ECGC 2011: Is the Gaming Market About to Crash?

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People are broke and they aren't buying computer games. They are spending more time on facebook cuz it's free. Console games are really pathetic now. There's no improvement from one release to the next. You might as well keep playing the old game...especially when you're broke.
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]console gaming is over-rated...i hope that the game market does crash and developers will start developing for PC again ....like it used to be about 8 years ago[/citation]
Than maybe you should try The Witcher 2. It's a game made only for PC and with PCs in mind. It's also going to be a great RPG, in which the character development and story are most important. Btw. I suggest you do not try Witcher 1 as it was made on Bioware engine and has pretty weak fighting system (but the story is still great). I also hate games designed for consoles as they usually are made just for money and as a platform for future DLCs.
 
Personally a crash is a great thing when one considers that it would push some developers to strive for what they get while others go belly up. It doesn't matter if it is a console or a pc when most of the games out there are not creative or original.
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]very true...and very expensive, considering how old the tech is...i know that they upgraded a few things but that's because they were not properly designed in the first place, look at what happened with the xbox 360...lol[/citation]

That's an illusion. People who say PC gaming is cheaper should probably look back on how much money they spent on the gear capable of running those games. If consoles suddenly vanished and every developer started creating games based on the latest technology in the PC market, gaming would get very very expensive. Think how often highend PC gamers replace their gears right now even with consoles hindering modern graphics development. Without consoles the market would spiral out of control. Budget gamers would vanish because budget gears probably gets outdated within months. Everyone who wants to play a decent game would have to shell out 1500 dollars every 2 years to stay on top of the trend.

In a nutshell, yes consoles are bad, but we need them. It's a necessary evil that we must co-exist with to make PC gaming still affordable.
 
I know this is a PC enthusiast site and all but the "PC is l33t" remarks are pointless. PC has better hardware, cool story, really, it's never been said before. The devs however were not happy with the amount of money they were getting from you and jumped to where the grass was greener. By the time they "come back" to PC, they'd be nearly broke, because they've already invested themselves. It isn't going to help you at all, and you don't need to be bitter at consoles because your dev teams abandoned you.

But hey, I agree with you, the PC devs that went to consoles SHOULD go back to making PC games. Companies like Epic put out games like shooters that are graphics dependent, those kinds of games don't belong on consoles. Graphics are worse, controls are worse, they don't go together, it's not going to it's target market and it's worsening what are supposed to be the draws of their games.

And what of the original console devs? Well out of this console generation, Nintendo has been the most successful. MS and Sony are the ones trying to grab PC gamers with high tech and graphics, but they can't compete with real PC hardware, so they're playing a losing game. Consoles don't win with superior hardware, they win with accessibility and innovation. You can call it kiddie, but you were all kiddies once, and it's a market that has always kept the console industry afloat. Many of the software devs need to get some new ideas though. Sequels aren't a problem themselves, but they need to be good sequels. Mario used to be a showcase for what the new system could do, now it's midseason filler. JRPGs used to have interesting stories and characters, now it's more about how many CGI/anime cutscenes they can fit on the disc. Fad games like DDR and Guitar Hero can only hold people over so long before they realize there isn't much else to offer.

Consoles, stop trying to depend on graphics like you're PC, you aren't PC, it isn't going to work. If small "app" games have one thing going for them, it's that they aren't depending on graphics to hold their game up. Small devs are going to pull the rug out from under the huge ones with entertaining gameplay if they don't remember how they got huge to begin with.
 
[citation][nom]borisof007[/nom]I still play Baldur's Gate 2, MechCommander, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I receive infinitely more joy from them than any modern game can give me.[/citation]
Yeah, it's really interesting how the devs nowadays have problems with simply reproducing the great games in new settings and graphics. Just look at what happened to Fallout - from a great RPG game it turned into near shooter with the third instalment and only because of Obsidians great skills with making sequels F:NV is closer to an RPG.
Yet, I cannot completely agree that new games can't rival the old ones. Thaere are still some great titles, like Portal, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect 2 or Amnesia that bring something fresh to the world of games. And of course there is The Witcher 2 that may (or may not) become the RPG of the year but it is an actual mature game that does not fear such themes as sex or hard moral choices, where you choose between bad and worse having no idea what the results will be later (16 endings, with locations that you'll see only after certain choices - great replayability)
 
Cerny said he's looking forward to the monetization and socialization "revolution,"
Click to expand...

Oh you mean MMORPGs in which players work as teams and spend tons of money on ingame items and microtransactions? Maybe if you go back in time you can wait for that revolution but it is already here and MMORPGs are raking in millions per month.

What is hurting consoles are MMORPG, Indie games and Steam/GG/Impulse. But consoles have rebounded with motion games such as Kinect/Wii/whatever the third one is.

The author sounds really out of touch with the market. Cool you made Sonic 2, that game was so sweet, but you seem to have completely missed the MMORPG revolution, the motion game revolution, the indie game revolution and the FTP/microtransaction revolution. Yeah, gaming sure is done for I'm going to quickly buy up all the books I can now.
 
Someone said that we need consoles to keep pc gaming affordable?

Thats a ton of crap, you know why?

The way games are built now allows for a simultaneous release of all three console platforms plus PC at the same exact time!

Take CoD:BO for example, simultaneous with the exception of wii.
 
Its true most games seem to be a copy of some defined template. I guess it works, but people are growing tired of it. I think minecraft is a great example of the simplicity he is refering to, removing some elements in favor of the ones that matter, and being original.
 
