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Will the Second Video Game Market Depression/Crash Occur This Decade?

Is a video game market crash/depression coming before 2030?

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    107
CLW

CLW

Member
The video game market collapsed in 1983. Is another collapse/depression on the horizon in the 20s?

MS appears CERTAIN to be leaving the console space and with its complete ineptitude AI bot in charge may collapse even as a 3rd party

Sony is in GAAS HELL and seems to be riding the well we aren't Xbox to the bank

Nintendo is kind of doing whatever out there

PC parts are through the roof due to the AI bubble

I was alive but not fully aware during the first collapse but it feels like DARK days are ahead.
 
No It's no funeral we're attending, actually, just the beginning
Throw on your fancy attire, fears in the fire, don't lose hope
 
People have been predicting a crash every year for the last 10 years.

Games are more popular than ever before, so the software side isn't going to crash. We - realistically - only have 2 console manufacturers left and they're not directly competing. We'll have to wait and see what happens to the PC components market.

There's nothing happening that indicates the video game industry is going to collapse anytime soon.
 
No, you must be insane. For that to happen, people would have to stop playing games like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, League of Legends, PUBG, COD, DOTA 2, CS2, Genshin Impact, GTA Online, etc... for the fucking industry to crash.
 
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Microsoft is not, and never was, the be-all and end-all of gaming. Their failures don't matter in this context. They are in a shitty position because of their own incompetence, not because of market-related issues.

GAAS will either succeed or fail. Sony is still profiting, and I imagine if GAAS cuts into those profits they will shift. If they don't, they deserve to get smacked.

Nintendo is doing what Nintendo has always done.

Most PC gamers don't typically have the latest-and-greatest hardware anyway. That's the perks of PC gaming. You can play most games on a very wide spectrum of hardware.

All this is to say that we're fine.
 
Paradigm shift leading to armageddon. The prices across the board are going to alienate the traditional console audience and continue to raise, shrinking the aduience leaving the only the whales and the rich. The whole purpose of consoles from the beginning will be lost. They chase Gaas just as much has locking people into their ecosystem, it's where the profits are.

Most the audience who is aging, the young audience. Is extremely loyal to a game or games, and willing to spend on virtual items. The console doesn't matter if they can play it anywhere they want. It's their social group that matters. They usually aren't loyal to a box. Fortnite, Roblox, Mindcraft or whatever poison.

The traditional gamer who isn't addicted to a Gaas, is the loser here. Just look at companies like 2K and their sports titlles, how they continue to get worse and increase in prices and decrease in content. Gaming future is fucked.

Never mind the costs to keep up with chasing cutting edge visuals.
 
Loomy said:
People have been predicting a crash every year for the last 10 years.

Games are more popular than ever before, so the software side isn't going to crash. We - realistically - only have 2 console manufacturers left and they're not directly competing. We'll have to wait and see what happens to the PC components market.

There's nothing happening that indicates the video game industry is going to collapse anytime soon.
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I think the PS360 gen ruined a lot of people's perception on the gaming industry. THQ could have been EA had they made the moves EA did during the PS2 generation. Or Acclaim could have taken Ubisoft's spot.

These companies that are considered industry-leading titans today were simply in the right place at the right time with the right content. This is why I barely even mention them at all when people make wishlists in gaming showcase threads. The only thing I care about when it comes to them is the legal, non-emulated access to their older libraries.

Otherwise gaming as a whole will keep moving on without them whether they stay or leave tomorrow.
 
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Nah its not gonna crashing indie devs will pickup the slack left by aaa.

Ms still has tons of ip even if they all end up being mediocre will still sell millions. People who game on PC basically all run windows which at the heart is ms.

Sony at this point is playing with house money. They can try all they want with gaas. There is no threat to them.

Nintendo operates on a different lvl that cant be explained.

Pc will be fine despite the parts shortages and increasing prices. Games dont push hardware anymore. You can still play most games with a rig that's like 10 yrs old running on something like a 10 series gpu.
 
Definitely not, games interest are at a all time high right now with tons of amazing games coming later within this decade.

World of Worldcraft The Last Titan
Resident Evil 9 DLC
Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake
Resident Evil 0 Remake
Resident Evil 10
Final Fantasy VII Part 3
Stellar Blade 2
Tides of ANnihilation
Dawn of War 4
Total Wars Warhammer 40,000
Space Marine 3
Upcoming big Starcraft game
Whatever the new big Zelda game is
Grand Theft Auto VI
Witcher 4
Elder Scrolls VI
Fallout 5
Atomic Heart 2
Granblue Fantasy Relink Endless Ragnarok
Dead Island 3
Prototype 3
Half Life 3
System Shock 3
And who knows what other surprises there are.

