5 Reasons the Video Game Industry is about to Crash...

[Salnax]

I don't see the industry crashing in the future. At least, I don't think it's likely, even with the factors mentioned in the article. What I do think is that current trends will continue for at least another 5 years, and that although games may continue to succeed as a business, they will become increasingly, well, boring.

I almost want a crash to happen, if only because I doubt that my favorite companies would be destroyed in the process. There's too much polarization. Either you create the biggest hit in series history, or you doom a franchise. Either your game sells millions, or your company dies. EIther your game is 99 cents with in-game advertisements and micro-transactions, or $60 with slightly fewer in-game advertisements and micro-transactions.

Ironically, the old titan of the industry, Nintendo, is the main refuge of the middle-class game nowadays. Nintendo doesn't really make AAA games other than a console Zelda every few years; All of EAD combined is only about as large as the team that made Resident Evil 6. Games like Mario titles, Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and even 2nd party titles like The Wonderful 101 that don't fit in either the 99 cent or AAA model seem to largely come from Nintendo nowadays.

This is also why I love my 3DS. The 3DS, despite its problems, is largely free of many of the industry's greatest poisons. Budgets are reasonable, a floor and ceiling of roughly $2 and $40 is set for most games, micro-transactions are fairly rare, and the system gets titles that combine creativity and production values. The Vita, conversely, seems to want to be a handheld console, but in a bad way, its library largely divided between as many cheap downloadable titles as possible and a couple of high budget titles that might easily have been AAA if the resolution were a bit higher and required more resources.