| HappySqurriel said: From what I know, the percentage of games that are profitable has been around this level for a very long time ... What has changed in the past few years is there are far less games being produced, games that lose money are losing far more money, and games that turn a profit are not turning the profit they once did. All of these changes were caused by games becomming more expensive to produce. |
Games have definitely been generating more revenue as an industry over that last decade plus, which in turn encouraged additional spending, both in terms of project (and budget) size as well as the number of players in the development/publishing game.
It took the gaming industry from what was a hobbyist's industry into a multibillion dollar part of the entertainment industry.
Revenue may have increased greatly overall, but I think not in proportion to the amount of spending taking place. We may well be on the cusp of seeing many more players in this industry going down, both good and bad.
Bigger risk in this case doesn't necessarily mean bigger potential reward, rather bigger potential for losing more money overall. It's a bad situation that makes one wonder how long it can be sustained if the general public loses interest in gaming again like they did back in '83. It seems less likely since video games are almost as common a form of entertainment as movies or TV, but this still doesn't mean that production budgets can't be rolled back in the near future with enough significant loss, high profile projects.
