Nintendo has lost the core market this generation

[68soul]

WereKitten said:

It's probably just a transition phase where the costs for the upper tier have balooned but the whole press/retail/distribution system has not adjusted or found an equilibrium between the different tiers. You can still produce games on the HD consoles and PC with $3-5M and aiming at 200-300K sales, but then it's very hard to enter a market saturated with huge projects. Look at the japanese market for JRPGs and you'll see lots of smaller projects still being born on the PS3, because their specialized market is not that oppressive.

Just like there are theaters specialized in cinema d'essai, and you don't pit a niche movie and a summer blockbuster directly, so the smaller games will have to find alternative ways to be distributed and promoted. I'm frankly not that worried: projects for which the authors are strongly motivated will endure the financial distress more than bombastic run-of-the-mill moneymakers. Plus, we're going towards pervasive low-cost network distribution and things like the "japan import" channel we heard about in the SEGA-Sony meeting, Steam, etc. would likely be able to save the day even if retailers and mainstream press are slow to adapt.

 

 

The analogy with "cinema d'essai" is quite good, and the same could be said with many musical styles, and many artistic expressions...

Im' working in the music business, especially jazz and world music... and how many singers/groups are sellin' one million of albums? Nearly none for these "niche" genres... does it mean all the groups/artists sellin' only a few thousands copies are totally irrelevant and should quit music (or cinema, or litterature, or any other art form)? Of course not...

But now, if the production costs for an album were suddenly 200% or 300% more expensive, and sales hard to get in a saturated market, i can tell you many artists would suffer, many artists who by the way, deserve to make a good living out of their artistic production...

If videogames become like the biggest and most expensive cinema blockbusters, how are they supposed to be viable? A movie may have a potential 500 million, if not one billion userbase, thanks to all the theaters and all the dvd players around the world... how could games support high costs for a 20-30 million max userbase? I think it's a good question, and i don't know if the people in this industry have a good answer...

But you're right, digital distribution may save "niche" games in a near future... it's a good solution, if prices are correct...