, WAY more indie games out there since the software to produce them becomes cheaper and even 3D engines are relatively easily avaiable for a serious developer team.

So while yes, the "High tech" Elite triple A teams with shittons of budgets will continue to do mainstream pop, but in my eyes, the video game market since its early beginnings has never been as varied and diverse as of today. BECAUSE the triple A games are stuck at one call of duty after another, other game developers on low budget even have a CHANCE to compete and fill the specialized niches the big developers leave behind. Im times of youtube, lets plays and kickstarter, anyone with the sufficient talent, starting funds and a well thought out idea could make a new game.

As for triple A devs, if they find out, that the money they invest doesnt increase the profit at the end, they will of course try to go the DLC route. But DLCs always have a bad effect on people, as they start to feel like they are not getting a complete game. Take "Evolution" for example, a multiplayer game where you can buy i think 4 different (!) games, where each game unlocks exactly one class, while the rest needs to be unlocked via DLC (Since you just unlock something thats already there, I doubt you can call that DLC at all) to a point where you pay like 3 times as much for the complete package than what you paid to even be able to play the game - just to have all classes present.
Those games get a super bad reputation, causing people to not want to buy it anymore. EA has it so bad, the company is considered the worst gaming company of all. Nintendo with their weird Lets player policy and the way they marketing just recently lost more than 10% (!) of their magazine subscribers due to them protesting against recent company decisions.
They will either adapt to what the customer wants, or die out, and deservingly so.

So I wonder, what exactly is supposed to crash?

Amaroq is on the money. Let the bloated companies go under for all I care. Indie gaming is on the rise.

Amaroqs wrote:

Thats why Indie Games are more and more prominent. Games like Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy's, The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat boy, Terraria, everyone has heard of at least some of those.

It's not always the one's you've heard of that are the most fun or give ya what you want. I've been pateinly waiting for Pokemon togive me everything I wanted, multiple avies, choose any one from any gen and stuff like this. I gave up a while ago then Nergal gave me Pokemon Black a Pokemon fan game that delivered all I wanted and more. As an indie gamer and game maker I'll tell you some of the best jewels are hidden on small corners of the internet. Especially if you want real old school RPGs but are sick and tired of Final Fantasy messing up your hopes and dreams by churning out yet more junk. XP Or KOTOR 3 being an online game with little to no connection to the main story.T_T Or my favorite new tick with gaming consumerism: buy stuff in RL to beat the game faster or add your own stuff to it!! =D It's cheap!! Only 59.99 for the game, several hundred fora basic console and this? Like twenty bucks a pop for simple stuff....@_@ NOOO MOoORE! Gosh why did gaming hve to evolve so far out of control? Used to be it was less interactive but had fun characters and storylines using silly narrative and fun mechanics. Now all we have is shooter this,life sim that weird title that and for huge sums of money for very little return in my opinion.

jedi-explorer wrote:

It's not always the one's you've heard of that are the most fun or give ya what you want.

I never said that. I just tried to make a point by mentioning stuff people would know. Its no use to start with games like FTL, Prison architect, Nuclear Throne, Gods will be watching, etc. if no one knows them, as that might even disprove the point i was trying to make when saying they become more prominent.

The replay ability of games has gone down. Personally, I could spend an entire day playing G Mod and not get bored. For the simple reason that you can do whatever the hell you want thanks to the mods. Want to drive a ferrari into a haunted mansion to fight an evil alien scientist? Done. Want to go to a jungle to fight some kick ass zombies with wolveriene and Iron man weapons? Done. Want to go bowling with nuclear materials? We have that too!

Also games that are heavily modded (Ex Skyrim and such) usually have a strong community. As far as gmod goes, any major show, movie, or game has some kind of materials to use.

I dont think games are versitile enough to survive. You need to do many things that keep the player having fun. And grinding enemies for Exp isnt really fun.

With Xbox one, PS4, and Wii U (Wii U is just a glorified N64 anyway ) I don't think they will make it. As stated by Karbo, game makers are playing it too safe. Indies are actually more fun than most others beacuse they were made by players for players. And then we have EA. With the mass boycots I dont think they are going to be around much longer. I kinda laugh that in Need for speed Unlimited they make you pay for virtiual gas!

But in all honestly, I think PC and Steam will be all thats left. Im sure we all have a steam and like it more than any 4th gen console. (Thats not to say I won't boot up my Wii or DS ever again, but I have been doing it less).

Anyway, thats my tke on it.

dragon808tr wrote:

Im sure we all have a steam and like it more than any 4th gen console. (Thats not to say I won't boot up my Wii or DS ever again, but I have been doing it less).

Anyway, thats my tke on it.

And here´s mine: I have none of this Stuff - and I´m happy.

