On The Verge of A Gaming Crash? Without Nintendo....

[Lord N]

Ummm......hell yeah. The video game industry would certainly be on the verge of a crash if not for Nintendo.

There were about 170 million consoles sold last generation. The PS3 and 360 will sell 90-100 million between the two of them. That's a 42% drop off, which is a damn shame.

The PS3 and 360 userbases consist almost entirely of core and hardcore gamers. Smaller developers and publishers would be capitulating left and right as they wouldn't have the cash to make the big-budget titles that would be necessary to appeal to this small demographic. The only titles you'd see would be from traditional genres and/or sequels to already popular tried-and-true franchises. Non-traditional titles would be too much of a risk as they wouldn't appeal to the PS3 and 360 userbase. For reference, notice how the only non-traditional game to sell well and not be on the DS or Wii is Little Big Planet.

While I like the DS and am not too fond of the Wii, I have to admit that the video game industry would be in a lot of trouble right now if not for Nintendo. The Japanese market would be in a real shite state of affairs. For the love of god, the best selling console this generation would be the PSP.