Damn, man. I was trying to just end this awful conversation peacefully. 

I didn't buy my PS4. It was a wedding gift. I started subscribing to PS+ before Sony erected the online paywall. It's a great service so I kept re-subscribing. I spent $3 for Uncharted 4 at Redbox. I received review copies from publishers for the rest of the games. Yes, I pre-ordered the collector's edition for The Last Guardian. I've waited seven years for it and I trust Ueda implicitly. I also bought DLC for Fable II. And once I stole a candy bar when I was a kid. You caught me.

I'm not asking anyone to stop playing their favorite games or stop supporting their favorite developers. I'm asking consumers to be smarter about how and when they invest their money in an industry doing everything it can to separate consumers from that money.

I certainly don't want you out of a job, if that's where all this anger is coming from. I don't know. I just know you've continued to attack me and label me a liar, and haven't engaged with my actual points. 

You're doing a great disservice to this awesome forum and this wonderful community. Folks come here for the free exchange of ideas and perspectives. They don't come her to suffer personal attacks. I've dedicated years of my life to this site, as a member, a moderator, and a writer. What exactly have you contributed? A bunch on insults directed at human beings you judge based on a gamer card?

Anyway, I really do hope you find peace. You seem proud of your occupation. Maybe you could try to understand the pride I have in mine?

Its completely irrelevant where you get your consoles or your games, or why.  You still use them, and  continue to consume games on those platforms and use all of the services you claim are ruining the game industry. You're still playing and reviewing games you feel developers should not be making. Again, it's like wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, donating and voting for Trump while writing articles blasting his policies, and begging people not to vote for him. It doesn't matter if you got the hat for free, you're still wearing it, and wearing it proudly, and people see you wearing that hat while begging people not to vote for him. That sends a mixed message, does it not?

I've not once called you anything other than a hypocrite, which you obviously are by your own admission. I don't think you're lying (and have never said as much) but you're being disinegnous by saying that it's awful that Sony is offering a service like PS+ while you're subscribed to it. It can't possibly be that bad to you if you're spending money on it. So these consumers that you're pleading to be smarter with their money and not subscribe to such services, how many of them do you want to do as you say and not as you do? How many of them are supposed to be smarter with their money than you appear to be? If Sony listens to these people you're pleading with to not buy into services like PS+ and Sony cancels the service, you'll actually be missing out on something you're willing to pay for. You will lose out one something you consume and enjoy. Why is this so hard for you to understand that this makes you look bad?

As for me apparently detracting from the site, are we or are we not freely exhanging ideas and perspectives? Of course we are. You just don't like the conversation, because the ideas and perspectives is about your hypocrisy. Besides, just because you've been here longer or "contributed more" doesn't mean you should be immune from criticism. You don't get special rules (or at least shouldn't).

Perhaps you'll consider that my stance on you and your presence on this site is similar to the stance you're taking with the game industry. I'm not mad. I didn't take any of the criticism you had against the game industry personally. You have just one opinion amongst hundreds of millions. What makes you think you're opinion on the industry has enough power to hurt me or any other developer personally, especially when your criticism is so broad and vague? It doesn't. The only reason I said what I said, is because I dig the site but like to call out bullshit when I see it here. You dig the game industry but like to call out bullshit when you see it there. Yet somehow you believe your pursuits are noble, but mine are a scourge to the site?  Well as the Dude says, "that's just like your opinion, man".  Afterall,  I'm not the one profiting off of calling you out in any way. You on the otherhand....

Really, do yourself a favor and become more aware of your actions and how they represent you as a person. it appears that how you feel you present yourself and how you actually appear to those around you may not coincide.

I dont recall him ever saying those games shouldnt be made, just that there should be more of a balance among various genres and level of budget instead of a couple genres and a small percentage of games making up the majority of sales.

Life is too short for this stuff. You've already made up your mind about me as a person, and nothing I say will convince you otherwise. Plus we've been derailing this thread something fierce.

I'm going to follow Ian Maclaren, who said "Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." I'm sure you have your own battles to fight, as I have mine. I wish you the best, and I hope you have a successful career developing games.

Fair enough. Best of luck to you as well.

But you do realize that the only thing that's required for this to happen is for people to buy more smaller budget games, right? Most developers make high-budget, low risk games because that's what sells. Rockstar already knows they're going to get back whatever they spend in GTA VI so long as they make a solid polished game and don't deviate from the formula too much. Activision already knows the next Call of Duty is going to sell like hot cakes (although the bro-shooter crowd appears to be tapering off a bit). Naughty Dog already knows The Last of Us 2, or another Uncharted game made to their standards will sell very well. Why deviate from that?