Personally, I really hope that the big companies smarten up and don't simply fail to the indie companies. At least the ones with IPs I still really enjoy like LoZ, the Koei Warriors series, Monster Hunter, etc. It'd be sad to see those IPs stop getting new games.

I also hope Console gaming doesn't fall to PC gaming. The latter is a lot more complicated than I and I'm sure plenty of other people would like it to be, for one. I've been playing Magicka (thank you Ilceren) for a bit and even though it's a very fun game, it frustrates me how slow it runs on my computer, and I have no idea how to try to get it to run more smoothly, and no motivation to try to figure it out on my own. I much prefer just popping in a console came, flipping on the power, and playing an equally fun and much better-running game. Saves me several hours of trying to figure out and set up optimal conditions for some PC game. >_>

Amaroq wrote:

Thats why Indie Games are more and more prominent. Games like Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy's, The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat boy, Terraria, everyone has heard of at least some of those. Indie game developers are growing everywhere, producing games that back in the days had triple A game developers behind them.

Retro games such as the old Zelda games are highly sought after, even 20 or more years after their creation.


I think you guys are looking too much at the triple A industry. In my eyes, the video game market will not crash at all, but evolve and split up. More "Pay what you want" models such as League of Legends, WAY more indie games out there since the software to produce them becomes cheaper and even 3D engines are relatively easily avaiable for a serious developer team.

So while yes, the "High tech" Elite triple A teams with shittons of budgets will continue to do mainstream pop, but in my eyes, the video game market since its early beginnings has never been as varied and diverse as of today. BECAUSE the triple A games are stuck at one call of duty after another, other game developers on low budget even have a CHANCE to compete and fill the specialized niches the big developers leave behind. Im times of youtube, lets plays and kickstarter, anyone with the sufficient talent, starting funds and a well thought out idea could make a new game.

As for triple A devs, if they find out, that the money they invest doesnt increase the profit at the end, they will of course try to go the DLC route. But DLCs always have a bad effect on people, as they start to feel like they are not getting a complete game. Take "Evolution" for example, a multiplayer game where you can buy i think 4 different (!) games, where each game unlocks exactly one class, while the rest needs to be unlocked via DLC (Since you just unlock something thats already there, I doubt you can call that DLC at all) to a point where you pay like 3 times as much for the complete package than what you paid to even be able to play the game - just to have all classes present.
Those games get a super bad reputation, causing people to not want to buy it anymore. EA has it so bad, the company is considered the worst gaming company of all. Nintendo with their weird Lets player policy and the way they marketing just recently lost more than 10% (!) of their magazine subscribers due to them protesting against recent company decisions.
They will either adapt to what the customer wants, or die out, and deservingly so.

So I wonder, what exactly is supposed to crash?

Well I'm just saying I think the market is going to crash but I'm not necessarily thinking it's a bad thing.
Indeed a new landscape could emerge from it and it could be a great and refreshing way to start over.
And yeah, save for a couple exceptions, I don't like at all the policy of DLC that is becoming more and more " release unfinished games and make people pay more for the part we kept aside" kind of tactic >>

I think things are just gonna get worse before they get better. Now Steam is getting into letting people pay for MODS. You know, the things people used to make for free? I mean, the people who make the mod get a cut of the profit, but it's insane what people won't monetize. It scares me because I thought Steam was immune to this kind of money grubbing, and don't get me wrong, I don't defend ol Gabe as perfect, but now the true colors come through.

Perhaps we do need a crash, as earlier people have said. Just swipe the industry out from below everyone like a rug in a three stooges skit.

My personal take on it is that I think it's only a matter of time before the console market specifically crashes. With digital distribution being overall cheaper and more convenient than physical distribution, it seems to me it would make more sense that they will eventually become the norm. Also, current gen consoles really don't do anything that PC's can't. The only sort of old market I don't see dying anytime soon are handhelds, since being able to play something on the go is always nice. I know mobiles are taking a bite out of it, but mobiles also get a bad rep with disgusting fee-to-play games (no, that wasn't a typo), and taken at face value, games on mobile aren't as meaty as say games on the Vita or 3DS.

Yeah. If only someone would make a Felarya game...

But really though, once people stop buying half-finished games as Karbo said, the market will likely improve. I'd rather buy a quality game than a half baked one with DLC anyday.

Really all I play anymore is G mod. beacuse I can do anything i feel like and make up any story I want. If only they had Felarya stuff...

My thoughts on DLC:

So I was walking around target yesterday, looking for some birthday presents for myself, as it is coming up. Naturally, I stopped in the video game section. What I saw horrified my inner gamer... EVERYTHING HAS TOY DLC!!! They had Amiibos (Nintendo's version of the figure character skylanders type thing (As well as disney infinity which i didn't care for, not being that big of a disney fan anyway)). So, I wateched the vid from the Kiosk there. Now, to play a Nintendo game you need: 1. Wii U or 3ds, 2. The game (Which will cost you $60 ish) 3. at least 1 compatable Amiibo. (about $20-25 in store).

