What is the state of the gaming business? I'm really quite curious. Sega seems to be finished with console gaming and Capcom isn't doing all that well either, and both publishers are focusing more and more on mobile gaming. In recent years THQ had to shut down and a bunch of other studios have gone the same route and is no more. This got me thinking about the state of out hobby.

PS4 is doing as well as anybody could hope for and XB1 is doing quite well for itself too, only the Wii U is a disappointment this gen as far as home consoles go. But are two new consoles representative of the whole industry? As games get more and more expansive more and more studios and publishers can't keep up.

Right now the budget for some games are HUGE - games have become really expansive business. And to recoup these losses we're seeing more and more DLC's and microtransactions in games, some better than others. We're also seeing a lot more sequals hitting the market, and a lot more annual franchises, and this in turn leads to rushed launches with loads of problems with game breaking glitches, no online support, or whatever it can be.

Where are our business heading? Is it in a healthy place right now?

Survival of the fittest like every other industry.

It is sad that some big names are struggling and may even be no more in the future, but they will be replaced by new studios. Generally, it is the studio's own fault if they are failing. I worry about guys like Platinum, who make fantastic games that aren't mainstream and don't sell very well, but more often than not a studio gets in a mess because they fail to make good decisions.

Companies that fail are companies that put out stinky crap for a while. If more companies need to fail to weed out more crap, great.
Crappy games brought down gaming in the 80s, so the move toward better quality is always a positive.
And it seems that consumers started rewarding quality products more.

Gaming now is doing fine, and I hope it will continue that way.

Console sales are overall still decent, but there could very well be a market rupture that completely changes the definition of console gaming within a gen or 2, so all companies need to make sure they have their lamps on when that comes.

The biggest problem with the greater industry right now is that it is a breeding ground for inefficiency and unnecessary spending. Marketing budgets are bloated beyond reason and the controlling and often outright draconian atmosphere at major devs and publishers is a textbook example of how to run efficiency in a creative endeavor straight into the ground. These practices are not sustainable and some companies are in for a rude awakening, especially those using overhype to sell incomplete or unpolished products to consumers. You can only erode consumer confidence so much before it bites you in the rear.

But that isn't the case is it though? Just this fall was littered unfinished and rushed games, prime examples are Ass Creed, Drive Club, Halo MCC and quite a few more. None of them delivered what they promised. And this is a part of the problem I was talking about in the OP, albeit not outspoken.

I'm not really clear on the whole Sega thing. It seems like the lay offs are mostly hitting Sega of America, but as far as I can tell, Japan isn't being touched at all in this. Could it be that SoA just screwed the pooch one too many times and are now being sent to the mobile doghouse while Sega's Japanese console support continues undiminished?

1- The problem are artist: game development is not that much more expensive with all the middleware and game engines out there, before ps360, few studios were buying game engines, now everyone has one and that has made things easier for some studios, but the amount of art required to make a HD game is huge and artist are very expensive, they are the ones eating much of the budget.

2- Game prices need to go up: in truth i do think that US$60 is a lot of money, but lets admit it, publishers are not making money, developers are not making money, we are getting rushed/unfinished games, WE are losing this battle. If that is all fixed by making games US$70, man I'm more than willing to pay that, I just want quality games that work at launch. If making games US$80 ensures that Ill will not get a day one in disc DLC and micro transactions I'm willing to pay for that too.

It seems to be going in an interesting direction. One of the reasons I never complain about games like CoD or Assassin's Creed, even though I don't play them, is because they finance the industry. They let publishers try other things.

We're also seeing a renewed interest in the "middle", with some small studios taking on larger projects and some big publishers taking on smaller projects. The middle died because publishers were asking $60 for games that were clearly not on the same level as the heavy hitters--downloadable titles at different price-points seem to be addressing that mistake.

As far as studios closing, that's always been the case and always will be the case. The NES was death to many studios and yet here we are.

That is no fix. All that would happen is people will buy fewer games at full price. It might mean more money for games that are already making bank (GTA, COD, and the like), but that's about it.