Why do I have a feeling we are going to have another video games crash soon.

Doesn't most of their income come from MTX and mobile now anyway and not the actual game sales, if it mean't better games being made, then a crash wouldn't bother me personally.
 
Probably a "crash" of the traditional games market that we all know and love.

In actuality, it'll probably be more like a "revolution" in the sense that games like Fortnite are still making more money than God and F2P mobile games are where the market has been moving for a while now.
 
I have zero concerns about the video game industry.

If companies try to raise prices, that'll be a great market opportunity for other companies to seize sales with lower prices. If AAA devs refuse to take risks and just release weak rehashes, other smaller-budget, AA, or indie games will step into the breach (see Expedition 33). If the industry crashes and shrinks to the size of the PS2 days...I'll be sad for talented employees, but the PS2 days were great from a consumer perspective. We'll still have far more great games than we can play.
 
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Disagree. We have seen that if anything, people flock to gaming as an escape in hard times. I think we will see a slowdown in the output of AAA games due to rising costs and companies being risk averse, but the industry will continue to produce, and it's easier than ever for indie devs to ship a game.
 
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OverHeat said:
Game or costing more and more. Less risk are taken for original content. hardware price increases. Your thought GAF?
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If you're referring to the OG crash of the early 80s, it was due to shovelware.

Now, do we have shovelware these days? We absolutely do. Often in the official digital stores (which, yes, should be curated more carefully, this very much includes the Nintendo eShop). But OTOH, bigger, and at least in theory better, games keep getting released. They sell in the millions. As do some of the indies. That doesn't seem like a crash to me.
 
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GHG said:
Maybe for the western AAA and "AAAA' market.
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This. It's too late and gaming is too large and too worldwide of an industry for a full scale crash.

Maybe if the old western pillars take a backstep, people here will finally venture outside of this odd bubble they've put themselves in, instead of constantly thinking a crash is on the way.

The only thing that might crash is your old favorite AAA franchise that was milked to death anyway.
 
Sorta kinda. We are witnessing the alternative to crash in real-time.

Ubisoft completely tanks and from the ashes of their old devs comes 33. Oh wait, they didn't close down, they got bailed out by infinite money Tencent.

Microsoft just bought out everyone with infinite money and will continue pumping Gamepass titles instead of "crashing".

Maybe it can get "worse", but you'll never see Atari level gaming death ever again.
 
Crash in Western AAA for sure.

Mobile, AA, Indie, and Non-western AAA are doing fine. Indies and AA are in something of a Renaissance.

But Western AAA can crash and burn for all I care. Hopefully do better on the next go around.
 
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GHG said:
Maybe for the western AAA and "AAAA' market.

And to that I say good riddance.
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my man denzel GIF


I've been saying that here for years as well. The industry (the big publishers/developers) need to be gutted and start fresh. The mismanagement and not knowing how/where funds are being misused is fucking gross.
 
No offence but people who think video game industry crash in order to "reset" are same idiots who thinks nuking the world will solve entire problem.

That's not how reality works.
 
What we are definitely having is a franchise crash- "big" games aren't allowed to fail these days, case in point: Alone in the Dark, (the grand-daddy of the Resident Evil genre), Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy, Deus Ex, Metal Gear solid...(Konami going via the remake route to revive it..) Dead Space.....these days games have to be patched out to be what they should have been from the get-go...(Cyberpunk, Star Wars Outlaws..) Halo flopped badly, who knows what the next iteration will be like.....Mass effect as mentioned earlier, after the debacle of Andromeda, now it's taking near enough quarter of a century just to get another instalment, and if that flops it could mean the end of that franchise too..
 
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Crash?.... no

But things will have to change drastically (and we are seeing as much with studios closing and mass layoffs, the industry is just bloated in every aspect of development).

people are gonna give up on waiting 15 years for some overbudget bloated hot mess GAAS game that is filled with activism and 0 ideas.
 
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Games as a whole, no. "AAA" and big budget games? Very likely. I feel like they're learning that they have to make changes pretty quickly.
 
Imho, the "crash" this time around is the massive consolidation that has been going on. It's crazy that both Ubisoft and EA haven't been bought yet.
 
People have been predicting a video game crash 'soon' on this forum for years now.

The global economy is covered in shit and laying in the gutter while governments all over the world spray perfume over it. Everything is going to have a 'adjustment', not just video games.

Most industries will pivot just fine. Entertainment is one of them. You think billion dollar companies are going to (A) ride the car off the cliff or (B) make a change and ride out the storm until they can go back to ripping us off?
 
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People switch 1000 dollar iphones every few months now. They upgrade their GPUs from 4080 to 5080 ffs. Why would it crash? They're pouring all their hard earned money into tech.
 
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Not an industry-wide crash, but the Triple-A market. If GTA VI underperforms, the fallout would send shockwaves throughout the entire AAA market, potentially leading to a crash.
 
GHG said:
Maybe for the western AAA and "AAAA' market.

And to that I say good riddance.
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Industry needs a good crash to help them get over themselves a bit, I think. Seeing games like Clair Obscur do so well is refreshing. Turns out we really don't need to bow to corporations.
 
