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

Topher said:
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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That's exactly what I'm saying, those people who think world works like video game and by crashing/nuking will "reset" everything….they straight up fucking idiots.
 
How can we have a crash when these companies are making more money than ever before?

The only thing crashing are the games themselves...but for the industry to actually crash it would need something stock-related or revenue / profit related to go down...

The problem is this: Most games being played aren't new...most new games can flop right now and still the industry would be fine because GTA, Fortnite, Fifa, etc are out there having content.

I also think that AI will end up decreasing development times. Will games be better? Probably not...but it won't lead to a crash.
 
Laptop1991 said:
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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I am explaining that while that is true, there is context to the numbers, the context being that, a company making a few billion dollars off of mobile games and MTX is not going to change anything for Rockstar, or Capcom, or Sega, or Nintendo, or any of the other console companies, any more than Netflix and Disney+ making billions of dollars might, or any more than theme parks having YoY growth might; they are competing for the same market, but they have completely distinct and non overlapping spheres of operation. For now, console/PC developers and companies are concerned with how to increase their total addressable market and revenue in the sphere they do operate in. We have seen multiple forms of this, from the push towards multiplatform releases, to further ways of monetizing the existing market (via price bumps for games, hardware, and services), to even attempts to increase the base of the console/PC market, via initiatives like Game Pass or Series S. But presently, at least, there is very little cross pollination between the two streams.

A time may come in the eventual future where dedicated discrete gaming experiences are making so little money relative to investment, that it makes more sense to abandon them and go for the mobile/MTX market. For that to happen, you'd have to an at least Xbox level collapse and implosion for PlayStation and Steam and Nintendo. Until that happens, the console market is stagnant, but still extremely monetizable and profitable for the players operating within it. The money being made in non overlapping streams isn't particularly relevant.
 
We're never going to get a crash like the 80s, because there is still plenty of good content being made, and people can make indie stuff with digital distribution.

What we will likely see is the Western AAA space contracting like it did in the late 2000s, and hopefully will reform itself in some capacity that can still produce some good games for the core audience.

Some of these AA games are using budgets AAA used to in the 2000s. 100+ million productions are gonna get rarer.
 
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Diminishing returns, longer development cycles, budgets through the roof, cost to customers increasing.
Meanwhile Kojima Productions says
the leap from PS4 to PS5 is not as huge as some might expect, especially when compared to past console upgrades. the biggest change was likely in efficiency. The PS5's hardware allows developers to achieve their goals more easily and in less time compared to the PS4
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The truth is, It's desperately needed.

-Almost no creativity in videogames anymore. Cost are so high that everything is cookie cutter
-Quality overall is in the shitter: Buggy messes
-Games just are not fun anymore: Many modern games feel like a chore to play
-GaaS: Every publisher wants a pice of that GaaS money and every flop represents another quality game the developers could of been working on
-Development Times are too long: It's crazy it's 5+ years between games. I remember getting whole trilogies on one generation.
 
Well if a crash could mean the end of boring mainstream licenses like CoD, GTA, Fortnite, Fifa/Madden, Assassin's Creed (and let's not forget that infinite diarhea of aweful free 2 play shit on mobile) I wouldn't really care. The problem is that if a crash happened, it would be double A studios that would pay the price and probably Microsoft getting even bigger by "saving" them by buying them.

So in the end, I'd really like for that not to happen.
 
LakeOf9 said:
I am explaining that while that is true, there is context to the numbers, the context being that, a company making a few billion dollars off of mobile games and MTX is not going to change anything for Rockstar, or Capcom, or Sega, or Nintendo, or any of the other console companies, any more than Netflix and Disney+ making billions of dollars might, or any more than theme parks having YoY growth might; they are competing for the same market, but they have completely distinct and non overlapping spheres of operation. For now, console/PC developers and companies are concerned with how to increase their total addressable market and revenue in the sphere they do operate in. We have seen multiple forms of this, from the push towards multiplatform releases, to further ways of monetizing the existing market (via price bumps for games, hardware, and services), to even attempts to increase the base of the console/PC market, via initiatives like Game Pass or Series S. But presently, at least, there is very little cross pollination between the two streams.

A time may come in the eventual future where dedicated discrete gaming experiences are making so little money relative to investment, that it makes more sense to abandon them and go for the mobile/MTX market. For that to happen, you'd have to an at least Xbox level collapse and implosion for PlayStation and Steam and Nintendo. Until that happens, the console market is stagnant, but still extremely monetizable and profitable for the players operating within it. The money being made in non overlapping streams isn't particularly relevant.
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Yeah it's true, like i said and while GTA is one of the few exception's you mention, i'll bet you Rockstar will make far more money from GTA 6 online than they will from just game sales and they will sell a lot of copies, just like GTA V did and yeah it might change in the future, i hope it does as i don't play Mobile games or buy MTX's, but as of right now that's where most of the profit is, so my point still stands.
 
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Maybe. I think the huge push to make ai games will be what decides it. If the forget a human element to tailor it, it's could be a bad time.
 
yes, having the biggest playerbase ever and companies putting out record years after another surely seems to be crashing any moment now guys!

gaming is so bad! look at Ubisoft!
wait, thats like, 0.1% of the market. Who cares.
There are a SHITLOAD of great games and they sell very well.
If you think the market has a problem ur spinning ur own AAA slave carousel.
Get out of it.
 
I have a feeling some AAA studios and publishers are in for a very rude awakening. Some can still manage to turn things around if they realize this in time. My 2 cents.
 
We're witnessing some of this already with all the layoff announcements in the past two years.

There's a million games in existence that are free to play, given away for free, constantly on sale, or pirated.

New games very rarely provide a truly new experience and it's been diminishing returns in the graphics department for 20 years.

