Opinion piece asking if the video game industry is dying

[SEGACOOL]

NO IT IS NOT DYING!!! JUST GOING THROUGH ANOTHER CYCLE.

1977-1987 - Coleco and Maganvox are gone. Atari is still selling 2600&7800 and INTV is selling Intellivision III. Nintendo, Sega and NEC are all selling systems.
1988-1998 - 3DO, Atari, INTV, NEC, Phillips and my favorite the Action Max are gone. Nintendo, Sega and Sony are selling systems.
1999-2009 - Sega is gone from the console business. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are all selling the next gen-consoles.
2010-2020 - The big three(MNS) are all selling systems. Atari Flashblacks, Coleco, Intellivision Plug&Play's are on store shelves. Maybe one of the three will stumble but the demand is still around.

Every Cycle there is a loss. Maybe this one Atari, Coleco and Intellivision will leave again. Who knows? Just enjoy gaming time while you can.

One day old age problems will catch up and you will wish you hadn't wasted your time fretting over something that is out of your control.

[Kollision]

I hope some of these companies burn and sink into a hellish ocean of fire and flames.
I mean it.

[TheSonicRetard]

-Higher Prices

Prices are lower today than they used to be.

[Drakon]

Uhm mobile devices steal the thunder from consoles....mobile device games are still video games...so the industry isn't dieing it's just transitioning. 27% transitioned. I mean these mobile device games capitalized on a new sort of market which is great. E3 booth babes can go find a job at hooters, the world shall have balance.

[sega16]

NO IT IS NOT DYING!!! JUST GOING THROUGH ANOTHER CYCLE.
1999-2009 - Sega is gone from the console business

There is conflicting information you say it is not dying but then you said that sega left the business,

[Breetai]

A bad (worldwide) economy, job loses, rehashes of the same games, full priced games which are very short in length, etc.., all play on the wallets of consumers.

Funny... while all true, none of these, that I remember, was touched on in the article. The guys here have a better handle on reality than paid writers.

[bultje112]

Keep this in mind for if this happens I'm the guy who said it.

2012
Q3: Much anticipated games are way below the expectations of people and they get pissed.
Q4: All of the main 3 console makers are hemorrhaging money at an unprecedented rate. In a gambit they release the specs and abilities of the new console generation. Wii U is released and it is not nearly as popular as the Wii was. While not great it is acceptable.

2013
Q1: Consoles still doing horrible. Games still suck with DLC policies garbage. Wii U is still riding the wave of the Wii, sales slow.
Q2: One of the new age consoles is released and due to lack of testing and shoddy materials it is a disaster. It is unreliable, and ridden with software issues. Performance over the previous generation is not impressive. While more powerful, it is not what people were hoping for. Wii U sales slow to a standstill.
Q3: Wii U and new console are failing horribly and generation 7 is still selling better than 8.
Q4: 3rd console enters the mix taking experience from the failings of the other 2. Initial sales in hopes that it will be better than everything else on the market. However the issues of DLC and software issues plague the system. Reliability is better than console 2 but it is still sensitive to external interference.

2014
Q1: Everything is doo doo. The initial happenings of a crash occur such as low hardware and game sales.
Q2: Crash in full swing and the big 3 begin to pull out. Keep in mind that the PC gaming market is nearly unaffected.
Q3: Games in remission
Q4: Games in remission.

Nothing would recover until a few years later and game consoles learn that more isn't necessarily better. Returning to basics becomes a more important issue and the 8th generation remains a blight on the history of games.

it's total nonsense. people say this with every gen. yeah the old days were better. a new vidoegame crisis blabla. it never happens. the industry is too big and too diverse to ever have a crash again. it's not an inflated bubble like it was in the us in 1983.

[bultje112]

I hope some of these companies burn and sink into a hellish ocean of fire and flames.
I mean it.

especially microsoft. although I admitt it's like choosing between aids and cancer in these generation console companies, but at least sony allows creativity in it's games and tries to be more on the forefront of new things.

[SEGACOOL]

There is conflicting information you say it is not dying but then you said that sega left the business,

I can understand that confusion. They make software for consoles.

But do they make those plug & play Sega controllers or just license the name out.

[sega16]

I can understand that confusion. They make software for consoles.

But do they make those plug & play Sega controllers or just license the name out.

Yes but we lost a great console maker they had some good systems like the genesis and the dreamcast. The dreamcast had better graphics that the ps2 but unfortunately they used a property gd-rom which had less memory instead of dvd so they lost to sony.

[Obviously]

There's a whole mess of things including a bad economy, an aging generation of consoles, and an uncertain industry that doesn't really know where to take the next generation. Despite these things gaming is still the largest entertainment industry, it's not going to die out.

It is really edging towards a major change though, and where it's going to go from here is anybody's guess.

[old man]

Sales always drop off as a generation of consoles gets older. The real problem is manufacturers finding ways to get people to buy new ones now that advances in graphics and capabilities are getting less noticeable from previous generations.

[sheath]

especially microsoft. although I admitt it's like choosing between aids and cancer in these generation console companies, but at least sony allows creativity in it's games and tries to be more on the forefront of new things.

This, uh, yeah, wow. Sony is the opposite of new things, period.

[bultje112]

strong argument