The Game Crash of 2013?

[RicoADF]

The machine had just 4k of memory. If you fed the Atari 2600 the raw text of this article, it would have run out of space in the middle of this paragraph. That's just text. And in that space you needed to fit your graphics, sounds, and machine code to run the game.

I believe that is not exactly correct because the games had their data on cartriges, which were like ROM and could hold more memory than that. My Vic-20 had 4k too, but plug in a cartridge and you could play much better games than what would fit on 4k.

Your getting storage and memory mixed up. A cartridge is like a DVD/Hard drive, it stores data for later usage. Ram, aka memory, is where data is located while a process is in action. Eg: To display this reply the quote and my reply is stored in the ram so the display can display the text. If it was a word document it would be saved on the HDD after closing. He's saying that it would run out of memory and thus not display/be able to load the whole paragraph of the raw text. Yet had to cram graphics, sound and text into the 4k to be shown on screen/heard as being played.

Hate to get into a nerd war over this one, but there is a difference between ROM and storage. Cartridges are ROM memory which are directly accessible by machine code, i.e. information on cartridges do not need to be loaded into RAM memory but can be directly accessed. So you would have the 4k internal RAM in additional to game resources on cartridge ROM.

So cartridges are basically like flash storage in a modern phone? Interesting.... (I've never touched a cartridge other than as a kid, far too obsolete/old to learn about)

 

[MartyGoldberg]

So cartridges are basically like flash storage in a modern phone? Interesting.... (I've never touched a cartridge other than as a kid, far too obsolete/old to learn about)

Other than being removable, no. The ROM in ROM memory means "Read Only Memory." What's there is there, and is not rewriteable - no different than a program distributed on CD or DVD. What was also being discussed was some manufacturers also added RAM onto a cartridge, but that was RAM to be used for the system itself and nothing to do with writable removable storage.

 

[RicoADF]

So cartridges are basically like flash storage in a modern phone? Interesting.... (I've never touched a cartridge other than as a kid, far too obsolete/old to learn about)

Other than being removable, no. The ROM in ROM memory means "Read Only Memory." What's there is there, and is not rewriteable - no different than a program distributed on CD or DVD. What was also being discussed was some manufacturers also added RAM onto a cartridge, but that was RAM to be used for the system itself and nothing to do with writable removable storage.

Thats what I first thought, sounds like the extra ability some had added has been mistaken as a standard feature. Interesting that they added that upgrade into the cartridges. I'm suprised there wasn't any ram upgrade module for PS3 or xbox as they were seriously lacking it.

 

[MartyGoldberg]

Thats what I first thought, sounds like the extra ability some had added has been mistaken as a standard feature. Interesting that they added that upgrade into the cartridges. I'm suprised there wasn't any ram upgrade module for PS3 or xbox as they were seriously lacking it.

Well on the 2600, the cartridge port is the expansion port. It's the only way to expand the hardware of that system. It doesn't have to be a game cartridge to expand the system's ability, just fit in to the cartridge port. For example, they were also at work (with a 3rd party that had been hired to design it) with something called the Graduate Computer expansion, that would plug in through the cartridge port and add more memory, a keyboard, and the ability to code in basic and save on tape. Spectravideo actually was able to release something similar though far more scaled down to the market:
http://oldcomputers.net/spectravideo-compumate.html

Next gen consoles from the 2600 like the Intellivision and then Colecovision dealt with hardware expansion of the system's capabilities by adding a separate expansion port (both the cartridge port and expansion port are really just connectors to plug into the system's bus anyways). The Atari 5200 also has an expansion port, but also uses the cartridge port for some peripherals as well - such as the 2600 adapter when it was finally released (and the adapter actually contains a full 2600, just using the 5200 for it's television output).

Separate expansion ports of course became standard on consoles for many years to come.

 

[Titanium Dragon]

I could be way off on this, but as far as I'm aware inflation is the decrease in value of currency, where as in 1983 $40 has the spending power of almost $100 today. How are they misusing it? I understand there are many more factors such as median income but it seems completely appropriate in the context.