It's not easy these days to convince someone why they need to play the new Assassins Creed.
 
Did Market had to crash to stop games like Guitar Hero ? No, people moved on, so did the companies.

They will adapt, see market trends, and maybe stop selling 80$ games.
 
Going is way too big now to have another crash that threatens to end the medium altogether.

That would be like for movies or books to have a crash and be in danger of going extinct. It will never happen in the foreseeable future.
 
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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Its its low quality woke western AAA games, we-players wouldnt notice if 90% of them flopped, thats how bad many of them are, most of hardcore players got tens if not hundreds of high quality games in their backlogs, even if we got 0 new games for whole generation we would be just fine here ;)
AA games that are budgeted properly are doing just fine, so the so called "video games crash" is just healthy gaming industry getting rid of cancerous cells- thats is a good thing.
 
Crash of AAAA is most welcome. We're seeing smaller studios pull off "close enough" to AAA games. Making more room for them would be great and not much of value lost. At least imo. Really what are we talking about here? Assasin's creed? Dragon age? A real casualty is doom, and there are going to be some of those.

I have to say the much maligned UE5 may have some hand in bringing them up. There are AA games getting huge graphical uplifts. The graphical fine tuning that was more a matter of manpower last gen really is getting automated, even if at the cost of framerates. I tried the gothic remake last night and it really has no business looking as good as it does. Avowed, robocop, ninja gaiden, E33, gothic, oblivion - they all have good shadow and lighting all over the place with environments mostly looking nice and cohesive.
 
Not a crash but the traditional games market as well as service games will probably become more difficult to finance. A big adaptation is underway.

Trying to get people off older service games is a problem, you can spend so much and nothing lands time after time, there's been many big losses already. With traditional style games, that player base could shrink a lot as it won't not be replaced as much like previous generations once did. There's a big issue not only in diverging tastes but marketing to various groups as well as known rising cost and longer dev times. Games or ideas becoming old hat during seven years of dev time. I'll always remember Uncharted 2 taking 18 months to make or just the creativity and new ip for the 360/PS3 gen and kissing goodbye to PS2 era very quickly, like Assassins Creed, a very exciting new ip.

I think AI will bridge the gap one day and they'll be too many games
 
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I'm more afraid of a hardware crash than a gaming industry collapse

Games will keep evolving, but the physical tech behind it is build on finite resources. Rare earths, lithium, copper, all getting harder and more expensive to mine

It's probably decades away, but the signs are there
 
I think we are in a transition period when development cost is too high, but new tools (specifically AI) will soon get game development back on a healthy track.
 
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I don't think the industry will crash, but western AAA is definitely as washed up as hollywood right now. Seeing studios ruin IP like Mortal Kombat is ridiculous.
 
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You are worried about the cost of games?
You spent more on gpu than you will spend on games in 5 years lol.

Anyway. If the crash is coming, we got stuff to play for years
 
Like others have said, a crash isn't going to happen. And while the industry is ever changing, I do think shifts could accelerate due to costs booming in both hardware and software as well as missteps from the big players (Ubisoft, Sony's failed GaaS initiative, etc.).
 
No, I don't think so. I'm not an economist, but I don't see anything specific about videogames that might predict an imminent crash. You mentioned rising prices, but of course that is happening in nearly every area of life.

I see worrisome signs in the general economy and housing market, and if there is a big crash there, it will depress the videogame industry, too, but that won't be specific to videogames; it will affect everything. Short of that, I see videogame companies continuing to plug away. Some companies will fail, but others will adapt and thrive.
 
Gaming is too mainstream to crash like it did in the 80's (or whenever) IMO.

But we have been witnessing games and devs crash due to a canyon size disconnect between devs / pubs and the actual audience for their games. To an extent I'd say that counts as a soft crash.
 
a full crash? No, gaming is too big an industry to fail now. A stagnation or deflation of the market size though? Possible, but it would rebound pretty fast. What we badly need is a resurgence of the AA market that lets devs experiment at smaller budgets, smaller team sizes and lower break even numbers. I think we're on the cusp of that happening with AAA games now taking a full generation+ to build, and smaller games like Split Fiction being giant financial hits without insane budgets or team sizes.

Its just a natural market correction that happens in every industry, its naturally weeds out the fat and overstaffed areas of the industry. Its badly needed right now when you look at the state of AAA games taking 5000 people to make them and 300million dollar budgets.
 
I feel like there's too much money in the gaming industry now for the main players to allow a crash, but there needs to be some correction. Gaming budgets have scaled to the point where the AAA side has become homogenized and eating itself. IMO we need to return to the days where games had a better cadence of releases. The 7th gen, notably, gave birth to many popular IPs which saw complete trilogies released over 5-7 years. That may mean scaling projects back a bit but its obvious that costs have gotten out of control, and increasingly passing the buck to the consumer so that the line keeps going up makes gaming more exclusive than inclusive, which ultimately becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as growth is stifled, so the only recourse left is gouging the hell out of the remaining userbase. Gaming has some price elasticity but there seems to be some hubris amongst the stakeholders that we will just continue to absorb higher prices when more important things( like oh I don't know, rent and groceries) are dwindling away discretionary income, and when that happens people will seek the best bang for buck entertainment. The gaming industry needs to be careful not to price itself out of that equation.
 
Sony is making record profits
Nintendo is about to launch a new console with record pre-sales

GAF: "Why do I have a feeling we are going to have another video games crash soon"
 
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't mind a gaming crash. Tired of all of the blatant greed, lack of innovation and companies trying to take advantage of consumers.
 
Don't worry Apple is starting to buy game developers and are planning to put a dedicated gaming app In iOS 19

😂
 
If it comes to the point where all the major players of the video game industry crashed and burned simultaneously. Well, I'd say we'd have bigger things to worry about.
 
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