How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

[ilovetogame]

i think the industry was definitely heading for trouble if the wii wasn't made. lets just say nintendo didn't have a current gen system out. you'd have two options right now, $400 360 with $60 games where only the best most hyped games make a decent profit so that only the big companies can continue to make games, and the $600 ps3 with $60 games that is even more expensive to develop for with a much lower userbase and so making money off a game is near impossible. hardly any new gamers are gonna be brought in to the industry cuz hardly anyone is gonna buy an absurdly expensive system as their first gaming system, especially when one doesn't have much to offer and the other focuses mainly on just fps and sports games. now realize that the smaller companies would not be making games at all for those two systems cuz they can't afford the high development costs and so maybe they stick to downloadable games but thats not really gonna bring in any new gamers so it doesn't actually help expand the market at all. any company that is rich enough to make $15-20 million dollar games is gonna lose money on every game they make unless its both a very good game and is very hyped (especially on the ps3). a lot of development companies would be knocked out of industry, no new gamers would be coming in, many current gamers would not be buying a new system for a couple years after they released so that the prices could become reasonable, and they still won't buy as many games cuz each game is $10 more than normal which adds up. i'm not saying the industry would start crashing right now if not for nintendo and the wii but it definitely would be wounded and bleeding badly.

if you look at how much it costs to develop games versus how many copies of each game sells on average when you've got development costs around those needed on the 360/ps3 you're looking at a very dire situation that ends in few companies making a profit. a lot of companies have even said they make wii games to make up for what they lose on the other systems. so think if the other systems was all there is, developers would be dropping like flies, and thats what would cause the video game market to go into decline. maybe not necessarily a crash like in the early-mid 80's. but it's certainly possible.