Report - Video Games At Risk For Another Crash

[Gahars]

The soloution is obvious, become one big massive company that involves all 3 of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and blow the mobile gaming out of the water by offering decent prices for games. No nintendo, im not paying £9 pound for a HD port of one of the wii sports. No Microsoft/Sony im not paying £10 for DLC to play a game i already bought and is on the disc.

How does a monopoly help consumers? What incentive would they have to keep prices low if there's no competition?

I doubt such a crash will happen.
I quite agree with this report for that matter, and don't think that we should expect a great console sales decrease anytime soon.

Do you agree with this report because it's truly better made, or because it conforms to your biases? Are you ignoring the sad reality and just paying attention to the comfortable lies?

I suspect this is overblown and the article is just ignoring that. You won't get a crash unless you reduce the number of console gamers, not the percentage of console gamers--you can reduce the percentage just by having more non-gamers play Farmville.

"Industry veterans will remember the crash of 1983, when the games market was saturated with hardware devices," the report states. "Today, the industry runs a similar risk, as [with] a higher-than-ever console installed base, consumers may be resistant to adding more hardware to their living rooms."

While the report acknowledges there are more gamers now than ever before, it suggests their habits are changing. Specifically, Superdata found gamers increasingly gravitating toward versatile, multi-purpose platforms like PCs and mobile devices. As a result, an increase in the number of gamers won't necessarily translate into an increase in demand for consoles.

/le face

 

[Dork]

I think a crash will happen. The console is market is being flooded to death.

There are going to be too many consoles this "gen". We got the Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, the Ouya, the Gamestick, Amazon's android console, Mad Catz console, and every iteration of the Steam Box. Not only that, but very few of those consoles have their own unique library of games, they all boil down to multiplat machines. The industry is also being flooded with cheap indie games and horrible AAA games.

 

[Xexyz]

I have 2 consoles and 6/10th of a console! YAY!

 

[stanleyopar2000]

ugh..another ANALyist predicting a video game crash...

 

[kristianity77]

I dont think there will be a crash but its obvious that with more choices of where and what to game on, everything is becoming diluted. And with everything becoming more diluted, especially on the next gen, that will lead to less sales perhaps when costs of producing games keeps on going up and up. I think there is some substance in that article in that troubling times may well lie ahead.

Back when the 360 and ps3 came out you had 3 choices really. 360, PS3 or Wii. If you didn't like those options you had a PC. Then there were two devices to satisfy the handheld market in the PSP and the DS.

This time round its conceivable that along side the PS4 and Xbox One your going to have more people this time round that are prepared to stick with previous gen right to the last breath purely because its HD, games still look decent enough and there is software everywhere of decent quality. Then when you think that android consoles are popping up now that I can only see growing (Ive just made a purchase of an iReadygo I5 and I think its the best handheld I've ever owned). This time round as well you've got mobile phones, the half way house that is the Wii U as well as 3DS, Vita, Nvidia Shield, the upcoming Steam box thingy. The list never ends.

All these choices might look great for the consumer, but surely its a nightmare for developers in where and when to deploy resources and budgets etc. Games like GTA costing millions to develop you'd imagine will start becoming the norm in the next gen as costs spiral, but if sales become more fragmented due to a lot of consumer choice with regards to hardware, will companies break even on their outgoings in a lot of cases. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[weatMod]

The soloution is obvious, become one big massive company that involves all 3 of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and blow the mobile gaming out of the water by offering decent prices for games. No nintendo, im not paying £9 pound for a HD port of one of the wii sports. No Microsoft/Sony im not paying £10 for DLC to play a game i already bought and is on the disc.

this is the most retarded post, consolidation = lack of competition and drives prices up not down , the whole problem is that these huge companies have too much control

 

[Silverthorn]

-snip-

I don't disagree with most of the facts presented in the article. Sure, gaming habits are changing, smatphones and PCs are taking a more prominent place on the market, and there's certainly a saturation of consoles in households.
What I don't believe is that a crash would happen because of it. Console gaming sales might decline, sure, but I expect it will be progressive.
Also, mentioning the cause of the crash of 1983 as just "saturation of hardware devices" is being too inaccurate imo.

 

[Clydefrosch]

gosh, its like they werent even around when everyone with a ps2 got a ps3.

how saturated must the iphone market be by now?

 

[Jiro2]

As a result, an increase in the number of gamers won't necessarily translate into an increase in demand for consoles.

