The art of hyperbole...

And no, it will not be Big or 1$, there will always be an in-between, we're seeing 10-15$ indie games today, and transitional companies like Arc Systemworks with the Bit-Trip series.

And this is why we can´t allow companies like Microsoft or Sony to make enormous power houses. You want hyper amazing graphics? Then Costs go up, Prices go up, Little companies die. So yes, basically the so called "Hardcore"gamer and the graphics whores are killing the industry.

Why do we still quote this guy? It's obvious he think the whole industry should kiss Nintendo's ass and that Nintendo should make games the way he wants and because they don't he continues to throw these little fits of his.

He's got some points about the dire economic situation, bad demographics in advanced nations, shit games, and so forth, but man, is his attitude ever off-putting. "YOU DIDN'T MAKE THE GAMES I WANT HAHAHA YOU LOSE JOB NOW!!!" What an embittered little cunt.

Honestly, I think there is a gigantic problem in the industry ...

The problem is that the vast majority of development resources are spent producing games that appeal to a small minority of gamers (and potential gamers); if I were to put numbers on this, I would say that 80% to 90% of most publisher's budgets is dedicated to games that target 10% to 20% of the market. What this means is that most of these companies are struggling to turn a profit because most of the games do not end up as the high profile successes these publishers need to justify their budget while most gamers are not having their needs met because only a couple interesting games are produced for them in a generation.

People regularly talk about how certain "core" games flopped on the Wii without realizing that there were dozens (possibly hundreds) of games with far higher budgets released to the HD consoles that saw worse sales. If the publishers devoted this money to different products across multiple genres they would (likely) be able to produce multiple games that each had similar sales to these failed projects, there combined revenues would be far higher, and the industry on the whole would be healthier.



While many people dream of this happening, if game development budgets continue to increase we will have little more than an industry producing Call of Duty or Halo clones at budgets that are so high a single failed game can bring down a publisher; and the industry will likely die (except for Nintendo).

Aye, he's one of those economic purists that laugh at people with Liberal Arts degrees and anyone who doesn't do what he lovingly calls "real work."

Given my situation, he can die in a fire.

But until then, he does have a fair bit of a point, although i think that the problem he describes doesn't apply just to the games industry, but to everything in general. The advance of technology is just causing the death of "the middle," whereby, in a lot of industries, you're going to see middle-sized players either shrink or die. Like Malstrom said, the game industry will be (even more than it already is, anyway) dominated by a group of megapublishers and developers on top, and then a sea of microdevs, with nothing in between, and that this will be replicated in other industries as it becomes easier to distribute more niche projects

Well it can't be good for the industry when games costs 10x more now then a few years back while the games still cost relatively the same since the 80's sometimes even less,

Pretty much agree with this. Maelstrom is a narcissist douche that filters comments and cherrypicks the lamest responses to "demolish". His tone changed drastically after the Wii started the massive decline and Nintendo failed to become the jesus of the video game industry like he said it would (it was certain beyond a sliver of doubt) and its very obvious that the man is sad to the core of his very being over this, he wants games and the industry to be a certain way, his way, and he looks down upon those who think or feel otherwise or wish more depth in their entertainment products. He's elitist and condescending, ironically in the exact same manner he accuses "hardcore" gamers of being.

He got one thing right, much like John Lucas did in his time, and like JL he has gained a cult following that hung on his every word and took them as gospel. Also like JL but to the chagrin of his followers, he's been consistently wrong since then and become more and more desperate ever since, leading in a downward spiral till all he wrote about was nostalgic game music and almost left the scene in shame.

The man has read a couple of books about business and disruption theory and thinks he's a genius, while the reality is that he's just a bitter, washed up asshat with a degree in bigotry and comment filtering. I appologize to all his fans for being so crass, but I am absolutely revolted by the attention this man gets.

I agree with you about the hyperbole part. But if we read the article with an open mind I think he has some good points. I always asked to myself ¨why more third party developers don´t support the Wii? they don't want to make money?¨. As a great fan of the original playstation and the Nintendo DS I always put gameplay over graphics, but some of my friends would not play on a Nintendo DS or a Wii even if they get it for free because it has ¨crappy graphics¨.  

Great post. Thanks for posting.