Re: The Death of the Video Game Industry - It Could Happen!

On May 29, 7:23 pm, "Nick Soapdish, Jr." <JGordon...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 29, 4:03 pm, Mattinglyfan <kyler.jack...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 29, 11:58 am, "alvinstraigh...@xxxxxxxxxxx"

<alvinstraigh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Increasing Prices

Remember when $200 bucks was a lot to pay for a console? The greed of
M$ will be their downfall. Cmon, $100 bucks for a crappy Xbox hard
drive? If M$ was smart, they would lower the arcade version to $250
and insert a hard drive. The gaming industry is simply going to get
too expensive for the average consumer.

Am I remembering wrong or does anyone else recall that consoles 10+
years ago cost more than today? I could have sworn there have been at
least 2 - $500+ systems in the 90's (not accounting for inflation). I
could have even sworn that games were darn near $100 or even more. I
could be wrong. I am not Paul Heslop old but I am getting up there in
age ;) J/K Paul

Geez, another not-crazy post from alvinstraight? What's the world
coming to??????

Mattingly, while I think you're right about console prices, it's the
game prices that we need to be more cognizant of. The majority of
what drives and funds the industry is game purchases, and the fact
that game prices increased with this generation after quite a few
years of remaining at the $50 mark is not good. While industry
pundits like to cite that revenues for the industry increased, I'd
wager a fair amount of that was due not to an increase in game
purchases, but an increase in game prices. It now takes longer for
game prices to drop as well, both used and new. Finally, let's face
it- the economy is screwed, between the job market, gas prices, and
the implosion of both the housing market and related investment
markets affected by devalued sub-prime mortgage paper investments.
This equals less money to spend on more "frivolous" things like games.

Well, games back then were overpriced to be honest. I remember paying
$40 for Super Nintendo games back in 92, and development costs are
nothing compared to what they are now. If you consider what it costs
to develop a game to run with today's graphical needs compared to
then, you're talking dollars to cents really. It's not uncommon for a
game to cost over $15mil today to develop.


While I don't see a 1983-style massive crash of the video game market,
I do see it shrinking back to a growth/size figure smaller than the
2000-2005 boom times.

.

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