October 8th 2023.
Are we entering the last days of video games? It's a troubling thought that many gamers are asking as the industry seems to be in a state of flux. It's easy to forget that back in 1983, the US video games market suffered a crash so severe that shops refused to stock new games or consoles and most people wrote the whole concept off as a passing fad. It wasn't until the release of the NES a couple of years later that it recovered, ushering in a new era in which none of the previous industry giants remained relevant.
Today, video games are so entrenched in modern culture that it seems like something like that could never happen again, especially as the reason for the crash was over production of poor quality titles. However, market saturation and the cost of making and buying games are still an issue. Every generation it gets worse and now, as publishers increase their prices during the middle of a cost of living crisis, it seems like we're reaching a tipping point where something has got to give.
Recent reports on job cuts at several different games companies, even at the makers of Fortnite, and the apparent explanation of all the upheaval: that video game companies are no longer attracting the investment they used to, might be a sign that the industry is in trouble. If I was a venture capitalist with a few billion to spare the last thing I'd invest in is a video game that will take six or more years to make and has no guarantee of being a hit at the end of it.
Games take so long to make you can only get one or two full games out of one developer per generation. That means employing hundreds of people for half a decade or more, with no chance of making your money back unless it's either a mega hit or you fill it with microtransactions, NFTs, or some other scam. Even when you do, as Fortnite proves, that's no guarantee of long-term success.
This industry is clearly unsustainable with the way it currently works. Traditional games are too expensive and time-consuming to make, the bottom seem to be falling out of the free-to-play market, and subscriptions are already failing. Concepts that seemed like they might be publishers' next big money maker, like NFTs and live service games, have already been discredited and that really doesn't leave anything but indie gaming.
A world in which indie games are the only video games wouldn't be so bad, but it's not likely to happen. More and more publishers are going to go under or, more likely, get bought out by Microsoft and others just before they go under. It's possible that either Sony or Microsoft will leave the games industry, because they get outspent by the other, or become irrelevant – after all that's what happened last time with Atari and the others.
It's clear that something has to give. Video games just can't keep on getting more expensive forever. We're rapidly reaching the point where something is going to snap, and it's not something to be relished. Nintendo will survive, as well as indie games and mobile games. But games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take six or more years to make? No, they'll be gone, at least for several years or until technologies change.
[This article has been trending online recently and has been generated with AI. Your feed is customized.]
[Generative AI is experimental.]
