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NJ5 said: ... That's the way of the world. It's the way movies went, and I still don't see why we should go out of our way to support mediocrity. I don't support mediocrity either. However I do support whatever it takes to make the industry sustainable, and the "graphical arms race" is clearly not a sustainable path. It just heightens gamers' expectations to a level that makes most or all publishers spend too high amounts of money in a significant percentage of their titles, which leads to the financial disasters we're seeing today. |
I meant that it made more sense for you to show yearly projected data, not for their financial reports.
And obviously any arms race is not a sustainable path. But the financial troubles we've been seeing stem as much from the inability of those producers to adapt than from the potentially increased costs.
I don't care for the "industry" at large because I believe it will just naturally split in very different segments. The blockbuster movies, authorial movies, the Sundance festival films, TV productions, straight to DVD movies... all of these are different kinds of productions with different production values, different costs and different targets that have been proved to be sustainable.
The various entities in the game industry will learn to do the same, it's about time it matures a bit. Saying that the only way out is for everybody to go back to lower graphic investments is naive. Differentiation is where it's at.
Why didn't EA sell Braid? Since we're at that, why don't they have a $10-$15 line of smaller but good games? Why didn't they try serial experiments like Siren's Curse (that I bet recycled a lot of assets, but expanded the story in each "episode"... and stories are cheaper than art)
Look at Valve. They went for the episodes, made of content more than new assets and technology. They invented their own distriibution system. They created small, excellent games like Portal with minimum investment in HD assets (the "Sundance" segment).
Frankly, going back to SD is a poor substitute for real advancement in the industry.
