The game industry isn't anywhere close to dying (unless you are really jaded with gaming). If anything the gaming market is oversaturated. It's soooo oversaturated that you have indie developers practically giving their games away on Steam, XBL Indie Games, Amazon, etc. for peanuts (80 MS pts for Breath of Death VII is amazing for the consumer but I truly feel that if they charged 400 MS pts for that game, it would be a fair price for a few hour quality jrpg experience. If a full-length quality sprite-based jrpg on the DS goes for like $30-40, I'd say $5 is a fair price for a quality few hour sprite-based jrpg. Just because it's made by amateurs, doesn't mean it sucks. It's great.
In retail most devs are nervous about straying from the $60 price tag ($50 for the Wii, $30-40 for DS and PSP) because low price is often perceived as low quality (look at Deadly Premonition and their $20 debut price tag. I wouldn't be surprised if game reviewers psychologically expected a crappy game for that low debut price and that expectation colored their perception of the game). But in a true free market sense, many of these games are not worth the price tag and that's why they sell like crap. The gaming industry needs to change up the price structure (just like Indie devs have. Though I personally feel that some of the indies are selling themselves a bit short. I felt the Breath of Death VII guys could get away with charging more personally. It's all about maintaining that right balance. Setting price "just right" to maximize revenue. If demand is low and your price is high, you need to lower your price. If demand is high and your price is low, and I'm your customer, I'd totally like have your babies. But you are crazy to financially screw yourself out of more money like that.
And when it comes to the quality of gaming today, yeah sure sometimes I'll try a game and I don't like it but if that's the case, I just send that game back in the mail to the rental distribution centre (or whatever they call those). And then try a new game. No big deal. There is no shortage of quality games out there to play. It's all about seeking them out and seeing what's good out there.
Like sure it would be a drag if EA went out of business (yeah they are evil but their EA Sports stuff is good and they have lots of great IPs outside sports) but EA does not equal the gaming industry. We as gamers can easily move on without EA. All those key guys employed at EA will just move on to another studio and create some more kickass games. The economy blows but even then, people with in-demand game development skills are going to be able to find new work in their field and bring us more kickass games. Maybe not as much kickass games as before but that's ok because the market is already oversaturated with so many new games anyway. There is more than enough money in this industry to sustain a healthy gaming future. Some studios close down, that's life. But there's more than enough consumer dollars floating around out there to ensure that the key creative and talented individuals of gaming will continue to make great games somewhere at another company if need be.
