Game market crashes after 2005?

General Discussions
#21

Well, the number of gamers doesn’t grow expotentially anymore… and China/India… that’s more like a new market they won’t be magically added to your audience. Culture and ofcorse language might be an unavoidable obstacle and most likely it’s out of range for your marketing anyways.

Just take eg football… in europe no one cares about it. The same is true for asia. Or take that “drive a train” game for PSX - it’s a japan only thingy.

Sure there are games wich are attractive for the whole world equally. Puzzle games or jump n runs for example, but alot of games aren’t.

#22

WTF ???

Ah! You mean “American” football! ;D

#23

no, he means American “football” :wink: 8)

Cas :slight_smile:

#24

Yes, I ment: American hand, foot’n’foul “ball” :stuck_out_tongue:

;D

#25

Not true,

I have hung out in all japanes and all-chinese game shops overseas, and they were ALL playing WCIII. In english. ALL of them. Every last one. This month it will be something different.

Teenage boys around the world, in all cultures want the same thing: Action/adventure/strategy games.

Also, every year, for the number of people that leave the game market, more people join it.

In addition, the article seemed to focus on console games. Whoopty-doo. He forgot a significant portion of the market: desktop workstations.

Blockbuster games will continue to be developed and will continue to make big bucks. Console or desktop.

If you are looking for new innovation, it is already there. Look for better AI, more realistic behavior, etc. The faster an average machine gets the more “real” the experience. Anyone on this forum NOT going to buy H2 when it comes out? Then you aren’t a gamer. Just a wannabe with a poor attitude.

And graphics hitting a plateau? Bull$#!t

Have you seen the recent starwars and LOTR movies? When your average desktop machine can crank the battle scene quality CG images realtime that you saw in the movies then you can try to tell me you hit a graphics plateau. And no, no game has movie image quality yet…even half life 2 is SIGNIFICANTLY less real looking than the current CG in the movies industry.

And no, the speed of the processors speed increase will never slow down. Twenty years from now someone will come out with a gigabyte sized bus, a terabyte of video memory, and all your game shops will be developing for it. New materials are discovered regularly, and the only reason that no one has built a gig sized bus is because we don’t have the programming capability…not because it is technologically impossible to physically make a gig sized bus.

Oh, by the way, “new innovation will cease, and we will have to shut down the US patent office in the late 1800’s”

Don’t recognize the reference? Go get an education.

What the guy who wrote the article doesn’t realize is that he is growing up. When one person gets tired of a hobby, it doesn’t mean that the hobby is lost. It means that that one person is lost to the hobby.

He needs to g oout and take up paintball, or build a sailboat, or perhaps get a degree, a job, and contribute to society.

He was funny though. I will give him that.

#26

quote
If you are looking for new innovation, it is already there. Look for better AI, more realistic behavior, etc. The faster an average machine gets the more “real” the experience. Anyone on this forum NOT going to buy H2 when it comes out?
[/quote]
I won’t buy H2, it doesn’t interest me (neither did Halflife). Neither does Doom3. As I said previously, the time I spend with gaming is already filled (3/4 of them with oldies).
Of course technically the ID games always have been impressive. However there are companies out there to make real games with their engines. Every few years I tend to play some of these.

#27

“All” huh? Well not me or any of my friends. No one.

And there aren’t any barriers? Yea, sure. A japanese dating sim will ofcorse sell aswell in the US or Europe. ::slight_smile:

However, I agree that the whole article is badly influenced by the fact that the author lost interest in playing games and I also agree that raw computing power will increase as usual for at least the next decade (as usual=Moore’s law). But the problem is creating the sheer amount of media you’ll need - that’s damn expensive… it already is and if you need 1000times more “stuff” it won’t get any cheaper. And… well I already wrote that stuff :wink:

#28

I apologize if I was being unclear. My fault.

I meant to say that I have seen the gaming market, at a glance, inthe asia/pacific area, and there are plenty of non-western teenage males that will buy the english version of whatever is hot this month and play it until they find the next game.

Basically, I was trying to say that a broad “Cultural barriers will prevent games from spreading to new markets” is a load of bunk. Cultural barriers will affect the spread of games to new markets some. But they will not prevent the spread…

Also, please let me retract the H2 comment. I was being a bit zealous. What I should have said was
that halflife 2 (not an id product) has a very impressive demo and there will be lots of FPS fans out there buying it up, throughout 2005.

Ok. Detractions and clarifications stated.

Apologies for the sore toes.

#29

Somehow I doubt that. Current manufacturing processes are getting near the limits of what they’re capable of. You can’t keep reducing the circuit size because you end up hitting weird physic-y limitations, and you can’t just increase the die size to compensate because then you send reliability (and thus prices) though the roof. We’re already seeing a slowing in the pace of new chips.

Don’t get me wrong, they’ll still be getting faster. I just expect that they’ll have to be at least one major change in direction in order to keep up with Moore’s law.

#30

Current manufacturing processes are getting near the limits
of what they’re capable of.

Actually we were getting near those limits several times. A new lithographic process solved it… or stretched silitium. There are already new ways to produce even smaller stuff (3 shrink steps ahead). By the time that will be reach that there will be new things ready for the mass market eg bio chips, single molecule transistors, nano tubes… whatsoever :slight_smile:

Also Moore’s law isn’t about the clock speed (wich doesnt says anything) :wink:

#31

Of course there are barriers. Many. Like you said: language and cultural differences and a lot more. Which is good.
The recent “Game programming gems” book(s) featured some articles about this sensible topic.

#32

The good news for us is that the crash ( if there is to be one :slight_smile: ) is down to lack of creativity which bodes well for people striving to create something new…

#33

Well thank /root for that. I might have a job when I graduate after all.

It’s a little scary getting a comp sci degree, hoping to move into game design, and worried that there might not be a games industry when I get there. Or worse and more accurate, that the market will be saturated with gamedevs and programmers.