Two issues here:

The first is that inflation is not necessarily what might be thought of as a constant across everything. Housing getting far more expensive when other things do not is inflation, but it leads to misleading comparisons, as you can still buy, say, the same number of loaves per bread per video game you could buy, but you can't buy the same number of loaves per bread per rent you pay. Inconsistent inflation across different markets thus is rather confusing. Honestly, an easy way of looking at this is video games - video games cost the same now as they did in the mid 1990s! Many games cost $50 in 1993, and many games STILL cost $50 in release in 2013, despite 20 years of inflation. That would suggest a 0% inflation rate for video games. Other things have also gotten cheaper - a decent computer, for instance, is far cheaper today than it was 10 years ago in absolute dollar terms. Thus, inflation is not actually a constant value across markets, and so just blindly applying a number is confusing, because it doesn't necessarily mean what it seems like it should mean.

The other problem lies in the fact that your disposable income affects how much money you can spend on entertainment. So if I used to have, say, $1000 a month in disposable income, and now I only have $800 a month in disposable income, the cost of anything I MAY spend money on has effectively inflated by 20%, because I can purchase 20% less of it, even if its price has remained constant. So if you look at the graph that mdev posted, someone who was making 54k in 2008 (adjusted) is making 50k in 2011 (adjusted). That person has lost 4k of annual income, effectively, which means his discretionary budget has shrunk by likely several thousand dollars.

So, basically, if I had $400/month of entertainment money in 1983, and $500/month of entertainment budget in 1993, assuming I'm buying a $40 video game in 1983 and a $50 video game in 1993, the difference in cost is 0, even though, ostensibly due to inflation, the $40 game "cost more" post inflation - because it takes up the same proportion of my discretionary budget, it effectively costs the same amount regardless of inflation.

I think we may see another video game crash. However, it would not be the video game crash of 1983 all over again. Still, it could be very, very bad. That being said, I think it may not be possible for it to happen in the same way; rather, I suspect we'll see a more gradual crash over a number of years as large companies flounder and the mobile games market has real problems. The predatory pricing of apps is a big problem, I think, for the mobile gaming industry, and I could easily see it ruining the industry down there on the bottom, which wouldn't be good for us on top.

Additionally, there is the AAA market which may be in danger to some extent. If they can't keep people buying games, what happens? That being said, I'm not sure such a crash is possible; if a few of the big guys died, I think the others would be able to survive it because they'd pick up the lost sales. AAA games DO require huge budgets, and thus large numbers of players.

I think games are too mainstream now to really fail in the way they did before. On the other hand, I could be wrong; honestly, I expect that the television industry is going to start having very major problems in the next few decades. Old people watch TV; I don't, and many people my age do not pay for television. What happens when the internet takes over television's role? At some point, high-budget programming is going to become increasingly untenable, unless it is supplemented by some sort of income from the internet, but internet needs and television needs are far from identical.

I wouldn't be surprised if the console industry crashed entirely, though. It has like, one more generation left in it at most, and maybe not even that. Computers are getting too inexpensive to compete with; the consoles worked on the idea that you had to pay a lot for a gaming PC, and it would still be obsolete in less time than the console. That simply isn't true anymore; a new computer in 2013 will probably last the entire lifespan of the next console generation, because it has higher specs than said consoles. The Wii U's sales are "encouraging" the competition, but I don't think that it is actually encouraging at all - some people have pointed out that if people aren't buying the Wii U in any real numbers, what makes people think that the other consoles are going to be any better off with higher price tags and less innovation?

Incidentally, regarding:

While the "indies" are making games like "Thomas Was Alone", "Braid", and "Bastion" that would hardly have stressed last generation's hardware, the AAA people seem convinced that what we really need is photo-realistic hair on our dogs.

The problem is, more or less, Braid and Thomas Was Alone are very art-house type games. They aren't actually good games. Bastion isn't actually that great of a GAME either; it is the story which sold it.

Also, regarding Kickstarter: Kickstarter is no savior. Kickstarter is actually one of those routes to failure. Kickstarter itself is going to have a bunch of high-profile failures in the near future, and people are going to get stingier with it.

Tl; dr; I think the industry may be heading for something bad happening to it, but it won't be as abrupt as the video game crash of the early 1980s, and it won't be the same. I could see the smart phone gaming market completely crater, though, and utterly wreck mobile gaming, and indeed that industry already seems well on the way for it. I could see the console industry cratering too.

But PC gaming? I think it is fairly safe due to the lack of need for proprietary hardware and the fact that you can set your budget to whatever is reasonable, while still having broad distribution. It might even benefit from the death of the console.