In fact all these great upcoming games combined with all the backlogs that's already out. Gaming is easily at the best right now.
 
If Nintendo dropped their prices across the board, I'd honestly be completely satisfied with everything they do and stand for.

That said, given the overall landscape of the industry, I'm still perfectly willing to pay a premium. They're the only company that consistently seems focused on giving their target audience exactly what it wants, instead of chasing DEI or trying to force a live-service model onto everything.
 
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I can see segments of the industry crashing out but not the entire industry. I feel the AAA segment is going to be changed a lot as it isn't sustainable in its current form imo. I also feel we'll see less games possibly coming out (most of us wont even noticed). It getting ridiculous the amount of titles that are coming out now and the vast majority aren't pulling in the numbers they need. It will get worse before it gets better though. More games will come out for a little bit due to AI, it will also turn a lot of people off and when others see that doesn't work will see a larger drop in releases coming out. Lastly prices are getting nuts and not just from hardware shortages. I mean look how expensive first party controllers have become, MTX's reach prices of a brand new game for a skin. Things won't stay the way they are for too much longer. The dam is starting to leak and people are getting to the point that they are sick of it in a lot of cases.
 
No, but the AAA space is likely gonna have a 2008 like recession, and hardware sales will stagnate due to pricing.

A crash isn't possible though, because so many people already own hardware, overall revenue is still strong in the industry, asia is doing fine, and the AA to indie space is if anything doing better.

The industry is more than western AAA, console first-parties, and live-service...but I swear for many that is the entire industry to them.
 
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To be specific: I believe the Western AAA video game market will crash, yes, but the video game industry will survive just fine. We'll see a collapse in the Western publishers and console markets as they push their audiences to breaking point on cost and quality.
 
Ngl, I think that we are watching it happen in real time. A crash really entails a reshaping of the market rather than, idk, the end of video games, though.

Concord was unheard of 10 years ago. Microsoft self immolated. Sony are doing their best to shoot themselves in the foot. Nintendos earnings were under what they expected, and everyone is having a horrible time acquiring components for console production. Respected studios are getting shut down, less respected but old studios are getting shut down, bad studios are getting shut down.

That being said, the indies are better than ever and even if no new games ever get made again nobody will ever want for good stuff to play.
 
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video game developer crash is seems happened already
although video game market might never crash in this modern era.

in developer side, it's hard to find publisher now than ever,
not because the product, but everyone seems don't want to take even the smallest risk

it's all started with sony report in early 2024 i think
everyone panicked, and here we are
 
No. So long as your average idiot normie has access to their annual kickball/throwball simulators, COD, Fortnite, etc and other such MP garbage, then the industry is going to keep chugging along just fine at least financially.

If you mean the death of traditional games for actual gamers, then that's a more interesting question.

Personally, I've become almost completely divorced from Western studios outside of the indie and AA space. I'm glad that other countries like China and South Korea are filling the void that Western devs left open. Western studios are more interested in chasing the feminist lie that women play video games that are just stupid farming sims or match 3 tile games and even if they did, they think they want to play as some ugly freak.

They're also deadset on chasing the normie crowd which I also want no part of. Walking sims with barely any gameplay and dumbed down for them to easily digest alongside the copious cutscenes so normies will feel like they're watching a movie and not playing one of those "icky" video games. It's one of the reasons why most games have shit like beyond easy difficulty, where you just straight up skip bosses, can be invincible, and even Assassin's Creed: Shadows had "canon mode" where the game even chooses story options for the players. We've devolved to the point where even fucking STORY CHOICES is spoonfed to the player because so many morons are partaking in this hobby now.

If Japan can stop chasing that same "progressive" ideology that Western studios are and go back to making strictly Japanese games, then my entire AAA library will just be Asian games. I also want to see South Korea and China diversify their single player games beyond Soulslikes. If they can do that, then I don't see the point in wasting time or money supporting Western asshats churn out more ideological horseshit.
 
Sony and Xbox are low hanging fruit, so let me talk about Nintendo. You can get an Anbernic 34xx for around 55 dollars. Then spend about half an hour setting it up and BAM you have access to the entire GBA collection on that console original form faction. Better emulation than what Nintendo provides too.

FireRed and LeafGreen combo goes for 40 dollars. Yeah, a crash is fucking coming and I'm not usually a sooner.
 
