It's interesting to know that the American construction/housing market's crash is comparable to what would happen to the videogame industry if Carnival Games didn't sell 200k copies.

Interesting indeed.

Yargh, there needs to be more people in this thread!

If gaming had continued on its road before Wii/DS it would have crashed, not today but in a few years, the barriers were getting too big (high costs, controls, etc.)

Nice article. I can't wait to see what devs bring out next xmas. That will be when we finally see a lot of ground up wii games. Not PS2 shitfests.

Post of the day.

good find...

The industry has been growing year after year without the Wii and its gimmicks .This guy has just swallowed too much Iwata and Reggie propaganda .

 While the market has grown, so have costs, much faster in fact, not to mention that recent growth has been nintendo driven, not to mention that the growth of gamers has only grown due to population growth but has remained stagnant when taken into account overall population

This is what the Wii has set out to change 

Avinash Tyagi has some good points but I'd like to add that the housing industry has also been growing for years and then we come to find out that all that growth was irrelevant as the companies investments are ending up losing money on their investments.

The article is so flawed that it's hard to believe that N'Gai Croal actually called it "thoughtful", anyways here are some questions I have.

Would games like Grand Theft Auto 3, Halo 3, Bioshock, Street Fighter 3, etc have sold better and to non-gamers (like grandma and grandpa) if they had a vastly simpler control scheme/controller? Doubtful. The truth is that the game content is much more to blame in keeping non-gamers away from the systems than the controllers. Just look at Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii, it's obvious that it's just selling to the same crowd that bought Metroid Prime 2 dispite the use of the nunchuk and wii remote.

Also he talks about arcades in the 80s and 90s basically being filled with males between the ages of 16-34, well that's basically the same age group that dominates videogames today. So if that's the case what's the excuse for games in the 80's not appealing to a wider audience when many only had one or two buttons and a joystiq, hardly complicated controls. The truth is that the same age groups and gender that played and dominated games in the 80's and 90's are the same ones doing it now.

Also I don't get why he seems to believe that most reviewers don't know how to review games that don't have an ending because it goes against some kind of canon. Isn't that the case in online multiplayer games? They have no ending and yet reviewers don't seem to have a problem with them.

He also seems to equate the number of people who buy a game with what the review score should be. Well there are Hollywood blockbusters that make 200 million dollars or more, does that mean they should be given 8s or 9s or higher because of that?

I could go on but I think I've written enough for now.

To be honest I just think people are crapping themselves too much over this whole "cost of video games" ordeal -_- when the PS2 came out, were the games for it more expensive to develope than PS1 titles? You bet your bottom dollar, I don't mean this as an insult, but the wii is the only console out there that didn't push for battle hardened specs, company's don't have to push theyre limits to develope on it. Nintendo didn't make as much of a move forward, they simply "changed." And after all, if these company's were all failing mad style to make any scraps of money, you'd think big-budget gaming woulden't be all the rage in today's standard. They keep making them, people keep buying them. Plain and simple.

The wii has some great features, and appeals to many non-gamers for sure, but I woulden't call it the holy grail of gaming -_- If anything, I LIKE the fact that the ps3 and 360 have controllers with so many buttons that are all easily accessed, supply soooo much functionality, and allow me to lay down and relax. The wii simply isn't the system for me. Now I don't hate the wii by any means, I really don't. It's my second favorite console on the market. But I woulden't consider this industry to be "dying" OR that the Wii is some "savior."