"impending market crash"
Crash, right. Lets just make a big headline even though it's bullshit! At most it's just a hiccup because the consoles are getting quite frankly old and every game just gets recycled with an added number next to the title.

Also some franchises are doing great and the shift from arcade to PC to console is quite false. There were consoles before the PlayStation/Xbox era that dominated. PCs came in the 90s and it's one of the platforms that won't die considering how it evolves. I can't wait to see BF3 on PC.
 

I think he meant that the fact that consoles are weak in comparison to PCs forces the devs to keep the system requirements on minimal level. And I agree with this as I remember the times when 6 month after buying a new computer you had problems running some games as they required the newest CPU and GPU.
 
I am afraid he may be correct, but DLC that you have to pay for and "social gaming"(not really gaming in my opinion) may take over. Unfortunately, these are the things I hate most, along with MMOs.
It has become just too expensive to develop AAA titles, especially for the PC.
 
[citation][nom]jarraramjad[/nom]this guy is coo koo! i think he is mad pc market can never die cuz size matters[/citation]
Not sure exactly where you got this idea, because PC gaming essentially died a long time ago. Games are being developed for console, then ported to PC to keep gamers satisfied. Very few games are actually developed for PCs these days...
 
I think it's true that the market needs to change, but I don't think 'farmville' type games are the future.

What the game industry needs is to look back on their past victories and stop producing the games they are making now. The games need to go back and produce the deeper stories and have gameplay that is challenging and exciting, and also have the newer, better graphics. I know there are good games out there, but I've played my share of bad ones the past few years. I'm just not buying new games because I haven't found anything to pull me from the ones I already own, too.

I rememeber Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 that had exciting areas, but also some challenging puzzles, too. Fast forward 6-10 years and all of a sudden all I need is enough ammo and reflexes to blow everything away with a onion thin storyline. I like the action of RE4 and 5, but I really thought RE2 was just better because of the story that drew me in.

To people who are saying that the game market is heading to the cloud, how is your internet access? Maybe in SE Asia this could work, but on any given day my connection gets so slow because the infrastructure is so backwards where I live that I can't even stream a low grade YouTube video, forget about online gaming of any kind (and yes I have the fastest internet connection money can get in my area). There may come a day when I don't need to spend money on a gaming rig, but 2010 and probably even 2015 won't be that day.
 
[citation][nom]Proxy711[/nom]The only reason the gaming market might "crash" is because of shitty ports and 10-15 hour games with little or no creativity. If anything devs need to start thinking about what to add to the game not subtract from it.if a game has "RPG elements" it better be 40+ hours long. honestly i have a hard time buying a game that doesn't seem like it will have 50+ hours of gameplay, thru whatever means, like multiple play throughs or just one run.Remember Borderlands? a far from perfect game. I spent over 250 hours playing it(both single and multiplayer) ...now that is what I'm talking about.[/citation]

I completely agree with you on that, borderlands was by far one of my favourite games ever made and im really starting to see a decline in the originality of games nowadays... their all just cod ripoffs or are trying to make some other type of half ass rpg that will only get you 10hrs of game at most
 
[citation][nom]jfby[/nom]I think it's true that the market needs to change, but I don't think 'farmville' type games are the future.What the game industry needs is to look back on their past victories and stop producing the games they are making now. The games need to go back and produce the deeper stories and have gameplay that is challenging and exciting, and also have the newer, better graphics. I know there are good games out there, but I've played my share of bad ones the past few years. I'm just not buying new games because I haven't found anything to pull me from the ones I already own, too.I rememeber Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 that had exciting areas, but also some challenging puzzles, too. Fast forward 6-10 years and all of a sudden all I need is enough ammo and reflexes to blow everything away with a onion thin storyline. I like the action of RE4 and 5, but I really thought RE2 was just better because of the story that drew me in.To people who are saying that the game market is heading to the cloud, how is your internet access? Maybe in SE Asia this could work, but on any given day my connection gets so slow because the infrastructure is so backwards where I live that I can't even stream a low grade YouTube video, forget about online gaming of any kind (and yes I have the fastest internet connection money can get in my area). There may come a day when I don't need to spend money on a gaming rig, but 2010 and probably even 2015 won't be that day.[/citation]

Star Trek Online, Diablo III, Civilization are a few games developed for the PC primarily (or for the PC only) but I would say that PC has lost it's edge over the last 3-4 years. I don't think it's done for good, but it's going to take some innovative games to come out before people will part with their money like they did in the early 2000s.
 
Gaming market isnt dying, its just flooded with a ridiculous amount of content, most of which sucks. If you look at good, quality, fun games... you still see them doing well. I mean, portal 2 is gonna be a huge release. It may not have a ton of content or anything, but its a fantastic concept and its really fun, it has a style of its own.
 
Any game that becomes an ongoing expense is a game I won't buy. The impending crash of the U.S. Dollar and ensuing [hyper] inflation will price such games out of reach.
It is the "monetization" of so many things that is driving consumers away.
 
"Gaming market isnt dying, its just flooded with a ridiculous amount of content, most of which sucks."

No I think you nailed it. The game market is flooded, it's flooded with good games, mediocre games, and garbage. It's so flooded that unless an upcoming game has a stupendous pedigree it's not even news any more.
 
If the market crashes- people will still make games, art, music, movies. It will never end.

Its art. People will create it regardless if theres money to be made.

Might just get some quality gameplay back if it did crash. Graphics are great but gameplay is better.
 
i want a natural crash. We would get a surge of true artist taking over a confused market and the best of the experiments would become the new building blocks. ( maybe open gl on steroids)
 
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