Lionel Richie said:
Sony and Xbox are low hanging fruit, so let me talk about Nintendo. You can get an Anbernic 34xx for around 55 dollars. Then spend about half an hour setting it up and BAM you have access to the entire GBA collection on that console original form faction. Better emulation than what Nintendo provides too.

FireRed and LeafGreen combo goes for 40 dollars. Yeah, a crash is fucking coming and I'm not usually a sooner.
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Better get a former office mini pc with a 3400g for ~120 and you can play games up to Switch. Or a super cheap one with i5 7500t and you can play up to Gamecube.
 
Why would it? Gaming is growing pretty significantly everywhere but in the west, so if there is a crash it will be of the western gaming market and other markets will just pick up the slack. And, frankly, I'm not against the western market crashing and burning, because it's completely fubar and needs a reset.
 
One of my favorite publishers right now is Microprose, doubt they're going anywhere but up.

As for AAA space though, who knows what's going to happen. They're way too slow and safety obsessed and it's getting stale.

Also GTA VI is going to break eye watering records thanks to the above.
 
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I used to think that a crash meant the whole industry collapsing but actually it's more like a bunch of seperate mini-crashes because the industry is so vast now. However, if you liked a certain kind of game (let's point and click adventure games) then the chances are the crash has already happened and the only ones making these games are indie devs who only can only sort half capture the same experience.
 
It's a complicated picture right now.

We've had a minor crash of sorts, or a small bubble which popped that inflated up until around the COVID madness.

Rather than a crash, I think we're just in for an industry that is going to dramtically change over the next two decades.

Driven by things like:

1. A new generation of kids and young adults who have grown up playing mostly online games, AKA The Roblox/Fortnite generation
2. The old guard of developers from the 80s and 90s all retiring as we're seeing now
3. Next generation AI/AGI intergration into game development

Its very hard to predict how this wil all end up, but as a whole I'm pessimistic about gaming beyond the next 5 years or so and think the changes that will come from the first 2 forces above will bring about a new era that isn't for me.

But then if AI/AGI shit makes game development extremely cheap and easy then who knows how the landscape will look.
 
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Duchess said:
It will happen as soon as the fickle audience that the GASS trend is targetting move on to other worthless shit.
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I think if you strip away GaaS drones and their "games", then gaming might genuinely be contracting.

The safety obsession of that scene has bled to other spaces in gaming and the results have been bad.
 
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Not happening, and I'm tired of hearing about it. The industry is so unbelievably different than it was back then... not to mention that it was really just the US market that crashed and the rest of the world went on developing and playing games. We're seeing a reshuffling, of course, but that does not constitute a crash, nor will it escalate to one.
 
It will be mainly the US market. Devs who are making 150k+/month will have a hard time to justify their salaries when most their games flop.
China which has development costs of around 1/3 and a huge amount of money will overtake the US.
AI will enable solo devs and small studios to create games in a realistic timeframe.
At the same time AI will kill many entry jobs for established studios.

Tbh, I probably underestimate the effect AI will have. Seedance 2.0 showed already that you can prompt high quality scenes in a few min. Stuff that would have taken Hollywood millions to make. Gaming isn't that far yet but I'm sure it will happen as well. As a gamedev you can already let AI create assets, sprites, animations, music, voices etc. It's still not good enough to create you the game framework itself (at least something that isn't very basic) but it will get there. I could imagine people being able to create their own game with just prompts in 5 years. Probably earlier.
 
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Loomy said:
People have been predicting a crash every year for the last 10 years.

Games are more popular than ever before, so the software side isn't going to crash. We - realistically - only have 2 console manufacturers left and they're not directly competing. We'll have to wait and see what happens to the PC components market.

There's nothing happening that indicates the video game industry is going to collapse anytime soon.
Click to expand...
People don't even understand "the crash", because if they do, they didn't talk about because never existed for real. Just Atari that was dead, but japanese companies were full into the NES already, and Europe had games in the PC (those are kinda meh, but still)
 
A general crash, no. If one is truly dedicated to using the term you could say all the 10s( or is it 100s at this point, I've lost count) of thousands of layoffs and different studio closures has been kind of a 'crashing' of the old paradigm and the industry is pivoting.

I think people use the term crash thinking there's gonna be something akin to what happened in the early 80s and there's just no way. There's too much money now for the main stakeholders and investors to let it fail, but there's gonna be bumps along the way while its self-correcting from the traditional model that held up for decades.

And to be clear, as much as its easy to get into the meta conversations about the behind the scense politics and lament the loss of some of our favorite IPs growing up, between all the homogenized crap is still ALOT of good gaming to be found.
 
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