I Don't understand People saying we are headed towards another Video game Crash.

[jman1954goat]

People have been predicting a Second game crash as early as 2014 and I just don't see it.

AAA games over the last decade have significantly increased Cost and development with many saying it's not sustainable but this is ignoring the increase in profits and sales the industry has also seen.

The strategy of increasing budgets is paying of as every major publisher continues increasing in profits. Covid-19 has only increased the speed at which video game consumption has grown Many people are getting back into gaming or discovering Console gaming for the first time and while I see 2021 as a possible struggle do to economic decline I still believe the long term growth will be there. People Simply love Games and are willing to prioritize it with there Disposable income.

Individual studios will fail as they always have but with Sony/ Microsoft possibly headed towards a Buyout war and Apple and Google looking for a way into the Industry I think the safety net for studios Is Bigger than it has ever been.

That's just Triple AAA The mobile market is still Growing Massively and will be a gaming mainstay for Decades. Indie Games are the most at risk But also still seem to be doing well. PC gaming is Also bigger than any point in history.

I just don't see a crash realistically happening anytime soon. The game quality is present, the money is present, and the demand is present.

 

[Deleted member 2840]

People to this day still misunderstand the US Console Game Crash from back then, something even remotely similar to it nowadays is pretty much impossible

 

[RPGamer92]

Agreed, the industry is much bigger now and the crash was only in North America.

 

[Deleted member 33120]

Who is saying this anymore?

 

[Shopolic]

I haven't heard anything about next crash. Video games industry is in the best situation of all time and nothing bad won't happen to it soon.

 

[PJV3]

It should be okay bar the giant US tech fucks stamping all over it to beat each other.

 

[backpropaganda]

You are the first person I've read mention this in a very long time

 

[iksenpets]

I think people struggle to differentiate the at least plausible thesis that the games industry will stagnate versus the ridiculous one that it'll see an 80s-style crash.

 

[jman1954goat]

Who is saying this anymore?

Click to shrink...

You are the first person I've read mention this in a very long time

Click to shrink...

You would be surprised How often I still hear this (not on Era.)

 

[Deleted member 79451]

I don't know about thriving, but I think the industry is in a very stable / resistant position overall.

 

[Semfry]

The disconnect is that the high-end "crash" already happened, it just wasn't very violent and happened gradually; tons of games companies either closed or heavily downsized, with the AAA(A) end only comprising a few juggernauts with no one else even able to attempt to break into that space.

 

[Edify]

Video games were a toy in '84, they're the biggest entertainment medium on the planet in 2020.

 

[Maxim726x]

It will never happen again.

At least, not *anytime* soon.

 

[deep_dish]

I think you made this up. No one talks about this.

 

[Lobster Roll]

People who think the gaming industry is in any trouble are smoking crack.

 

[JCH!]

Who says this?

 

[Type VII]

Crash 5 is the next one.

 

[Darkkahn]

Next Crash? It's about time.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

You would be surprised How often I still hear this (not on Era.)

Click to shrink...

So here's the thing- those people want a crash because they think it would make the companies all learn from their mistakes and strive to be super consumer friendly from there on out, bringing things back to their good old days.

It's a children's fantasy.

 

[Deleted member 2840]

Crash 5 is the next one.

Click to shrink...

And just like before, this Crash won't be on PC.

 

[HououinKyouma]

Yeah, there might be a dramatic shift in game development or budget, but there's no prayer of a full-fledged collapse.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

The '83/84 crash wasn't as bad as many people make it out to be anyway. It was a console crash in NA, not a whole industry crash. People often talked about "computer games" as separate from "video games" back then even they should have been included. Computer gaming was awesome in that era.

Modern gaming isn't going anywhere. Video games, like music and film, are here to stay. Certain segments may rise and fall but there's far too much demand around the world for the industry in general to crash.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

First time hearing about this

 

[AndyMc1888]

The "crash" already happened with value aa games dying a death and recently with gamepass and some gaas elements in online games have started to make a comeback

 

[Cass_Se]

I remember people saying this like a decade ago, but not recently.

Besides weird predictions about the crash, however it would work, PS4 and Switch prove that dedicated gaming hardware can still be a massive success in the world of mobile gaming, which was often pointed as the end of traditional AAA development. As a matter of fact, the situation is probably better than ever. Gaming will be fine.

 

[prodyg]

been hearing this for 15 years... still waiting

 

[JEH]

What?

 

[lunanto]

 

[Djalminha]

I do think we could see a major company fail, but I think the industry is safe unless a major global event impacts it (and if that's the case, the videogame industry will likely be the last of our concerns).

 

[Thorakai]

The random capitalizations in the title and in the OP's posts are bugging me lol.

