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theprof00 on 30 September 2009
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Avinash_Tyagi said:

First off, your chart on PC gaming only goes back to 1998, you're missing a huge chunk of time prior to that in which PC gaming had fallen from its highs. PC gaming at one point was nearly the entire gaming market, by 1998 it was a minority, this was long before piracy.

And your argument that Playstation sent things into the biggest economy and that's why its in decline is flawed, first off in terms of sales the PS1 generation was smaller than PS2 gens and Wii's gen will be even larger than PS2's in terms of sales, not to mention Handheld gaming is larger than before, so the Wii gen is going to send gaming even larger overall, in terms of sales and revenues, but that won't matter because profits aren't rising. Its not the economy, this was an issue back before the economy started to tank. The big issue is the fact that while sales and revenues have risen, profits have not, in fact profits have fallen as costs of gaming have risen faster than sales and revenues.

 

Nintendo is one of the few companies to figure this out, which is why they have mad profits and security for the future

PC gaming was almost the only kind of gaming at one point. Are you going to argue that it's industry did that to it?

PC gaming never sold a shit load of software, and revenue was minimal. Sure it had more of the industry, but it didn't make nearly as much as it does today.

Do you even look at the profits that people make on PC gaming? There are hugely successful companies in the PC gaming world. Companies like Pop Caps, and others that develop things like Yahoo! Literati, Bejeweled, and flash games. PC gaming is in decline mainly because the competition is so unbelievably huge. You know where that competition comes from? Those casual games. Those casual games that cost all of 5 thousand to make, and don't cost the consumer a penny. They make their money on ad revenue and donations.Back in the day, guess what? More free games, Muds Mushes and Moos, user generated mods and a thousand other things provided free content for everyone to use. Now PC gaming has another cancer, piracy. In 2002 bittorrent was invented, and pretty much sliced the revenue in half starting in 2002 and maximizing in 2004.

Second paragraph, yeah I know you're right. I actually thought the gaming industry was in decline. Big surprise! It's bigger than it's ever been. Yes we all know that the wii has a really good profit margin. We know that they took a smart way into this generation. But it's because of the industry that games have come so far in the first place. These generations wouldn't exist if dev's took the money route. Gaming, for the past 20 years has been all about upping the graphics and the hardware.

And here's the problem this gen: MS. MS deliberately put their console out a year in advance, forcing both nintendo and sony to release faster than they would have liked to. I don't know if you remember seeing the difference between a ps2 game and the fucking fight night game on the 360. 360 made past games look like trash. If you try to take the money route and go for extended generations, you will be in trouble from competitors trying to gain a graphical advantage. This forces the industry to take the cut off of profit margin. It's really nobody's fault in particular, but YOU WILL SEE, that as the graphical trend starts to hit this wall, that is, the point where hardware leaps don't really improve the graphics, then innovation will flourish. Those prices will come down, and things will reset again. Until there is another huge graphical leap, and there is another race to the top.

Without the HD systems there would be no HD wii in the making, because there wouldn't be a profit in it. Gaming will always continue, because there will always be a market for it, and that market will give the consumer what they want. New experiences, better graphics, and more technology. The market will adapt. If you think for one second that the level of innovation the wii gives is the only way, think again. 3d gaming is on the way. Natal is going to stir up some shit too. Gaming will continue to evolve, and the one thing that has the potential to destroy it, is the casual core, because for that group, online poker is enough, and online poker is free.

Console gaming will become what PC gaming has become, a mass of tetris clones, and stick figures fighting, with a couple high profile games that everyone continues to complain about.