This was a serious threat before downloadable games for consoles, and the Wii in general were revealed. There's also always the PC if even those are too expensive.

"The movie industry many years ago realized that you need to sustain an independent development environment in order to rejuvenate yourself"

Yeah because the movie industry is so much more innovative than the game industry. I am glad that there are so few sequels coming to the cinemas. LOL

elnino334 said: mike_intellivision said: PS -- Do major movie studios really care about Indie films? I would think they do because those movies are typically cheaper to make.  There are many examples of indie films doing alot better in the box office then people anticipated and is usually all profit.  I remember the old dude from the brokeback mountain movie complaining about not getting payed because the director told him it was just an indie movie so he did the film on the cheap.  Boy did that bite him on the ass no pun intended LOL

He was talking about movie industry. It's a lot more than hollywood. Things are a bit different in Europe, that they are in NA. Here the indie films tend to be more common. @Parokki: The cheaper cost for PC comes mainly from lack of licencing fees and not needing a separate dev kits. An up-to-date PC game is just as expensive, as a game for PS360, with the diffence that with consoles you know what kind of hardware will be available when the game is ready, you could say consoles being a "safer bet". The problem in the article was the invenstment before someone is willing to publish the game, so the problem remains with the PC. Sure it's possible to put shovelware on PC as well as console and make the game cheap, but if you can't show certain level of quality, you'll end up having trouble to find a publisher.

DMeisterJ said: At the moment, XBLA and PSN (and eventually, WiiWare) are the only active services that allow small developers to take risks, I don't understand his article.

He wants people to invest money in his studio to make big budget games without companies like EA taking them over. That way if his game flops his studio isn't bankrupt.

In otherwords he doesn't want to make cheaper wii or handheld games, or downloadable games.

He wants to make PS360 games but without all the risk.

Additionally he wants people like EA to not buy studios but instead buy individual games from studios via investing in them as previously stated above.

So instead of EA buying Bioware they would give them a lot of money to make Knights of the Old Republic 3... and then would collect a majority of the profits. (Or be responsible for a majority of the losses.)

He basically wants a Broadway show, Bloom. 

he should stop making ps360 games and focus on innovative wii games that make good use of the wiimote

He's not really saying anything that hasn't been said on these forums a hundred times before. Development costs are rising quickly, and small companies can't afford to take big risks, especially if a single game that flops commercially destroys a company. So big companies pump out games they know will make money, such as military shooters, and anything with big burly guys with guns, or regular guys with guns, and the industry stagnates.

It used to be that weird titles like blast corps, tetrisphere, pilotwings, iggy's wreckin balls, wetrix, ect were common. Now there is just variations on a theme. Guys with guns in space, guys with guns on post apocalyptic earth, guys with guns in the US army, guys with guns in the US army in the 40s, guys with guns that are criminals in a city, guys with guns in an undersea city, guy with swords and guns, cute little critter guy with guns, guns with guns, on and on. If something like boom blocks comes out it's (1)rare and (2) criticized for not having enough guns.

How long will the industry be able to grow with just formulaic "guys with guns" games, and big companies crushing and or buying smaller ones? There needs to be fresh blood and ideas, and new pacman games, and tower defense games just aren't enough.

Wow, this guy makes such innovative, great games! Wow, Total Overdose! I remember seeing that one kick Resident Evil 4's ass really bad! How good it was to see indie developers win with their great indie ideas!

To be serious, the whole point of the article is right in some way. I think that if it weren't for Nintendo's new direction, we would be seeing a huge decline right now and a possible Videogame Crash in a genration or two because of things getting too expensive. Sony and Microsoft bashing up to each other, with technology almost on par with super computers, and games costing into the hundreds of millions sometimes... with 10-20 million as 'low-budget' game...

Iwata was right when he said the industry was dying, back in 2004. Thanks Nintendo for saving it all.

@Vagabond: LMAO.
As long as they invent new flashy guns, the Hardcore will be buying them, claiming that everything else destroys the industry. So, theoretically industry can grow as long as the 12-17 year old target group can grow.

@mariozeldametroid: It's not just that the indies wouldn't have ideas, what Vagabond just wrote relates closely on the subject. You may have an idea, that would change the industry forever, but you may not get a publisher for the game, since it does not have guys with guns in their asses or guys in space with guns in their asses.
Look at GTA for example, it was really intresting game, but i bet today Rockstar would have problems to find a publisher for it.

Yet they don't take them. Look at the crap we're getting.

About Mottes' prediction that the industry will become reliant on outside IPs, I don't think that will happen. It's more likely that they'll keep recycling old gaming IPs the way they've done in the past. And more than that, they'll keep recycling the same old ideas and gameplay styles under new titles.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel. Just last week EA's CEO commented on this very issue. He was apologetic for EAs attitude towards consolidation in the past, and talked about moving towards a healthier relationship with developers. If EA is getting its act together, that's half the battle won right there.

(Ok i would just like to make this clear before i say this beacause i know im gonna get jumped if i dont say this before my post. THIS IS JUST MY OPPINION!!!!)

i dont think Nintendo is destroying the gaming industry. if anything its imntrodusing new gamers. EX: retirment homes, jims, etc...) what i really think is bad for the gaming industry is people like (insert brand here) who buy out exclusives because they cannot come up with a good answer for it. That kills invoation because now u have two identical AMAZING AAA tile on 2 systems... well emagine if the other system had to come up with a game that has to be better than its competitio. maybie it wont come up with an answer but it will come up with new features, and thats where inovation comes from people!!!!! Buying out games like GTA just to be on your counsole is not a good solution. coming up with a game just like GTA but making new features avaialable so next year GTA has to get better to keep up is!!!!!!!!