10 Reasons The Video Game Industry Is Heading For Another Crash
1. It’s All The Consumer's Fault
Yes, it’s gamers and consumers that have allowed this situation to develop.
Every year Call of Duty and FIFA outsell everything else, because people buy them regardless, giving license to developers not to innovate. But here's the thing: CoD sales have dropped the last two years. A blip, or a sign of things to come? And some games get piles of pre-orders no matter what, meaning publishers can afford to push release on buggy titles and fix them later.
The high sales of certain titles leads companies to believe that a similar game will do well, so trying to push something completely new out the gate gets knocked back as everything is bet on 'what works' - an ethos consumers are more than happy to prove right.
It's a vicious cycle, as the success of Call of Duty leads to 101 military-themed games like Red Faction and Homefront; games that later cost THQ their existence. And when they don't sell, the surviving teams go back to releasing the same stuff all over again, risky game budgets and market research reinforcing the lack of necessity for forward momentum.
It feels like gamers are getting increasingly fed up, and one day there'll be enough of us who simply stop buying whatever buggy and unoriginal offerings the industry puts out - but maybe that's the only way they'll listen.
How do you feel about the game industry's treatment of its fans right now? Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments below!