Naturally I thought, "Ok, so you can get mario and he would work on all games. Not that bad i guess." Well after looking at the mario figures, there were some different poses. Then I saw that 1 worked for Super smash Bros and 1 worked for New super Mario. (Side note, Super mario games should die, they have beaten it to death and back! Like, next we are going to get vore flowers or something!). So, if you buy all the afore mentioned materials, you are stuck with just 1 character to play! Think of how crazy that is! You'd spend a small fortune on 1 GAME!

Nintendo was my last hope of not succumbing to the DLC (and especially the figure DLC) cancer. That moment made me lose any hope for video games (Non-pc of course).

Side note/Reward for those of you who read that, Zen Pinball/Pinball Fx2 (what it is called on app stores/steam respectfully) has released an insane and very fun pinball table from the portal franchise! It is quite fun for the pinball player and portal fan alike (Of which, I am both!). On steam, it is 50% off the normal value, so it can be bought for $1.50 (US). Highly recommended if your a fan of either and you can also look it up on youtube to see a few plays of it!.

Have a good day everyone! I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

You actually don't need to buy Amiibos for any games that are currently out. They're just an extra gimmick Nintendo is using.

In my opinion and observation so far. The only way the market is going to crash is if the developers (and who ever publishers they are under) don't make their extended content reasonable with pricing and what you are paying for. If you haven't noticed, most of your indie developers are trying to publish themselves or get investors that are select grouping. They don't wan't to be associated with the big names (except maybe someone like blizzard because despite teaming with activision they are something of themselves). That only being because the consumers are getting great distrust for the quality of games they are buying. At the same time though as the consumer, for some reason we're asking more then we bargained for or want to expect. Could this be because of the lackadaisical of the game genres and scenarios we are used to playing. A good example of that being call of duty, where it feels repetitive and and not variety. Or is it perhaps Developers are being such copy cats these days and not creating enough of their own variety for a game to be special but they do these huge advertisement campaigns that get you pulled to to see how it is or liked, the so called "hype train" Which has existed in the past starting with really the halo series (Those being the first for getting super wide media coverage and revolutionizing how a game is presented and made or mass media).

We might be asking too much for developers to handle. We wan't our games to blow our expectations away but because and for some reason the developers still think a small crew and nulled resource management is the way to go, we keep getting the same kind of games too often. I'd like to give witcher 3 as a good example of what not to do to fullfill the ties to a customer needs. CD Projekt Red are their own publishers and their own developers. They have no ties to really fullfill or strings to tune except themselves and on their own time. They are an example of an Indie AAA studio on the rise of the Indie trend. I like their example of how they handled things because they most importantly listened to the game community. But gaming industry becoming a buisness instead of an art kind of brings that attention to the consumer on the back burner. As money is more of the objective then the game itself. Which is fine to some degree but lately it isn't because the quality of games these developers are working towards becomes absolutely abyssmal and ridiculous financial institutions are made such as on disc DLC packages day one, poor play testing another, even one case of paying modders and having to pay money to the people that had nothing to do with the game or it's developers. It loses trust. I can't trust big giants when they do stuff like that. But i can't trust little guys either because they become too money oriented to fullfill life's leisure at a talent they're good at. Their needs to be a differentiation between the morals these games are being built and a classification. Ones for the money and ones for the quality and experience of the computer. PC users don't have to deal with this because there is a lot of variety unlike console users. Gaming PC's are becoming a really wide pop-culture to play your games now unlike back in the day (Probably due to e sports and most of their games being on the PC. Being much as viewed as the most popular sports on ESPN.)

So i won't say there's going to be crash, but a revolution of things of how we expect gaming now and what the developers are willing to deliver and what the consumers are wanting to stay or demand their needs for the games they want to play.

Also, one of the major differences between now and what happened with the crash of 1983 was that anyone could make a game for the main consoles that were out, especially Atari, and sell it off as an official "Atari Game" without much difficulty. As such the market had a lot of bootlegged or home-made games that either simply didn't work, or were indie made versions of E.T. That was a contributing factor to the crash.

Now, I know it can still be done, but its a lot harder now days to just make a fake Nintendo, x-box, or PlayStation game and sell it. even harder to make it seem like a legit game for those consoles.

Darth_Nergal wrote:

You actually don't need to buy Amiibos for any games that are currently out. They're just an extra gimmick Nintendo is using.

Yeah, it's nice that it's not locking game content that's vital, but what worries me is how easily people bought into it, and how willing they are to pay for any form of dlc, even if it's just for some costumes. Thy could be testing the waters for all we know.