Here's the thing. Spending 1/4 as much on 4 games that don't sell as well as they would as a single title is a bad business move. Just ask EA. Look at the period when they released Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno, Facebreaker, the Saboteur etc. All smaller games on smaller budgets, most of which were well receieved by critics, but not great sellers as a whole. I think only Dead Space actually recouped it development/marketing costs. Was EA smart to do that, or would they have been better off pouring more money and resources into something like Mass Effect, or FIFA or Battlefield, and making those games better? Honestly, probably the latter.

It's easier said than done, and it's even easier to criticize without coming up with any better solutions that are firmly grounded in reality and more importantly backed by objective, knowledgeable research. Anyone can say "Sony should make a cheaper console", but I assure you that Sony is trying make the cheapest, best selling console they can because it's in their best interest to do so. So here's the question: Does a PS4 that is half as powerful as the current version that hits the market at $249 in 2013 a more successful console for Sony than the current PS4? Personally, I really doubt that. I see that as a console that doesn't get games that are as complete and as fleshed out as Uncharted 4. I see a console that gets absolutely thrashed in head-to-head third party game comparisons to the Xbox One. I see a console that third parties abandon because it takes to much time and effort to "scale down" their games to run well, if not for the poor sales. Because I don't see such an obviously weaker console selling well at all, even if its half the price of the X1 at launch. Not with Sony's target audience.

Yes, the very premise of the reposte... That the "industry needs journalists and reviewers".

What right do reviewers have to dictate the course of an entire industry. 

Much more seriously, he is saying basically that he is going to score a game down because it has a high budget. 

Teams that work on big games work just as hard as teams on small games and that is actually desperately unfair.

Games are made by far more intelligent and creative people than those in the press and the lack of standards and transparency, particularly in recent years has lead to reviewers just writing any old dribbling nonsense and attaching a number.

You can't even criticize the critics....I've seen someone do that on twitter and literally get a death wish from their coworker. 

The media are beyond reproach it would seem. 

I apologise if it seemed like trolling or something but what else can I do but laugh in despair.

Well, I'll just say that when you have a console that greatly outpaces the PS2 (so much so that many believe it will take the crown easily), yet has to crawl its way to just over 100M (over 55M units away from the PS2), there's no other way to define that but crash and burned.

How does that work when Nintendo and Sega sold ~80M during the NES/Master System era, then the same ~80M the next gen?  And do you honestly think that all of those Nintendo and Sega fans just jumped on the PS bandwagon?  Of course not.  Why do you think the N64 sold ~33M and the Saturn ~9M?  I mean, worse case scenerio Sony only brought in ~23M new users to the market.  A more likely one, though, is that they brought in ~40M-50M new gamers.  And the gen after that, they probably brought in another ~30M-40M.  The best part, though, is that unlike the Wii's new "gamers," they have actually stuck around and kept gaming.

I had to check your profile before replying. Now i dont understand how its possoble that you seem to be old enough to have been around when all this happened to not know or remember what really happened. 

Pre PlayStation era gaming was generally regarded as something for kids. Hell it wasn't till the SNES era and the whole mortal Kombat fiasco that an ESRB rating system was even deemed necessary. PlayStation (1) basically made the industry grow up. That's not my opinion, that's fact. 

Everything you say has a heavy casual gamer bias, and what the issue here is is that you fail to realize that "casuals" have always been there. Be it on the PS1/2/Wii..... whatever. There has always been a casual market and there always will be one. Casuals are their own type of demographic or market. You seem to insist on mixing the two up.

What Nintendo had seen a lot of success in is appealing to that specific market. Everytime they have attempted to make a fully "hardcore" console they have failed. And this is because for one reason or the other they fall short on something the hardcore market feels is important or relevant. Be it hardware, net structure, added features or just games. 

Sony or MS focusing on a market that has carried them accross generations is not a bad thing. Think of it this way, Sony and MS are cultivating more and more core gamers everyday. Nintendo usually goes after the casual crowd first. 

It's simple, if nintendos approach is better, then the wiiU should have sold better than it did. And the PS4 should not sell as well as it has. 

Most importantly though, and this is something you seem to miss; the casual gamer is still there. They are actually bigger and more than they have ever been in the history of gaming. They just happen to be on smartphones and tablets and facebook today. They are not the sort to buy a dedicated box to play games when they have an option of playing games on the phones they all already have. to them that just doesn't make sense. Unless of course you think it's a coincidence that the wii's value started to decline as smartphones and tablets gained in popularity. 

What would you rather have. 100M dedicated userbase that you can carry with you accross generations? Or a 150M userbase that can't sustain your business after 4yrs and you lose at the start of the next generation?

The wiiU failed because that "casual" expansion that Nintendo enjoyed with the Wii, simply went to play their games somewhere else. 

hee hee, you said "erection".

I also agree with most of what you said.