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Forums - Gaming Discussion - The 'AAA blockbuster' business model not being sustainable...when will it finally crumble?

Scoobes on 11 September 2013
Captain_Tom said:
JGarret said:

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?


There are a lot of simularities between the first gaming crash and the coming generation:

-Over-abundance of a popular genre (FPS whereas it was fighting games before)

-Little gameplay evolution 

-Far more console launches than usual (Ouya, Gamestick, NV Shield)

Who knows what will happen...

The 80s gaming crash is slightly different in that top titles saw an overloading of really poorly made clone games made by garage developers with next to no skill. This meant quality games got lost in a sea of crap with no real way to distinguish your title. We now have the license system for AAA titles which prevents this from happening as the pool of titles is smaller and have a set standard they all have to meet.

The place where a similar crash may happen is in the mobile sector where the app stores are looking more like the systems in the 80s.




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oldschoolfool on 11 September 2013

I've always believe that were do for another gaming crash,but who knows when? I'm guessing bye 2017.



Captain_Tom on 11 September 2013
CGI-Quality said:
cheesecake said:
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.

Depends on the game, actually. Metro: Last Light, Crysis 3, Arma III (exclusive) - PC games that walk all over anything on console (technically speaking). They don't even have that high of budgets (well, Metro and Arma don't), but can still achieve considerably better visuals than home consoles can. 

That said, a dev like Naughty Dog has figured it out. Their games are hardly pushing any records financially, but always set new benchmarks visually.

Correct!  Metro: LL and even BF3 look leaps and bounds better than anything on consoles.  In fact I would be willing to bet that BF3 maxed out looks better than BF4 on PS4.  

The only next gen game that has floored me in graphics is Killzone: Shadow Fall.  You have to download the 1080p footage to see it (Not youtube people!), but the lighting and particle effects are absurdly beautiful...



richardhutnik on 12 September 2013
Scoobes said:
Captain_Tom said:
JGarret said:

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?


There are a lot of simularities between the first gaming crash and the coming generation:

-Over-abundance of a popular genre (FPS whereas it was fighting games before)

-Little gameplay evolution 

-Far more console launches than usual (Ouya, Gamestick, NV Shield)

Who knows what will happen...

The 80s gaming crash is slightly different in that top titles saw an overloading of really poorly made clone games made by garage developers with next to no skill. This meant quality games got lost in a sea of crap with no real way to distinguish your title. We now have the license system for AAA titles which prevents this from happening as the pool of titles is smaller and have a set standard they all have to meet.

The place where a similar crash may happen is in the mobile sector where the app stores are looking more like the systems in the 80s.

Much lower price point, and also a user rating system, help to counter the chance to get blindsided by really bad stuff that took down the industry back in the day.  The smart device market has ways to make sure that cream can rise to the top.



Suke on 12 September 2013

I have a year, 2008. That's sort of when the industry started to crumble, not crash, crumble. The sequels and lay offs shows it. Development cost are rising and publishers are getting too cocky.



“Don’t follow the hype, follow the games”

— 

Here a little quote I want for those to keep memorize in your head for this coming next gen.                            

 By: Suke
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Scoobes on 13 September 2013
richardhutnik said:
Scoobes said:
Captain_Tom said:
JGarret said:

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?


There are a lot of simularities between the first gaming crash and the coming generation:

-Over-abundance of a popular genre (FPS whereas it was fighting games before)

-Little gameplay evolution 

-Far more console launches than usual (Ouya, Gamestick, NV Shield)

Who knows what will happen...

The 80s gaming crash is slightly different in that top titles saw an overloading of really poorly made clone games made by garage developers with next to no skill. This meant quality games got lost in a sea of crap with no real way to distinguish your title. We now have the license system for AAA titles which prevents this from happening as the pool of titles is smaller and have a set standard they all have to meet.

The place where a similar crash may happen is in the mobile sector where the app stores are looking more like the systems in the 80s.

Much lower price point, and also a user rating system, help to counter the chance to get blindsided by really bad stuff that took down the industry back in the day.  The smart device market has ways to make sure that cream can rise to the top.

I actually agree, it's just that the mobile sector of the industry is more like the pre-crash 80s were (but where lessons have been learned it seems). The licensing system should prevent a repeat crash occuring in the console space.

Not to say it can't happen in the console space, just the reasons behind it will be different.




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