A crash is a decrease. Just not having an increase isn't a decrease. Increasing the number of gamers, and not increasing the demand for consoles because all those new gamers are playing Farmville or Angry Birds, won't increase the number of console gamers, but it won't decrease it either, so it won't cause a crash.

 

[TVL]

Women who shop for shoes; 100% of them have a pair of shoes already... Brace yourselves for the big shoecrash of 2013!

At least according to data gathered from five people that we're involved in a study at Supershoe, all they had to do was add insane lies and wait for traffic to their site to increase... it worked!

 

[stanleyopar2000]

I think a crash will happen. The console is market is being flooded to death.

There are going to be too many consoles this "gen". We got the Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, the Ouya, the Gamestick, Amazon's android console, Mad Catz console, and every iteration of the Steam Box. Not only that, but very few of those consoles have their own unique library of games, they all boil down to multiplat machines. The industry is also being flooded with cheap indie games and horrible AAA games.

game crash in 83' happened not because the consumer had too many choices...it was because all the numerous choices were all low quality

 

[TemplarGR]

game crash in 83' happened not because the consumer had too many choices...it was because all the numerous choices were all low quality

Exactly!

And this is the same reason a crash is likely to happen again, sooner or later. It is obvious to us veteran gamers with decades of gaming experience that there has been a steady decline in game quality for years. Graphics may have improved(though their improvement rate is slowing down), but the gameplay is declining badly.

I don't know if this will happen this gen (PS4) or next gen(PS5). But it will happen, because now that the graphics are in the "good enough" category, there are few things they can improve to force people to pay more money... And designing quality gameplay with lots of content is expensive and difficult, and will raise costs.

Anyway, a new video game crash would be highly beneficial for the industry, it will allow us to get rid of EA, Actiblizzard, Ubisoft, Capcom, SEGA and all other big enterprises that treat their fanbases like dirt and restrict creativity...

 

[newo]

Most people are playing thier games on PCs? What what? GTA5 sold a billion in 3 days? hmmm...

The next console I build is a 360. I aint got no money to say up to date. I still have a huge backlog.

 

[The Catboy]

History repeats itself, thus I am not shocked.

 

[Dork]

it was because all the numerous choices were all low quality

-All those android consoles with phone specs
-Indie game oversaturation
-huge budget games that end in disappointment

Looks low quality to me.

 

[chrisrlink]

i wonder if the US Gov shutdown has anything to do with it NAH -sarcasm- at any rate the US economy does play a role well time to pack my bags and move to a more economically sound country

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I think there will be a soft crash... Not like it was in the 80's (although to be honest I enjoyed that period of time.... I picked up so many games brand new at stores sometimes for 50 cents a pop... lol)

 

[FAST6191]

Let's not forget what caused the original Video Game Industry Crash in the first place - inflated prices, lack of software due to a difficult development cycles caused by a multitude of entirely different target devices and an incredibly large selection of devices to choose from, each with an uncertain future.

For a moment there I thought your were setting up for an "oh wait", it might even be half possible to turn it to it but if the consoles are being PCs again and software development has become more abstracted then I will hold back. Likewise if we do have diversified income streams (adverts are the order of the day rather than something special, they also do media to a serious degree, merchandising, peripherals) and the odd game can still make a profit then I do not think it will end up quite as toxic as it was before. Toys and entertainment are brutal industries, always have been, but I doubt they are going away any time soon.

Anyway I saw this when clicking around earlier but did not read too much into it. Going back now I would probably say something like it is clickbait of the better sort as there is a change coming and nobody quite knows what it will be.

On the other hand if devs are not so inclined to curtail their spending and/or they are slow to properly embrace different models then there could be some serious casualties.

this is the most retarded post, consolidation = lack of competition and drives prices up not down , the whole problem is that these huge companies have too much control

Consolidation does not have to mean monopoly as much as unified architecture. I have about 20 different DVD players around here and most are made by different companies, all play DVDs though.

 

[Foxi4]

i wonder if the US Gov shutdown has anything to do with it NAH -sarcasm- at any rate the US economy does play a role well time to pack my bags and move to a more economically sound country

You can always return the tea you threw into the sea and beg the Queen for forgiveness - a responsible parent welcomes its disobedient sons with open arms when they show repentance.

 

[BlackWizzard17]

Nintendo please sell the wii u as a "toy" and save us all from yet another crash on the gaming history.