2. Inflated AAA Market
The AAA gaming market seems to be heading towards a big shift. What was once a booming industry with enough for all, the AAA market has become very profitable for certain franchises but also poison to others making it near impossible to create a hit franchise that can compete with the FIFAs and the Call of Dutys of the world. Developers are sinking lots of money into development in the hope that they might be able to out Call of Duty Call of Duty. Publishers and developers are sinking many millions of pounds into development and many more millions on advertising that it is making it nigh impossible for games to turn a profit. Games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil 6 and Hitman Absolution have all been victims of inflated budgets where the title has sold millions of copies but still haven't met the lofty expectations of the publishers. This kind of market obviously isn't sustainable for long. From where I stand, it is beginning to look like the AAA market is headed for a bubble bursting moment where their autonomy over the market may fall apart. And smaller titles will inherit the earth. Consoles are built on triple A games and are not structured to support a focus on indie and smaller games. The indie market is abuzz with tons of complete and fantastic experiences that can easily rival their bigger brothers, and these games are cheap to develop, cheap to buy and are selling games in bucket loads. Look no further than Angry Birds or Minecraft. Both extremely good games that were developed for a fraction of the cost of a game like Medal of Honor: Warfighter. These smaller successes could well begin to take over the market while all indie games get a bigger share in the coming years. While consoles can certainly adapt, PC and tablet gaming could well take over from these inflated AAA games.