Avinash_Tyagi said: Diomedes1976 said: 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

Thats why I think the Game Industry has shooten themselves in the foot...

Not every developer counts with 10 or 15 millions (Sometimes more) to make a game, and if there is money and the game is made, not every game out there is a success...

And Wii solves that issue as well, notice the non games on Wii and the mini games and their popularity



Not entirely true a lot of people who played back then and in the NES era stopped gaming for years after gaming became more complex



But perhaps they need different reviewers, reviewers who aren't as vested in older styles of gaming to review them



Excpet that's not true, it is the Wii that has forced the PS3 to make the huge price drops that it has made, othjerwise it would still be at a much higher price range, prices of tech and prices of game devlopment have made it so the average consumer cannot enter the market without Nintendo



It is this attitude of elitism that would lead to the eventual downfall of the industry

I wouldn't say the industry was growing a few years ago, if anything it was stagnant as far as people who play games. I think one major change is that gamers spent a lot more than before on their habit.

Back in ye olden days, the 16 bit war of '92, you were on 1 side of the fence or the other. Why? Because no one had 2 consoles. This is a very, very recent development of people buying 2-3 consoles a generation. The thing is for the most part it wasn't 160 million people buying a console each last generation, it was about 100 million people total. I can't think of a person last generation I know personally who just had an Xbox without a PS2 sitting right next to it.

I'm guilty of this myself as a Wii60 owner who primarily plays PC games.

I will say one thing about the complexity argument: there's a lot of games where there is a different kind of complexity. SSX for the Wii is probably the most complex and difficult game to control this generation, but if you put in the time and effort to learn it you'll realize just how deep the controls are.

Another example was renting Madden for the Wii. For the most part me and 2 of my friends never touch Madden games, but the other guy in our group is one of those buy it every year types. Of course we make him the quarterback. About half way through the 2nd quarter of our first game he declares the controls broken and the Wii version unplayable.

Usually this griping came up when he was blitzed and consequently sacked. By the end of the 3rd quarter we figured out when the heat was on him he'd panic and do the motion wrong. The thing is on any other version of Madden when you feel the pressure you just mash the button like a maniac, and in all his years playing it never occured to him that he did this, he always took himself as a calm guy in the pocket. Sort of in the same sense that you can play shooting games all your life but in real life if you're rushed in all probability you're going to miss a target 5 feet in front of you.

We figured out 2 things that night:

1) The best regular controller Madden sucked at Madden Wii, but one of our guys who was a quarterback throughout high school and some junior college did it perfect every time when we made him quarterback our 2nd play through. Ironically our best player usually hates sports video games.

2) There are a lot of games on the Wii that, if done right, open up an entirely new type of difficulty. Generally speaking if you're bad at a Wii game, we call you Wiitarded, but everyone is Wiitarded at some game. Our good football player also shanks every shot in Super Swing Golf. There's a world of difference between pushing a button and actually having to swing a golf club straight, or remain calm and maintain your form when the blitz is coming.

It has evened the playing field a lot and made games more fun and a lot more social. As much as I love my 360 I also understand that when friends come over it's essentially a paperweight, because no one wants to bother learning a game just to get up to my playing level, it can take hours of days of getting pounded over and over again. By contrast the Wii is played by everyone, including my wife who can kick my ass at bowling, Super Swing Golf, and as a result of her getting into those games ...GEARS OF WAR.

At the end of the day, if you want video games to be a respected and mainstream medium, this is the path it has to take. It's no longer viewed simply as the preferred past time of basement dwelling 10-24 year old virgins calling each other African American homosexual people of the Jewish faith over a mic because they have to real friends to speak of.

It's become an every Sunday party thing at my house, when multiple TVs come over 1 of 2 things happens:
1) Someone brings their Wii and people are swapping controllers, games, and seats constantly
or
2) 2 people are sitting by themselves pretty much totally removed from the social aspect playing games the Xbox until we all go out to eat. It's really hostile to the party environment and kind of an unspoken downer. But it's great for just 2 people or me by myself.

3 years ago 4-8 people getting together every week to play video games would have conjured up an image of frat boys linking up for Halo, fun but exclusive. Today it's people of both genders and a huge age range (our group is ages 19-34). A couple of those hardcore gamers that play with us can actually talk to the girls in our group now instead of just hypothesizing about how they could never get one :O

In the end it's all about fun. Bottom line end of story, when it ceases to be about fun and more about who has the biggest joystick, something essential is lost.

