cAPSLOCK said:
Of course the industry isn't recession proof, the 1930s film industry proved no entertainment medium is recession proof. Something to the tune of 1/2 of the movie theaters shut down, and right around the time when sound was a new thing (a big technological jump just before a crash). Granted today is nothing near the level of the Great Depression, but like you said, the entertainment industry seems to do better than most. At least part of the blame does rest on "evil, shiny graphics." Most of the video game industry (including Nintendo) isn't Microsoft and Sony--they can't sink billions of dollars into debt while other arms of their company pick up the slack. The industry as a whole wasn't financially ready for the leap to HD. There was something like 10-15% HD penetration (and what % of that % are gamers?) by 2006, and to make matters worse the cost to produce a game has gone through the roof. http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=37077 This thread is a pretty good one on the financial problems HD causes. That's the problem, though, it's already an economic strain in difficult economic times. Things weren't exactly peachy here in the US for quite a few years prior to the crash, the financial system just publicly caught up with the rest of the problems. 2001-2002 "9/11 Recession" was fairly substantial, 2005 saw a massive downturn in the housing market. Not to mention a slow and steady collapse of the middle class here since the early 1980s that accelerated in the last decade. The death of the computer gaming industry around the end of 2001 was something like a canary in a coal mine. So I agree with a lot of what you're saying in spirit, I'm just putting a higher % of blame on HD than you. In my opinion it was the 2 biggest bullies on the block pushing the whole industry in a direction it wasn't ready for. |
Good post! 
Oh, I know that HD needs to take some of the blame, there's just no denying it but often times people leave the economy's overall crash out of the ecuation entirely, not to mention the the fact that this generation has a difficult hardware chasm separating the competitors and that a manufacturer who has previously been soundly beaten is suddenly on top for the first time in nearly two decades. Besides, having seen lists of bankrupt developers in 2009 there's a rather large semblance of either developers who made mobile games (Iphone type phones are selling like hotcakes so all is not well despite having hardware sales, you simply can't count on having blistering software sales), casual games that weren't successful or let everything ride on a big budget title that drowned in either better competition or wallowed in its own mediocrity (think Lair and Haze). I for one perfectly well understand many developers' timidness in restructuring and changing entire processes where making games are concerned, they aren't exactly guaranteed to make heaps of money outside of HD gaming either, as the startingly low sales of many game have shown us (a small profit is to be had for many of them but most big companies don't seek small profits, they rather fancy big ones).
So its either; release big budget games on three platforms that historically have moved that kind of software but aren't assured to or release smaller budget, similar games on a platform (or platforms) that historically hasn't moved much of it at all and risk less of a loss if and when it goes bad. To me, there's really no mystery in why quite a few choose option A, doubly so when they don't know the first thing about what the crowd that will be the recipients in option B really want and whether they can actually make it. Either way, there's bound to be obstacles for everyone and I really am stunned at how well the industry is faring in the face of this plethora of troubles.
