boag said:
Im not sure where you get this artificial change idea from, what I am making is pondering a scenario, where the market does push for the crash of the Industry either because of over saturation, or consumer dissatisfaction forcing them to abandon the market in droves. Both which are natural occurrences. You cannot artificially initiate a market crash.
Lastly your final statements about CEOs dipping into rainy day funds is incredibly flawed, whenever a CEO fucks up royally he doesnt shift to another CEO job, at least not in the same Industry.
Ah, looks like I misunderstood you then. You seemed to be so focused on the idea of the industry crashing and it being out specifically for 5-10 years that it made me feel like you wanted the big studios to just stop making games for that amount of time.
Perhaps I didnt make my initial statement clear enough, when I talk about the 5-years without AA titles, its because it usually takes around 5-10 years for a market to recover from a crash, depending on many factors
As we've both agreed, these "crashes" have to happen at a time the industry is ready and for the right reasons. However I don't really see a "crash" happening in the way you do. It's really impossible to compare the housing market crash to the games industry, as they are to completely different industries influenced by completely different market forces and under completely different circumstances.
I agree, they are both under entirely different circumstances, circumstances that make the housing market a lucrative investment even during a crash, the main difference and the most important thing you should take note of is that the Real State Industry will always recover, even with people actively sabotaging. The Videogame industry, under the same circumstances would have never recovered.
I think it's more apt to compare what's happening with the likes of Kodak and the transition to digital. The games market is slowly beginning to demand cheaper games which are more convenient to access with less of a presence of the gamemaker in their experience. In other words, cheaper games you don't have to waste hours trying to get at a store or unlock because of ridiculous access codes and DRM. Basically the types of services Steam has to offer.
You know how publishers have been making a big stink about used games lately? That is resistance to these new demands. Gamers are resorting more to used games because the industry isn't offering what they want. The publishers don't want to see the buying of used games as a change in the services they have to offer--just as Kodak wanted to see the digital revolution as a passing trend. Before that sink-or-swim moment, they resisted. They tried to tell the market its demands were wrong. But the customer is always right, and market always wins.
So sometime in the future these publishers are going to be faced with an option. As other publishers like Valve and Apple start coming out with more things like Steam and the app store, they will be forced to change in order to not be made totally obsolete.
Yes I agree, the similarities are far closer with the camera and film industry, since both are more ingrained in services provided than products, however I do not want to take a tangential conversation, on what was my off hand remark about a General Statement with which I completely disagree with. Saying that any industry is to big to fail, is a logical fallacy proven economics, but also by history.
And they won't just "stop" making games for 5-10 years, that's just kind of silly silly. AAA games will always be coming out from somebody. Who does it might change from time to time, but the industry is large and diverse enough now that it won't just "shut down" for a few years and only put out indie games. There are enough replacements lined up in the dugout to keep those AAA games coming out for a good while, even if the usual big-hitters bite the dust.
. That includes indie games.