Your Perspective on the Gaming Market

[Koh]

What's your perspective on the gaming market now? You can break this up as deep as you think it needs to go.

Definitely feel like the consoles are slowly dying, but I also feel like there is eventually going to be one uniform gaming console, in addition to PC gaming. Also, the rise of Indie-Gaming due to the accessibility of game development tools.

As for the games themselves, definitely a huge increase of the casual gaming market, and touch games. But that isn't going to stop some enjoyable, lengthy games from coming out.

[~Axis~]

I think there is a steady growth in the gaming market. PC game releases and console game releases have balanced out with each other. Indie games are also on the rise (just look at TSR). Everything is balanced out in my eyes. Could be because of more powerful PC's and better development kits. I love the increase in PC games! Now I have more uses for a PC!

[puggsoy]

I think things are going to stay generally the same, at least for the next 10-20 years. Consoles aren't dying, PC isn't dying, and while indie games are becoming more popular, commercial games aren't becoming any less popular (at least not significantly). While Steam Box does look like it'll bring something new and will probably make consoles and PCs redundant for some people, I doubt it'll do too much on the big scale.

Personally, I prefer PC gaming and indie games, but I wouldn't want consoles or commercial games to go away. Not only do I really enjoy plenty of these of these (Zelda, Mario, Team Fortress 2, Fallout, etc), but if they disappeared it would eliminate the charm of indie games. And with no consoles we wouldn't see all these new, intuitive control methods popping up (DS touch screen, Wii remotes, XBox Kinect, and whatever will come next), not to mention portable/handheld consoles are extremely handy during long trips/power cuts.

So what I'm basically saying is that, in the current state, I see the gaming market's bits and pieces all to be complementary to each other. Take one away and you'll effect another bit. It'd be like if you took away all genres except for FPS, even people who mostly play FPSs would be annoyed because they wouldn't have any other genres to compare to.

What I would like to see is games as a influential and appreciated medium, like books and films. In general games are seen as ways to pass the time with no real meaning or significance. While this is true in many cases, some games can actually be really meaningful and give the same messages as any other media (stuff like Braid or Frozen Synapse).
Here's Jonathan Blow's post about it, which is where I got the initial idea about it. I agree with most points there and I'd really like to see games recognised as serious things that can actually have a point. It really depends on how people continue to develop games, hopefully with indie developers becoming more popular, more of these sort of games will appear.

[Vipershark]

While my main issue is the industry becoming a corporate machine, switching to purely indie is not the way to go about it.

My issue is with DD, DLC, microtransactions, and corporations trying to nickle-and-dime the consumer so they can squeeze every last possible penny out of a franchise EVERYTHING.
If it isn't guaranteed to make them money, they don't want to make it.

This is why this whole generation has been mostly the same games rehashed with different skin, over and over and over.
Nobody is really taking the chance to make anything new or creative anymore.

Also mobile gaming. Fuck mobile gaming.

[Phaze]

As far as I can tell, the entire industry might be heading for a market crash of sorts. I'm not sure how many more mediocre high-budget games consumers are willing to accept.

Casuals will always invest in consoles and the enthusiasts will always turn to their sweet gaming rigs. The only thing that might end up dying in all of this are the mega-budgeted corp. games, indies are too small to really get struck by a crash the same way a massive entity that spent a lot of money on their titles and marketing will.

[Lemonray]

I'm not sure how many more mediocre high-budget games consumers are willing to accept.

Customers who will put up with average games are as common as zubats in a dark cave, and I think there are plenty of people like that left for the companies to squeeze money out of. Eventually I can see people collectively getting fed up of the mediocre titles being pushed out by so many different developers year after year, but it won't be for a while yet.

[Lilly]

puggsoy touches on a lot of good points. Everything's balancing out quite nicely, now that games are as easy to develop as ever, (Freedom Planet is the one killer Indie game for me, can't wait for that to be finished!) especially on the PC and now even Linux to some extent.

While my main issue is the industry becoming a corporate machine, switching to purely indie is not the way to go about it.

My issue is with DD, DLC, microtransactions, and cororations trying to nickle-and-dime the consumer so they can squeeze every last possible penny out of a franchise EVERYTHING.
If it isn't guaranteed to make them money, they don't want to make it.

This is why this whole generation has been mostly the same games rehashed with different skin, over and over and over.
Nobody is really taking the chance to make anything new or creative anymore.

Also mobile gaming. Fuck mobile gaming.

Totally agree there. Sadly most of mobile games are cheap cash-grabs, but not all of them are like that. What's truly criminal is that all the garbage is obscuring the actual gems, like Shantae Risky's Revenge, leading to weaker sells on mobile platforms than dedicated handhelds.

And yeah, that's the impression I'm getting from the big-budget productions. At least we have indie games to take the wheel and experiment, but it would be nice to see a huge game company with a bigger production value make a bet on new, interesting concepts from time to time.