People have been saying this for at least 20 years, and here we are

Laptop1991 said:
Doesn't most of their income come from MTX and mobile now anyway and not the actual game sales, if it mean't better games being made, then a crash wouldn't bother me personally.
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Most of whose income? The gaming industry's?
 
GHG said:
Maybe for the western AAA and "AAAA' market.

And to that I say good riddance.
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The indie scene has its' own share of problems too, but it's more around discovery due to the amount of competition and blatant knock-offs that can be turned around quickly.

Topher said:
Industry needs a good crash to help them get over themselves a bit, I think. Seeing games like Clair Obscur do so well is refreshing. Turns out we really don't need to bow to corporations.
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Something tells me that no lessons will be learned from it and larger studios will continue down the path of increasing budgets and ballooning team sizes that don't lend themselves well to an authorial voice, creating games "for everyone" when in reality they serve no one and have the knock on effect of failure being catastrophic.
 
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While I am not actively hoping or rooting for a crash, but we are long overdue for a reset. So if there is a crash, I wouldn't be surprised or shock, nor would I be sad. It will be well deserved.
 
That depends entirely what a person means when they say "crash". We would have to define some specifics.

Personal opinion: No. In order to have a crash, we'd have to see Nintendo and Sony almost give up on their hardware platforms due to dire sales situations. Microsoft may be in a bad spot, but I don't know anyone who thinks the PS5 is about to drop to Xbox Series level of sales, or that we won't have a PS6. Nintendo may not sell as many Switch 2 units as the Switch due to the economy, but I haven't seen anyone predicting a repeat of the Wii U. On the other side of the industry, PC game sales have remained strong. The big popular games like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft are still big and popular.

I won't be surprised if we see major shrinkage at other third party publishers though. We all know Ubisoft has been on the rocks, but EA doesn't seem to be doing well. From the numbers I've seen it looks like Activision/Blizzard is just treading water? WB is not doing so hot obviously. Take Two seems seriously overleveraged on GTA6. I know everyone is just assuming that game will do GTA5 metrics, but what if it doesn't? What if it's not as good, and isn't as big of a sales hit? Because that series has been so huge for them, having an entry not hit as hard seems like it could have catastrophic financial consequences.
 
There's never going to be a "crash" like before.
The original crash was about the market questioning the viability of videogames as a product that would be profitable over time, or if it was just a passing fad like other toys.
The gaming market right now makes insane amounts of money, the only thing that has changed is which types of games are making the most money.

Even if you look at traditional gaming though, I don't get the doom and gloom:
-Dynasty Warriors Origins sold over 1 million in a month, became the most played game in the franchise on steam and helped make 2024 (fiscal year) one of their most profitable ones
-Atomfall, while they haven't disclosed sales, was apparently "immediately profitable" upon launch.
-Kingdom Come 2 was a hit and profitable after only a couple of days
-Monster Hunter wilds was a hit and the fastest selling game in Capcom's History
-Expedition 33 was a hit and went way past the sales expectations of the devs/publishers
-Split fiction was a hit and sold over 4 million copies since launch

The only games "crashing" seem to be these AAA productions that feel stale and soulless, need to sell like 5+ million copies at launch to be profitable, and offer nothing compelling beyond nice graphics. Personally I couldn't care less if those go away.
 
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Laptop1991 said:
yeah, the gaming industry
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Yes and no. If you look at games as a whole, the bulk of their income does come from mobile and gacha, but the companies developing for Xbox/PS/Nintendo/PC are not the companies that develop for mobile (usually, there are obviously more and more exceptions); in other words success on console doesnt mean anything for success on mobile and vice versa

So numbers alone dont tell the story as much as you might think
 
Define crash. The last time a crash happened in '83, the industry shrunk by an astonishing 97%. We might end up seeing a slight retraction in the short term, but that can be caused as much by general global financial troubles.

I would not define AAA reigning in their costs/scope (which let's be honest has gotten out of control) to align with their sales numbers, or publishers being generally more financial responsible, as a crash.
 
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LakeOf9 said:
Yes and no. If you look at games as a whole, the bulk of their income does come from mobile and gacha, but the companies developing for Xbox/PS/Nintendo/PC are not the companies that develop for mobile (usually, there are obviously more and more exceptions); in other words success on console doesnt mean anything for success on mobile and vice versa

So numbers alone dont tell the story as much as you might think
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It's been reported for quite a while now, MTX and Mobile games take a lot less to create and generate a lot more profit than full games, it;s not yes and no, it's yes
 
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The previous 1983 North American "crash" happened because a bunch suits thought video gaming and arcades was a passing fad to be replaced by the next big thing, that's how the trend cycle was understood back then. Imaging consumers wanted better & more capable hardware was an alien concept.
Today everyone understands the actual value of the industry and it's never going away, so there's no chance in hell there will be a crash.

What we'll see is maybe a few bigger actors disappear because of boneheaded business decisions. A shakeup here and there, but that's just evolution in action.
 
Videogames are there to stay. We won't see another '80 crash. But who or what will create them ? People or AI?
 
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Danjin44 said:
I believe same type of idiots, so much removed from reality.
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If we are saying those who want a "reset" of the industry want the industry to be totally annihilated then I agree with you. I expect a lot of folks who say that are not wanting something that extreme though. Hope not, anyway.
 
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