AAAs, AAs, As, mid tier, indies, social/casual. These games are ruining the industry.

Nope.... what is killing the industry isn't that AAA games are actually really big or shooter heavy. Its that they have AAA marketing budgets.

The gaming industry is in a constant summer movie blockbuster flux. If you want a game to sell very well? there are two ways to do it, start with low expectations and build the IP over the course of 2 or 3 really good iterations of the IP or go big and throw $100 worth of marketing money at it.

Mind you, this doesn't always work.

Yes, we are going to see more and more companies collapse. I think Destiny will be one of the biggest financial failures to date with its absurd budget. Sony recently said 4/10 games they release make money. Enough said.

Nah, I wouldn't say so.

I would probably say its more due to people buying habits. Nowawdays, the appeal for home consoles have dropped in the last few years. With the booming market for portable electronics with smartphones and tablets its quite eay to see where peoples money are going. And if a casual gamer from last gen can get by with super cheap or freemium games.. its going to be harder to convince people to pay the full $60/£45 for games that may or may not be any good. Not like to $1-3 games from a typical game an iOS/Android marketplace - lacking it may be which are like throwaways.

So you'll have consumers less inclined to buy something completely different than to something they are more familar with. Leaving not much in between. Thus, you have publishers wanting to the safe side and not go for risky moves in publishing unknown IP's; with big variance to what's popular, so they end up putting most of their eggs in one basket (or in this case the games - or franchises they know they can sell).

And the reason why Murdered: Soul Suspect sold horribly is because the game looked like crap. No amount of marketing could ever make that game look decent - be it a A, AA or AAA budget game.

Edit: Adding to that. A new game released at lower than than the usual price is usually seen as being crap. It doesn't instill consumers confidence in a game when its discounted from the publisher from the get-go. There are a some titles released this year that I can think of (at the top of my head), that fall into that category; Thief and Murdered: SS.

Good games with good marketing can sell best (GTA V)
Bad games with good marketing can sell well (Battlefield 4)
Good games with poor marketing can sell well (Demon Souls)

Everything can fail, but what succeeds more than not, like really succeeds is good games with good marketing, that don't have too much saturation/competition.

Poor project management is what's killing the industry.

That article is working with a faulty premise. "Unique" does not always translate to "enjoyable". Did Soul Suspect really fail simply because it was unique or were there other reasons?

Regardless, AAA games are fine. Saying they're killing gaming is like saying that John Grisham or James Patterson are killing novels because they're so popular. What killed middle tier games is simply the fact that their budgets climbed much higher than their sales. The reverse is true for many indies, which is why that segment of the market has been so successful.

It's the same reason many Japanese games can sell 100k copies and call themselves successful. Their budgets match their projections.

Airtight Games didn't shell the money for the development of Murdered: Soul Suspect.

Poor Financial management is more like it... Like I get it, graphicx take up more cost but considering how much lower the gameplay has come, one would think that it would almost balance out... Before, games used to be like 20 hours but now, most can bearly even make 5-6 hours (excluding all the shitty achievements and crap)