"Is the Gaming Industry Broken?"

[Bjorn]

Link via Slashdot.  http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13236

I don't think there's anything much new in the article; it's just saying things that to some extent have been clear for a long time.  But the interesting element is that the author points out (somewhat indirectly) that there doesn't seem to be a lot of accord between what the game industry wants to do (become mainstream) and how they're doing going about it (making development and costs of ownership more and more expensive).

When looked at from this perspective, it seems possible to me that the big winner in the next generation might be Nintendo.  In the "bell curve" model, the gaming industry has been shooting for the tails of the distribution for a long time.  Which is true of any starting industry: in the beginning, everything is technology based.  But it might be that Nintendo is betting that videogames have advanced to the point where it is best treated as a commodity industry, and that means convenience, simplicity, and low cost are the main factors.

Certainly it seems true that the advantages of pushing the technology envelope have faded.  Compare, say, Doom II to Quake 2 to Quake 3, and you can see huge differences, and graphics is a huge selling point, no bones about it.  But compare Quake 3 to just about every FPS made afterwards, and while the differences are there, they're more subtle, and it's hard to believe that anyone other than the most discerning graphics whore would really mind all that much.

[Dracos]

Wow, I never picked this up again.

I'll get back here...sometime this year ^^;

Dracos