We are seeing many western devs falling apart before our eyes, I believe it is due to two major factors.

1. They are wasteful, and manage their resources very poorly

2. They guessed wrong on the Wii.

As to the first point I have seen this discussed alot recently, but it just seems compared to Eastern devs, western Devs dont know how to run a tight ship. I really dont know what the source of the problem is, but I do believe it is related to my second point.

The second thing is the fact is that basically all of them have missed the boat on the Wii. Yea, some of them now are seeing the light namely EA and Take 2 (which have both stated recently they are shifting alot of focus to the Wii) but up until now they have been dumping tons on money onto the HD console, and they are now reaping the cost of that. With the news from Free Radical it even backs this up more... They banked on the PS3 (like many others), the PS3 has lived up to no ones expectations, and they lost terribly (not to mention they made a crappy game, but I feel partly the reason the game fell short is like of capital for them to made it good on a PS3 type budget, only a few devs can do that). Another glaring example of a western dev losing millions by missing the boat on the wii is... Rockband, even Activision lost alot of sales of GH3 by underestimating demand(it was sold out all cmas). Rockband Wii is outselling Rockband 2 on the HD consoles, but EA was so far behind the curve it took them so long to get rockband 1 out, they had to push back rockband 2, basically missing this cmas also. So basically, many western devs are losing money because they are making games only for 1/2 of the total userbase, and that half is the more expensive half to develop for.

So this is what I have been wondering, would we be on the verge of a gaming crash if not for the Wii and DS? It would not be like the 80's.... but It would see many developers go under, and the weakening of the gaming industry as a whole. ALL of the growth we are seeing is Wii and DS related, and many companies even now are able to operate because of highly profitbale casual type games they did put on the Wii(Carnival games, MySims, Lego Star Wars, etc). I think in the future they will put better game on the Wii and they will sell well, not as well as on the HD consoles, but more of them will sell (not just a select few) and they will be more profitable due to the MUCH lower dev cost and the familiarity with it (Similar to the Cube)

Well that is just what I think : ).

If the solution is so easy, why haven't they switch yet?

I would say it is more because of Nintendo.

Without the Wii the industry would have continued down the natural path and more consumers would be investing in HD systems and HD software. Tools and projects were started in 2004/2005 to be ready for HD systems.

 for the same reason they are in the mess they are know. Ignorance. Like I said, I feel things shifting for now. We shall see if they can make the Wii, the next PS2 with games for all. If they can it will be very profitable, large userbase, and lower dev cost.

It's not so much as guessing wrong with the Wii as guessing wrong with the 360 and PS3. I mean currently they are generally doing find on the Wii right now. But with PS3 and 360 development costs are just killing them right now. They know the game will sell but just getting it there could take them under. This is because it takes so long to develop for the HD platforms taht they can't release numerous products to help keep the costs under control. It's fine for the larger developers such as EA and Activision but it is killing the middle ground developers right now. If it wasn't for the Wii, PSP, DS, and PS2 they'd have all gone under.

So what we are seeing from those middle ground developers is a slow transition away from the HD consoles. They will probably still put their big games on those platforms but nothing else. Hell they might even port those over to the other platforms. I think a perfect example of this is Namco Bandai. Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 on PS360 but everything else is on Wii, DS, or PSP. You just can't put every game on the HD platforms because development costs and development time will kill ya.

So this will bring those platforms more games but possibly still not the big games. But as we've seen some big games have already jumped ship. So I don't think it was them so much guessing wrong with Wii, even though they did, but really with the HD platforms as that's what's causing them to shift over not the Wii doing so well.

Western developers are stuck. Stuck in a self-perpetuating reality that every game must be graphically superior, bigger, 'badder' than the last. Instead of focusing on simply making new fun experiences. New experiences are a little risky, yes but can be done an a small budget and reap large profits even with modest sales (World of Goo).

But instead they 'reduce risk' but essentually making the same games over and over with slightly different features and better graphics at greater and greater expense and lower and lower profit margins. Dependance on online is also a factor. Sure it works great for Halo & CoD but for modestly successful games the additional cost of hosting online servers eats away at the profit margin.

It's a classic case of the snake eating it's own tail. They created a generation of graphic crazed online gaming whores (no offense) who are ever increasingly difficult to impress. Look at GoDIII. Why are people disappointed?? Expectations are ridiculously high. Look at Killzone 2. How much $$$$ are they pumping into the graphics so it can at least live up to the expectations they themselves created. If gameplay suffers because all the $$ went to graphics then it's doomed irregardless.

I don't think the industry is going to die. But I do think we are watching the beginning of the downfall of the graphic powerful realistic violent game genre.

so many awesome devs going downhill finanacially, i would expext nintendo to bail out factor 5 if they got in trouble bur free radical is far less likely

and that means NO TIMESPLITTERS 4!!!!!!!!!!

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I'm not too sure your title suits the thread. Basically I get out of your thread that Western devs are on the verge of collapse because of Nintendo.

I wouldn't normally comment on this thread, but developing for Nintendo isn't the end-all be-all of the gaming industry. Currently Western devs are on the verge of collapse because of years of typical US business strategies (i.e. cultural differences between Japan and US). US companies culturally focus on near-term growth and profit, often times taking large risks in the process (blockbuster movies/games), this is almost opposite to Japanese culture, where companies are attempting to insure more long-term goals. This will lead Japanese companies to be more conservative and taking less risks. So this being one of the main reasons why Japanese companies are less likely to be impacted by a series of poor decisions.

If this trend continues it will be a sad sad couple of years. Theres nothing much the Wii offers for my gaming preferences. Ugh.

One of the deeper problems facing western publishers/developers at the moment is their dependance on inexpensive credit to fund their games ...

Most developers/publishers do not have the cash on hand to fund one of their larger games and yet can be in the middle of development of several of these large games. There are several problems that come from this; with every game that fails to turn a profit you dig yourself into a deeper hole which is difficult to get out of (in part because it hurts your ability to get access to inexpensive credit), and the current ecconomic climate makes it very difficult for anyone (except for companies who don't need it) to get access to the same ammount of low cost credit that they had access to 12 months ago. Right now, there are probably several publishers/developers who will be cutting back or canceling projects simply because they don't have access to credit to make payroll.