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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Update: Jade Raymond joins Google as Vice President | Rumor: Google's gaming console details leaked, possible controller design revealed via patent

Shadow1980 said:
DonFerrari said:

Most companies consider lack of growth almost as good as shrinking market =´[

Yes, but lack of growth is inevitable, especially in markets like consumer electronics. Take color TV. By the end of the 80s, it was already at full saturation, with 95% of all households in the U.S. owning at least one. After that point, the only new sales were people buying a second (or third or fourth) set or replacing old models that stopped working, and sales levels ceased growing and leveled off. Same for major appliances. When these things were new, they were rapidly adopted and sales grew quickly. But now nearly every household has a refrigerator and an oven/stove, and as a result, real, meaningful sales growth stopped and leveled off because people only buy a new fridge or stove because they're a first-time buyer (i.e., someone who grew up, moved out of their parent's house, and got their own home they had to furnish themselves), or because they need to replace an old, broken machine, or because they might want a second one (like a fridge in the garage).

Of course, with some forms of consumer electronics sales volumes can be improved by continually making newer, fundamentally different, and qualitatively far better types of models that make the old ones obsolete, but the ability to do that depends on the rate of technological advancement. TVs went from black & white to color and finally to flat-panel HDTVs (and even 4K HD for videophiles and those willing to pay more for super-sharp picture), so that's really only three major "generations" for TV sets since the 1950s. Home video evolved more quickly, with VHS, then DVD, and now Blu-ray, but that's still only three "generations" of home video formats since the early 80s. But consoles, being computers, have evolved much more rapidly. With consoles, eventually any given system will start to have reduced sales as it reaches its saturation point after a few years, but by that point improved technology allows for newer, more advanced systems to replace the older system, starting the whole cycle all over again.

But even then growth in sales is not unlimited. You can't sell 200 million consoles in a country like the U.S., which has only 127 million households, because there simply aren't enough households willing and able to buy a console. As with any other consumer electronic item, everybody that wants one will have one, and you can't expand the share of the population that wants a particular type of gadget, meaning the only real growth that happens as a function of population growth. The only way the global console market will see new, meaningful growth is through emerging markets adopting consoles in larger numbers more comparable to the per capita sales we see in advanced economies like in the U.S. & Canada, Europe, Japan, etc. Most of the growth in the console market in the 90s was due to Europe finally adopting consoles en masse in Gen 5 with the PS1 after largely ignoring them in the 8-bit & 16-bit eras, and now the market needs other regions to adopt consoles in large quantities to produce more growth in the present. But even then, meaningful growth will eventually cease altogether.

Honestly, I think this obsession with growth needs to end. There are always limits to growth, and sooner or later anything and everything will hit them. The idea that anything can grow infinitely in a finite system is the philosophy of a cancer cell. It results in shitty business practices as companies seek to produce ever-large profits for their shareholders (and it also results in shitty fiscal and domestic policy from governments; see the push for natalist policies in nations worried that the lack of population growth will cause them to fall behind other nations, as if it were some race to have the world's largest GDP). The obsession with perpetual growth forces companies to come up with new strategies to produce growth, and when they reach the end of real, meaningful growth some of those methods start to get increasingly questionable. Planned obsolescence is one way, such as appliances being made more cheaply and lower quality and consequently having shorter lifespans than they used to, forcing people to buy them more frequently (many decades ago you could buy a Kenmore appliance from Sears and it would last you 20-30 years or more; meanwhile, it seems like newer appliances were built with gremlins preinstalled, and you're lucky if they last 10-15 years). Cable companies increased subscription fees and introduced a larger number of premium programming tiers. Obstacles are put in place to discourage people from repairing their devices, encouraging them to pay an authorized repairer or buy a newer model. There's the cessation of upgrades to and support for an older operating system, pushing people to buy the new OS. Sometimes you'll see what was once a one-time product purchase turned into a subscription-based service, thus getting a recurring payment from the consumer. Predatory monetization schemes have become a problem in video games. And many businesses in general will at the end of real growth cut wages & benefits, cut jobs, and do whatever they can to artificially inflate their profit margins, even if it results in the destruction of the business.

 

The harsh reality is that infinite growth is not sustainable. As a certain obscure geology professor whose commentary I like to read said, "In the long run, every economic model that assumes unlimited future growth is a Ponzi scheme."

Fully agree with you. But you know boards are pressured by shareholders to push for increased growth so their share can also grow. And on that we see two basic movements, increase in organic revenue/profit or purchase of other business.

CEOs like their jobs and bonuses so they will gladly oblige. Therefore come the bad practices  you mentioned.

I do hope new markets open fastly enough for the platforms to see oportunities for growth that have nothing to do with bad practices. And perhaps seeing these lower tier/lower purchase power markets but vast number of consumers we may see a reduction in the pricetag in a way that benefits all.

Even with tax for imports (and even internal production) on videogames in Brazil being about 60% so making a Switch here 420 USD on greyshop (no oficial store) and PS4 about 500 USD, a new game from Sony is about 50USD on official stores and about 40USD on greyshops. Perhaps with the new laws we may see 30-40 largely available for SW.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."