Gaming is too big to crash at this point. The closest to this would be a shift in the types of games that get made as gaming becomes more mainstream and inclusive.

 

[Liam Allen-Miller]

I don't think people ever stopped saying this, and honestly it's only even something you can entertain with a very myopic point of view. Gaming has been so big and so prevalent worldwide for such a sustained amount of time that it's not even remotely possible in the foreseeable future.

 

[Lylo]

Does OP have any sources to back this claim? The only thing we hear is that the AAA games' model is unsustainable, but the games' price bump on the next generation and some other distribution models are being effectively used to mitigate that problem (GamePass, streaming services, etc) .

 

[purseowner]

It'll be a while, the last video game Crash only came out this month.

 

[DontHateTheBacon]

Did you see one person say something and now you're extrapolating it out as if this is a thing people think about? I've not heard anyone say anything remotely close to this.

 

[Plinkerton]

I could see one or two major publishers taking one too many risks that don't pay off, but I don't think an industry-wide crash will happen.

I think it's more likely that the exponential increase in development time/budget and content slows down over the next few years.

 

[Creepy Woody]

The only thing that's going to crash again is Atari.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Click to shrink...

"The Game Industry Will Experience Crash"

It's like the Pokémon 2000 movie where the dark prophecy that "The world will turn to ash" actually meant "The world will turn to Ash Ketchum to save it"

 

[The Bear]

The industry is not going to crash any time soon. That said, I do think having so many GAAS-games these days is going to be unstable, and will likely lead into some publishers either going bankrupt, or being bought by another publisher. We just saw this happen with Bethesda.

 

[jman1954goat]

The random capitalizations in the title and in the OP's posts are bugging me lol.

Click to shrink...

That is my posting style for titles.

I capitalize the first word, titles, and words I feel are important to the Point of the thread.

Games not being capitalized is a mistake on my part but can't edit it sorry

 

[Nola]

Crashing is the least of my worries. A consolidation race is a much more realistic and an actual, trending issue.

But even that I'm not too worried about, yet.

 

[Lord Azrael]

I've never heard anyone say this

 

[Amnixia]

Maybe not a crash in the same way but the combination of increasingly higher fidelity and the human cost will do some damage at some point.

 

[aisback]

The growth does seem unsustainable especially on the AAA side but I guess that's where GAAS comes in

 

[HardTimesFamilyPride]

The disconnect is that the high-end "crash" already happened, it just wasn't very violent and happened gradually; tons of games companies either closed or heavily downsized, with the AAA(A) end only comprising a few juggernauts with no one else even able to attempt to break into that space.

Click to shrink...

Yeah the "crash" as I've seen it is more a consolidation of the larger companies as the mid-tier (AA) space becomes more or less unsustainable for small studios. Which has been happening for a while now.

The risk at the moment is the bulk of the mass market being owned by few enough companies, prioritizing too many "make a quick buck" schemes like you see with many MTX and GaaS models. If your general consumer base gets bored of these systems, or for the price hikes we're seeing now, or regulation comes in affecting companies' monetization practices, or those companies don't effectively adapt to changing paradigms, or etc., one company going down (or just having to do a serious restructure) would be a large chunk of the market - a large chunk of the money going into the industry and a possible chunk of the higher-end games being made. One company deciding to go all-in on some crazy plan of theirs could force other similar companies to follow. If it's a hardware manufacturer or a pub that a manufacturer relies on to push hardware sales... oooh boy that could be a problem.

But I don't see this as an awful thing. Just cycles that happen. The big players would take a hit, and with the dev pipelines we have in place now smaller companies could flourish to fill niches that have now opened up. You could see an explosion of diversity in that space. Just an ecosystem like any other.

NOTE: I am not an expert

 

[elyetis]

I've sadly participated in enough EGS/steam topic to know that people still think the indiepocalypse is real regardless of what numbers actually show.

 

[vivftp]

PS5 about to sell 700 million units, there will be no crash

😏

 

[Dyle]

A crash isn't the worry, it's that the industry will consolidate in order to avoid crashing. Mid-tier and independent publishers and developers are increasingly reliant on the major corporations, whether it's to keep the lights on or to get their products the marketing push they need to find a foothold in the increasingly crowded markets. There are signs that users are spending less money on games and there is not much room to expand to a wider audience to make up for that lost revenue if the trend continues.

 

[Kaswa101]

Here for Crash Bandicoot jokes

 

[entremet]

Anyone who says should never be taken seriously on taking about the business of gaming.

 

[sibarraz]

Tons of people legit believe than the 84 crash nuked videogames across all the world even though business was still strong in arcades and computers pretty much everywhere.

Today the industry is way too consolidated for that too happen, at worst some of the current models will colapse like arcades did, but the whole industry will never crash