Technology site Digital Trends today kicked off season two of its show “Players Only with Scott Steinberg” with a look at the state of the industry in light of the economic recession and where the game industry is headed. Ultimately, the developers and analysts that Digital Trends interviewed believe that the industry is in desperate need of change. There's been continual talk about the traditional console business model being highly flawed or broken and it would appear that game developers agree. Lorne Lanning goes so far as to say that games at retail will be nearly dead in about five years.
We've transcribed several interesting quotes for your perusal below, and you can also view the entire video segment, which is less than 10 minutes long, at this page.
"Games are becoming increasingly more expensive. So the bets become bigger and you have to put out a lot more money to try to have quality. There's also so many more games nowadays... it's hard to standout. The retail model is fundamentally broken - it's very hard to get your game on the shelf, and when it is, how long does it stay there before people are on to the next thing?" - Pete Wanat, Executive Producer, Wanted: Weapons of Fate
“The big problem with the video game business is that video game companies grossly underestimated just how much money it was going to cost to produce next-generation games." - Chris Kohler, Wired
“Unfortunately, people are blaming the game industry for the failure of some of these publishers, and it's not the industry at all. It does have an impact on development budgets, but the guys who know what they're doing – Ubisoft, probably Activision – who haven't chased different kinds of businesses seem to be doing pretty well,” said analyst Michael Pachter, adding, “The current developer-publisher model is flawed from the developer's perspective because the developer creates almost all the value, but the publisher captures almost all of that value. Look at Guitar Hero 3 – a billion dollars from one game! Who got the billion dollars? Not the Neversoft guys. Not the RedOctane guys. Not the Harmonix guys.”
“Advances against royalties – that model is absolutely a model that has seen its day, and it's time for reform. A model that says 'Hey when the money is paid back from wherever the money came from, then money is shared' is a model that's starting to emerge, and ultimately I think will be the model that succeeds.” - Chris Taylor, Founder of Gas Powered Games
“The types of companies that are going to have the success in the years to come are not necessarily going to be the big goliaths. We look at it historically and say, 'It'll be Intel, or it'll be Microsoft,' but I think that's changing. The more we look at companies that marginalize themselves into profit zones only, where the mantra is 'Profit, profit, profit,' they're going to lose to the more innovative smaller operations that are forcing themselves to have to be more efficient, more clever, to have to engage the audience more deeply,” said Lorne Lanning of Oddworld Inhabitants, adding, “My prediction when we look at the future of games at retail is we don't see it. All the cost that goes into those retail games is not necessarily adding up to a better experience, and so it's going to be very hard for retailers to keep on encouraging people to build such big games to be sold at the shelf to cover all those extra costs that the gamer doesn't care about at all. In five years, it'll be like trying to find vinyl in music.”
4 Comments
August 10, 2009
Do you actually own a ps3? If so, has your wife actually tried it?
Is PSP GO a rip off?
What do you expect to be announced at Gamescom? Or at least the biggest announcement you expect?
On another site you and your 3 amigos always have something negative to say regarding Playstation 3. Why so glum chum?
August 10, 2009
Do you like Fishsticks?
August 10, 2009
lol what a duff. I posted these questions on the wrong page.
August 11, 2009
The problem with not having physical media is how do you keep a system's great games available? Who decides when players no longer want a game? Who gets to flip the switch and makes that game go off into the ether?
The ability to play a game on the console it was designed for could disappear. While emulators are nice, they do not replace playing a game with the controller it was meant to be played with.