Video Game Industry Dying?

[mystieus]

E3 is usually the videogame industry's big party of the year — a chance to celebrate its strengths and showcase the titles it expects to drive sales forward for the rest of the year.

But as the game makers gather for this year's event, a cloud hangs over the soiree. Retail sales are down 27 percent compared to this time in 2011. Mobile devices are stealing the spotlight from traditional consoles. And naysayers are openly questioning the long-term viability of the console industry.
Given the hard numbers, that's understandable, but there are a few other factors to consider before making such a declaration.
The first is the age of today's game machines. Microsoft's Xbox 360 made its debut in 2005 — and Sony's PlayStation 3 bowed the next year. In an industry that has traditionally swapped in new hardware every five years, that's a big gap — and it's one that is starting to affect sales.
"We've had an abnormally long console cycle and I think people are ready for something new," says Eric Handler, senior equity analyst at MKM Partners.

Full Article: http://games.yahoo.c...-175530304.html

[matthewfarmery]

I think this is a problem with gaming as a whole, and the publisher's fault to start with, EA aren't a good publisher, they done a lot of things wrong over the years, their list of games aren't that good, too many sequels / reboots / DLC fiasco. EA are just mainly interested in doing countless FPS / TPS then anything else. I blame them for a lot of things

the real issue is, the publishers are loosing sales for a lot of reasons, lack of decent games, too many reboots, and sequels. looks at SWTOR, now that has gone partly F2P (up to level 15) and that will be in one of the patches coming out) but it has no end game content, which is why the game isn't doing very well, and in two months lost over 400,000 subscribers

yes there is also the threat from mobile devices, and a lot of games are starting to appear on those

but I don't think the end is nigh just yet, kickstarter is helping to bring forth many games that the big publishers have turned their backs on

Wasteland 2
Double Fine Adventures
a new space quest game
a zombie meets xcom type game (Dead State)
and a Xcom clone
a Elite style game, that looks good and I've backed and it got funded, Drifter,
a Tex Murphy game
Grim Dawn (the devs asked for funding to help speed up the development and allows the devs to add more content, its an ARPG
Torchlight 2 (not KS funded, but soon to be released either this month or the next)
and a medieval turn based, tactical game, Legends of Eisenwald

and many, many others

these are from independent studios, not publisher owned, so I think this is also an exciting time for game players,.
if console sales drop through the floor, when the next gen systems come out, then fine, but right now, there are still many games been made outside publisher control and influence, especially EA. I hope none of the above studios gets controlled by a publisher, otherwise it would indeed be the end of gaming as we know it