I like the Wii alot. In fact, I already like it better than the gamecube. I think. I loved sunshine, but its looking like galaxy is even better (hopefully as good as mario 64- i LOVED that game)

Hi. I will admit I didn't bother to read most of the post. I would like to point out that software is where the 'industry' makes the money. So it would seem, the savior in NA currently is Microsoft's Xbox 360.

i think the industry was definitely heading for trouble if the wii wasn't made. lets just say nintendo didn't have a current gen system out. you'd have two options right now, $400 360 with $60 games where only the best most hyped games make a decent profit so that only the big companies can continue to make games, and the $600 ps3 with $60 games that is even more expensive to develop for with a much lower userbase and so making money off a game is near impossible. hardly any new gamers are gonna be brought in to the industry cuz hardly anyone is gonna buy an absurdly expensive system as their first gaming system, especially when one doesn't have much to offer and the other focuses mainly on just fps and sports games. now realize that the smaller companies would not be making games at all for those two systems cuz they can't afford the high development costs and so maybe they stick to downloadable games but thats not really gonna bring in any new gamers so it doesn't actually help expand the market at all. any company that is rich enough to make $15-20 million dollar games is gonna lose money on every game they make unless its both a very good game and is very hyped (especially on the ps3). a lot of development companies would be knocked out of industry, no new gamers would be coming in, many current gamers would not be buying a new system for a couple years after they released so that the prices could become reasonable, and they still won't buy as many games cuz each game is $10 more than normal which adds up. i'm not saying the industry would start crashing right now if not for nintendo and the wii but it definitely would be wounded and bleeding badly.

if you look at how much it costs to develop games versus how many copies of each game sells on average when you've got development costs around those needed on the 360/ps3 you're looking at a very dire situation that ends in few companies making a profit. a lot of companies have even said they make wii games to make up for what they lose on the other systems. so think if the other systems was all there is, developers would be dropping like flies, and thats what would cause the video game market to go into decline. maybe not necessarily a crash like in the early-mid 80's. but it's certainly possible.

Just some quick historical perspective.

Any market can crash -- video games did it pre-NES in 1983-84.
The only company today that can draw back to that point is Activision.
(There was an Atari, but it is not today's Atari)..

There does seem to be a bias on non-traditional games -- which include a lot of Wii games. Mario & Sonic -- which was cited in the article -- has a Gamerankings score of 71. Not bad, except when you consider it was honoted at top Wii game at Lipzig earlier this year.

I don't want to say there is a bias against Wii games because (a) SMG is trying to become the highest rate game of all time and (b) GHIII for Wii has a higher rating than its 360 and PS3 couterparts, despite its reported audio problems.

Still, it seems if a game is not something that the reviewer is used to playing or does not like that genre -- its toast when the review comes in.

I can also say that if you are looking for more of a family playing experience, those mid-rated games are often great fun and much better for quick fixes. These include the various mini-games and classic game collecitons -- which becuase they don't have full stories and sometimes are not as pretty as the other titles tend to rated lower by reviewers but still sell.

Finally, as far as broadening the demographic of players -- I agree that it is games and not controllers. That being said, controllers can scare off people. That being said, an original Xbox controller has two analog sticks, a D-pad, six game buttons, two system buttons and two triggers. A Wii controller and numchuck has an analong stick, a D-pad, two triggers, six game buttons, and two system buttons spread out over two controllers which you also have to move. Which is more complex ?

Mike from Morgantown

I believe there is a crash coming - and I think the Wii/DS will help soften the effect.

The crash occurs not when the industry stops growing - but when big brand games (such as R&C) don't sell enough units to break even - yet development costs continue to rise.

There are simply too many games out there these days. The last generation of games are still with us - and its created a huge flood of titles. Add to this to proliferation of VC / downloadable titles - and its become insane.

(and another point - if you tried - how many FREE games could be play - just by having a internet capable device, plus a web connection?).

...

Its time for a contraction. Some studios will close, some publishers fall over - less titles on the market - maybe even an entire console to drop out.

No wonder, low overhead DL titles (and in-game revenue sources such as advertising) have become so important to publishers.

Has MS been "bankrolling" the industry since the start of the XBOX?

Our economies are based on continuous exponential growth. And honestly? I don't think there's still much room to growth with titles like Halo anymore.

You have to add new demographics (as Sony was/is doing with the PS2 in Europe mostly, and as Nintendo did with the DS and Wii all over the world), entire new countries (like Sony did in Europe with the PS2, and Nintendo apparently wants to do now with China - we'll see how that one goes) for that to happen.

Because if you don't do this, there will be a crash. Actually, I agree with Shams - there will be a contraction coming anyway. This only softens the effect. But at least on some "demographics" there will definitely be a crash.

And to me, the fact that I'm with Entroper in having bought almost as much first year Wii titles as I did N64 titles for the entire generation (and I would've bought even more had I the time/money to play them), is proof enough of that - there are just too many games coming out right now, and there won't be enough dollars to pay them for.

Most (not all) of this article is complete nonsense. I don't have the time or energy to dissect everything he says, but this quote shows the problem with a major part of his argument:

He neglects to mention that previous Mario Parties were extremely well reviewed. The problem with this one was that it didn't improve on its predecessors and it didn't make good use of the Wii controls, not that the critics "didn't know how to review it." There's always been room in the mainstream industry for games that are "just fun," without specific goals and motivations, no matter what he says.

As for an industry crash, I don't think we were on the verge of anything so dramatic as that. It's true that game budgets and development times can't keep ballooning the way they have recently, but that's a problem of adapting development and marketing strategies. It's nothing the industry wouldn't come out of just fine after perhaps a few shaky transition years. There are hundreds of millions of game players out there, and as long as they're demanding games, there will be plenty of profit to be made.