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Are we due for another gaming crash?

Fahdis

Fahdis

Member
Well, is it time with the prices and everything else going bonkers? Will consumers speak with their wallets or have times changed where things will sell out regardless?
 
I can't see another North American 1983 crash ever happening again. Didn't the market drop by 80% or something wild until Nintendo came along? Gaming is too big today.

However, maybe there will be another crash of sorts. Games are costing too much to develop these days and theres alot of the same ol' same ol' coming out. Imagine if people get tired of the AAA output or another recession happens. Suddenly, people aren't buying alot of games that cost 500 million to develop. That would effect the AAA output. A recession for games of sorts...
 
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Xbox already crashed.

As for the others. They'll certainly lose sales. One more than the other but i see neither Sony nor Nintendo outright crashing in the near future.
 
Sohurmk833 said:
Xbox already crashed.

As for the others. They'll certainly lose sales. One more than the other but i see neither Sony nor Nintendo outright crashing in the near future.
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Well the Xbox may have crashed these past few years, but Asha is looking to reboot it, so let's see...how does Project Helix fare..
 
Brother, we are living through it in real time.

Get used to the current graphical capability of hardware because it's gonna stagnate for about fifteen years.

Developers better learn to tone it down and optimize their shit. They also will need to learn how to make actual fun and innovative games again.
 
There certainly is a crash happening at the moment. We went from consoles becoming cheaper during the course of a generation to consoles becoming significantly more expensive than when they launched. The ongoing AIpocalypse is also runing the PC gamnig business by making essential components more valuable than gold and diamonds. At the same time we see an increasing number of (primarily western) development studios firing people or even closing entirely.

The industry is not in a healthy state at the moment at all.
 
RAIDEN1 said:
Well the Xbox may have crashed these past few years, but Asha is looking to reboot it, so let's see...how does Project Helix fare..
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I admire the Xbox Fans. They Never give up.

Hopefully xbox does come back stronger then ever but I cant really believe in it.
 
I´m not expecting a crash, but something drastic will definitely happen in the AAA realm. That whole business model is just unsustainable with development cost and time getting more and more out of hand.
It´s literally russian roulette by now.
Maybe AI will become a savior here but we`ll see.
 
Yes, but not in the way it was back in 1983. For better or worse the industry is too big and (still) too profitable to become near-extinct.

We're in the "survival of the fittest" stage. And those deemed fit are the ones who can actually cater to their respective audiences rather than their shareholders.

Good times.
 
Fahdis said:
Well, is it time with the prices and everything else going bonkers? Will consumers speak with their wallets or have times changed where things will sell out regardless?
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Its not even half as bad as in early/mid 90s if u compare midrange gaming pc price, simply value of the dollar is extremly low now so if u are US gamer or westerner overall u slowly "catching up" to what rest of the world usually paid for having gaming hobby.

Only actual scenario where gaming industry gonna crash, but we will have way more serious worries by that time- is if/when china finally invades taiwan/ww3 begins.
 
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Cumulus said:
I´m not expecting a crash, but something drastic will definitely happen in the AAA realm. That whole business model is just unsustainable with development cost and time getting more and more out of hand.
It´s literally russian roulette by now.
Maybe AI will become a savior here but we`ll see.
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I doubt it, but the AAA suits are collectively hoping it will. They just can't face they've made some very short-sighted decisions and the chickens are coming back to roost.

If western AAA had cared about the longevity of their business, and perhaps made more frugal choices, then they wouldn't have found themselves in the current predicament they're in.

For the record, I don't think we'll see a crash, but we might see a course correction, recalibration and contraction.
 
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If it doesn't actually crash, it will get a lot smaller or different and just end up being gaming mostly on phones, which i don't do or consider the same, they already priced games too high and sales plummeted, now it's hardware, it's not looking good.
 
plane crash GIF
Yes.
 
I'm no gaming economist, but as hardware rises you're just cutting more and more people out of the market. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy that, at the very least, the AAA side of development falls further out of whack without the consumer numbers needed to sustain it. Maybe we're moving towards a whale based market where people are fine with $1000+ consoles and $100 games, whatever that amounts to. But I'm personally looking at a gaming future where I'll mostly be digesting smaller scale AAs/Indies on whatever hardware won't cost me a kidney.
 
I actually hope so.

A reset is what this industry desperately needs. Get the bad actors, consultants, money launderers, activists, and trend chasers out and the industry will repair itself, but we need the bottom to drop out for that to happen.

Noone ever said cutting cancer out was a painless procedure, but it's necessary for survival.
 
