Some people have been saying for years the industry´s obsession with chasing 'AAA cinematic blockbuster' games will eventually lead to disaster.

Recent stories vary from SE not being happy about some of their games not selling unrealistic numbers, to Capcom not doing great at all (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-09-10-capcom-looks-towards-big-changes-after-difficult-fy13)...from the article:' its performance throughout this generation has rarely been more than solid, leaving it in a difficult position for the challenges ahead. At present, Capcom has just over $152 million in cash, which isn't much for a company attempting to navigate the costly transition to a new hardware generation and the company-wide implementation of a service-based infrastructure.'

Anyway, if this model is truly not sustainable, when will it collapse as a whole?...does anyone risk a date?...sometime during this next generation, perhaps?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Development costs are getting too high, there's a reason that PC games don't look a lot better than Console games despite having extremely more powerful hardware. The soonest I could see the AAA industry crashing is 2015.

Just like in movie business, there will be few big players left standing, and they will be making all the profit. AAA will not crash, certain publishers will.

The problem is that games with lower budgets can't compete anymore. When you are going to spend 60 bucks on a game, you are probably going to pick the one you consider gives more value to you. This is usually a high budget game. I dont think all ga,es should be priced equally.

Yeah, that seems to be the plan. It's a big arms race and no one dares to back down because they're banking it all on the hopes that they will be one of the survivors.

I'm just here to annoy badgenome with a mobile games comment:

*insert mobile games comment*

in your face badgenome!

Agree with both of you. Many devs will continue to go under in their vain attempts at joining the exclusive club, but we will not a see a big cleansing of the industry.

Capcom sucking has little to do with this.

As for the Square games, all we know is that they did not reach goal. We do not know how much of a return they produced. It might have been worthwhile even if not to Square's hopes.

The thing about game development is that it's a gamble. Every new IP is a gamble. What many publishers have decided to do, then, is to bet big. That's really all it comes down to. They're trying to win with home-runs instead of a string of singles. I'm not even sure it's a worse strategy. Surviving on small hits is not easy, as one dud can close you down and two in a row is almost certain doom.

Also, let's be real. The reason for all this is that consumers started skipping over smaller games in favor of massive games. We can complain but GTA 5 and Battlefield 4 are going to sell a TON of copies.

Massive games with massive budgets are actually fine, to be honest. The segment that needs to reduce its budget are the mid-level games. They have to find ways to reduce costs. They also need to drop their prices when its obvious they don't match up to top-level games.

it already is crumbleing. THQ was just the begining.

When?? I don't think it ever will. There will always be a series that will be popular that demands AAA money to sustain it. There will most likely just be less of them since right now developers are claiming that their games need X amount of sales and are not getting close to it and after only of month of great sales but not hitting the target calling it a failure. I just hope that developers and publishers get their expectations to be more realistic so that new and old franchises can thrive and survive.