Cliff Bleszinski: Industry turmoil worst since '80s crash

[theRepublic]

richardhutnik said:

What happened in the 1980s is the consoles dried up, and people went elsewhere, like onto home computers.  On a personal level you could see a perpetual 1983, but not as bad.  What you do have is some titles do breakthrough and people do well.  But it will keep renewing, as indie guys see the success a few have and jump into the ring.  The thing is that the start-up capital can dry up, but there is still Kickstarter and also the likes of self-funding.  The mobile industry is really cheap to make stuff.  All you need is the dev environment.

What happened in the '80s is that there where enough bad games that it killed interest in consoles.  For the most part, people did not go elsewhere.  People do not need to game.  There are books, TV, movies, and all sorts of other entertainment.  The dedicated did go elsewhere.

It parallels what we see in the mobile space with so many bad games.  It is giving even the big boys trouble.  Zynga just closed some studios.  It is possible for the mobile well to be posioned.  If people want to play games, they have plenty of choices other than the mobile market.