So Much Bloat
So many non jobs
So many crap ideas
So many 'advisers'
So many in roles in an industry they despise
So much friction with customer's
So many arseholes as 'community' managers
So many games no one even wants
So much 'diversity' for the sake of 'diversity'

Is it any wonder if there is one?

Been gaming for 42 years and I wouldnt weep if there was

It needs a bloody good enema.
 
I hope these bloated $200+ million AAA single-player games crash and burn, so we can get back to shorter, more focused games that are cheaper to make and release more quickly. That way, we might finally see some real innovation again instead of studios constantly playing it safe.
 
West yes. Asia especially Japan, Korea, and China, no. Major culprit to fall of games from west is not just the price but turning games into leftist checklist for woke and dei.
 
I used to buy a new PC graphics card every generation. I have no intentions of upgrading my 4090 anytime soon, if ever. I may never upgrade my PC again and go strictly console in the future.

This timeline really blows.

Gaming has been my top hobby, BY FAR, for my entire life. It hurts to be a part of this.
 
MarV0 said:
For every AAA slop that fails 10 Indies succeed by providing gameplay innovations and new experiences.

This is not a crash more like a market shift towards consumer needs that were ignored for a while.
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Really?

List me 10 of these indie games released in the last year.
 
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If not a crash, something close to it.

Between the shuttering of all the studios and the insane pricing of development + computer hardware, it's feels like it isn't sustainable whatsoever.
 
Hopefully. I can't see any other way out of this current trend of activist Western Dev studios pushing their woke, blue hair, rainbow DEI agenda in every game these days.
 
The gaming woes are just part and partial of the worldwide issues across all industry. We're balls deep in the enshittification of everything by vulture capital. The entire world right now feels like a speed run of late stage capitalism.
 
kruis said:
There certainly is a crash happening at the moment. We went from consoles becoming cheaper during the course of a generation to consoles becoming significantly more expensive than when they launched. The ongoing AIpocalypse is also runing the PC gamnig business by making essential components more valuable than gold and diamonds. At the same time we see an increasing number of (primarily western) development studios firing people or even closing entirely.

The industry is not in a healthy state at the moment at all.
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Not to mention less consoles are being sold, period, even though the market is ostensibly bigger.

You can blame macroeconomics or Sonys incompetence but they should have sold 120M PS5s by now. But it's more like 95M. Xbox also doesn't exist, and Switch 2 is struggling. We don't know the sales of PC hardware but based on surveys it's not great, the 3060 is the most popular card and it's 5 years old and Nvidia started making it again.
 
I think the gaming industry will reinvent itself before crashing. Things like $200+ million budgets are unsustainable and studios located in the US are the ones hurting the most as the cost of living and salaries are considerably higher than other locations. That is why Chinese and Korean games are coming with everything for that piece of the market, and it'll only get more prominent.
 
Roman Empire said:
I think the gaming industry will reinvent itself before crashing. Things like $200+ million budgets are unsustainable and studios located in the US are the ones hurting the most as the cost of living and salaries are considerably higher than other locations. That is why Chinese and Korean games are coming with everything for that piece of the market, and it'll only get more prominent.
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That's because most American development studios insist on being located in liberal cities where the cost of living is astronomical. If I was Playstation, I would tell these studios to relocate or get fucked. If you can cut a game's budget by 50% just by relocating the studio, then do it. If they don't like it, let them leave and start their own studio.

The best decision Nintendo made the past ten years was putting an accountant in charge of the entire company. He runs a tight ship.
 
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CentralScrutinizer said:
That's because most American development studios insist on being located in liberal cities where the cost of living is astronomical. If I was Playstation, I would tell these studios to relocate or get fucked. If you can cut a game's budget by 50% just by relocating the studio, then do it. If they don't like it, let them leave and start their own studio.
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Many have been saying this but the people working in these places don't want to relocate. It is time for big studios to start subsidize their work to cheaper places (even cheaper countries) or move from the big metropolitan areas. Someone will need to give in here.
 
Absolutely no chance.

Will half billion dollars games disappear......maybe, but games are getting easier and easier to make, so in theory they shouldnt cost as much and thus dont need to sell anywhere near as much.
 
Unfortunately no.

Would be nice to see huge studios going down for their slop and crappy live services, leaving only indies and AA for a few years.

Clean it with fire!
 
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Roman Empire said:
Many have been saying this but the people working in these places don't want to relocate. It is time for big studios to start subsidize their work to cheaper places (even cheaper countries) or move from the big metropolitan areas. Someone will need to give in here.
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Then they can enjoy the unemployment line because their studio is unsustainable.
 
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