The 'AAA blockbuster' business model not being sustainable...when will it finally crumble?

[Cheebee]

JGarret said:

Cheebee said:
There's a summary out there somewhere listing all development companies that went under this past generation. I don't remember the details, but I was shocked by the sheer amount of devs that bit the dust. This gen's going to be far worse, I should think. I predict dozens upon dozens of devs going bankrupt.

If you think about the major devs/publishers, whether they are Western or Japanese, would you risk a guess in predicting which one(s) won´t make it to the 9th generation?

Well, that's an interesting question, but tbh I don't follow the financial ups and downs of most publishers/devs too closely, apart from Nintendo, Sony & MS (they should all do okay), so I really wouldn't dare say (although apparently Capcom isn't doing so hot nowadays). Would you wager any guesses?

A lot could seem to be doing okay, but things can change for the worse very quickly, especially with budgets ballooning out of control. This coming gen, situations where a few games fail, or even just one big game, could probably very easily cause devs/publishers to go out of business.

A sad by-effect of this is most likely going to be publishers playing it very safe and going with the tried and true, resulting in much less fresh and original concepts, thus more stale some-old same-old. Of course on the other side of that spectrum we have the whole indie scene, but too much indie might not be a great thing, either...