There are a lot of factors, many of which have to do with lackluster games coming out at a poor time of the year. Most people my age are too focused on school or graduating like I am to be able to shell out 60 bucks on a mediocre, uninteresting game on these aging platforms. I have a ton of pc games from sales that I haven't even touched yet and am perfectly happy playing Civ, Minecraft, and Saint's Row.
April NPDs are out and they are grim. Will next gen save us?
@skytylz: The NDP also doesn't count any iOS, Android, F2P, DLC, Micro-transactions, etc...
Boxed sales are shrinking, it's a close analogy to how iTunes changed the way music was consumed, does that mean anything to the whole of video games? