| Sky Render said: Mainstream gamers are no more a death knell to gaming than mainstream moviegoers were a death knell to film making. Certain types of games don't appeal to the mainstream, just as certain types of films don't, but that doesn't mean that those games (and movies) lacking mass appeal won't sell well enough to warrant their continued existence. They'll just inevitably be shuffled into background obscurity in culture at large, thanks to their status as "hardcore only". |
...but here's the rub. in the movie industry the high budget films (transformers, harry potter) are always targeted to the mainstream audience while niche movies (juno, sicko) are given smaller budgets to compensate. now the state of the video game right now is the opposite. mainstream gamers seem to be flocking to the wii while hardcore flock to the ps3/360.
if you're a big company like EA maybe you can afford to throw games with huge budgets at the hardcore niche and pay for them with low budget games for the mainstream. but what about developers like epic, square, naughty dog. if you only make hardcore big budget games how can you afford to stay in business. answer is you can't and we're going to see a lot of "consolidation" this generation and i don't think consolidation is a good thing for innovation in games.
@ Stever89 - my favorite line of you piece. "How can companies stay profitable and healthy if they can’t reach every demographic, because certain demographics are pushed aside for the “supreme” demographic, the hardcore players?"