[Rosencrantz]

While my main issue is the industry becoming a corporate machine, switching to purely indie is not the way to go about it.

My issue is with DD, DLC, microtransactions, and cororations trying to nickle-and-dime the consumer so they can squeeze every last possible penny out of a franchise EVERYTHING.
If it isn't guaranteed to make them money, they don't want to make it.

This is why this whole generation has been mostly the same games rehashed with different skin, over and over and over.
Nobody is really taking the chance to make anything new or creative anymore.

Also mobile gaming. Fuck mobile gaming.

Yeah, I'm basically agreeing with everything Viper's saying here. Video game development has become a really huge industry, and thus people are going to try to make things that sell rather than things that push boundaries and be overall extremely creative.

You know how everyone laughed at Kinect? You know how everyone is still laughing at Kinect? That's a legitimately interesting piece of hardware and its uses are still being explored by graduate college students working on their theses, since it can be used for insane things (like things involving medicine and shit). And no sane game company's going to further the technology in their games, because it's an extremely dangerous marketing decision (as most households don't own the Kinect, nor are many households willing to purchase one). A game company will be more willing to produce a FPS that appeases the competitive gaming crowd, since that's just easier publicity and easier money.

The sad part is I don't really venture out into vidya gaemin anymore as it is; I only play like five games total anymore and I haven't been following all of the newest trends (wasn't even aware that THQ was going out until I saw the article on Cracked about it finally closing down), so other than my overall disgust with the industry itself, I kind of stopped having a lumped opinion on the industry in general.

[Koopaul]

Nintendo is the freaking weird one out. They don't behave at all like the other companies, and that's why no one ever takes them seriously... and yet people complain about mainstream companies.

Let me ask you guys something. When discussing the game industry, did Nintendo ever cross your mind?

[Vipershark]

Not really, because nobody cares about Nintendo at this point. With little to no third party support, they've basically boxed themselves in. On top of that, Nintendo is terrible and has been ever since the death of the Gamecube. Try to argue that all you want, but first party (key words here: first party) Nintendo hasn't put out an actual "Nintendo-quality" game since the Gamecube. There have been some good second-party titles, but first party Nintendo has been severely lacking for years.

Nintendo isn't even on anyone's radar anymore until they either get people to actually make games (that people care about) for the Wii U or start making legitimate top quality games themselves.

Note that this isn't talking about the handhelds since they completely own the handheld market and there isn't even a dispute there. (But first party Nintendo still sucks (see NSMB2))

[Koopaul]

Wow... That is the dumbest piece of shit I've ever heard.

You have absolutely dumbfounded me Vipershark. Either you're living under a rock... or I don't know I can't even come up with a rational reason other than your an idiot. I could list games, but I already have in another topic. So you must live in a world where you are convinced none of those games exist or don't matter.

I'm sorry folk, I normally don't say insults unless they are necessary (you all know this) and this is that time.

[puggsoy]

Nintendo isn't even on anyone's radar anymore until they either get people to actually make games for the Wii U

Well I guess you haven't heard of Little Inferno then.

Made by 3 guys, released the same day as the Wii U. At one point it was at #2 in the eShop, above NSMBU.

[Koopaul]

He's talking about first party though. But it doesn't matter. The guy obviously never bothered to look into it and see what Nintendo has been making.

Don't worry guys I'm not mad at him. Just a little shocked and humored. As long as Nintendo continues to make games like Donkey Kong Country Returns or Galaxy 2, I have no reason to get mad at what anyone says.

[Vipershark]

Nintendo has completely lost any amount of soul and magic they once had. Gone are the days when Nintendo was the king, putting out cutting edge hardware (and most of all, software) that completely destroyed anything and everything on the market.
Gone are the days when Nintendo made games with passion and soul and games that were actually GOOD. This isn't nostalgia talking. Graphical/horsepower differences aside, almost every first party Nintendo game for the Gamecube (and previous!) completely STOMPS any sequel or counterpart on the Wii.

Don't believe me? Just look at a list of first party games on the Wii.
It should be glaringly obvious.

Why do -you- think nobody is thinking about Nintendo, Koopaul?
It's not like people have suddenly taken them off the radar for no reason.

[Davy Jones]

almost every first party Nintendo game for the Gamecube (and previous!) completely STOMPS any sequel or counterpart on the Wii.

Mario Sunshine -> Mario Galaxy 1 & 2
Twilight Princess -> Skyward Sword
Melee -> Brawl
Metroid Prime 1, 2, 3 -> Metroid Other M

nah, they're just as good. And the old SNES classics have a HEAVY nostalgia feeling, I think nobody who played these games in the childhood can say that they're not as good as the new games. But just ask a little kid who played the WiiU/3DS version of Mario and then SMW on SNES/WiiWare.

You would be surprised.