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TornadoCreator on 03 January 2014
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NYCrysis said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:
NYCrysis said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

[...]

I'm not sure about 8th gen becoming bigger, I think it has some chances as PC architecture could allow PS4 and XBOne to eventually meet, after price drops, the growing buying power of middle classes in emerging countries. IF this will happen there will be chances, I don't think it's granted, just possible. BTW TornadoCreator answering this same post of mine as you did, correctly pointed out the huge problem of the absence of a mid priced games category between dirt cheap casual games on tablets, phones and PCs and expensive triple A ones, this will have to be solved, otherwise consoles will have little hope of growing in emerging markets, as there wouldn't be an adequately priced SW offer to match the affordable HW. In the end, it COULD happen IF at least these two conditions will be met.

 

Actually there is it's called indie games and sony is pumping out some awesome looking ones at that for the ps4!!

Some of the best indies can fit in that category, but it's a minority. I guess what Tornado meant was that also the big industry will have to adopt more the model of dev prices not excessive and under control to be able to offer a wide mid priced range on a regular basis, not just to satisfy emerging markets, but also because the "triple A" model costs is sustainable only for a minority of titles. Indies can fill the gap very often, but for their nature not completely and not on a regular basis, a true indie is ready when it wants and/or when it can. This "missing link" should ideally unite the pros of indies and organized big publishers and devs without the worst cons of triple A, skyrocketing costs and rapacious attitude towards users.
Anyway, incentive programs for indies can help a lot, and like in the past, many of the nimblest outsiders will be former indies that grew up, but this doesn't change the fact that triple A model spreading beyond where it's justifiable is putting the industry in danger, a big crash would shrink the overall market and growing indies would take years to fill the void. It would surely be refreshing, but I fear existing console manufacturers would suffer badly (royalties are a big part of console producers revenue and even bigger of their profits).

but u are wrong about the minority part. Indies are rapidly growing and are the only hope for the middleground. Sony's 1st party are actually helping indies so I think it is the best model for inbetween mobile and aaa. Games like everyone's gone to the rapture, rime, shadow of the beast, h-hour, and hohokum are just the first taste to the future of what I'm talking about.


I disagree that indie games will be enough. What incentive would there be for someone of only a moderate income in a developing country to buy a PS4 for example if they cannot afford retail games? First of all, indie games are most frequently digital distribution which is useless in developing markets. India, Malasia, Thailand, Philippines; these nations need offline, physical, affordable software if they're going to be truly incentivised to join the gaming hobby.

In short what we need are budget titles, like I said before. Something in between the $<10 indie/mobile games, and the $60 Triple A with a further $30-60 in DLC, map packs, and pre-order special edition crap. No-one will buy a PS4 to play just Resogun, it may be good but it's not that good. No-one will buy a PS4 just to play cheap indie games which could easily run on previous hardware. They want games with a smaller, tighter, niche focus. Games that release at around the $25 mark with intentions on selling 500,000 copies at a profit. Yes this means low budget. These games used to exist though, and they where good, but they all got snatched up and turned into high end AAA franchises. The Hitman series, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, Metro 2033, even Demon's Souls. These where all budget releases. Look now, Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Dark Souls 2... they're high budget AAA games now. Back when the Tomb Raider reboot came out and Squeenix where complaining that it had disappointing sales and they needed over 6m sales to break even, I was genuinely angry. Why did they waste so much money? When Dark Souls topped 1m sales, they where celebrating, why? Because they didn't have an over-inflated budget. One thing they did have though was a triple A price tag. That seems disingenuous to me.

I'm a normal ordinary guy in the UK. For me, a brand new release comes in at £55, that's $92 USA. I cannot afford that. I don't buy games new any more. I used to, back when the PS2 and original Xbox had budget releases at £19.99, and standard releases at £34.99. Not any more. If games continue to increase in price such that the only games we can afford to buy new are the indie games, this industry will nose dive and no amount of hardware sales for the PS4 will save it. What good is a decent userbase if people can only afford 2-3 games per year; all the developers will go bankrupt... oh wait, is that THQ and Atari over there... perhaps it's already too late...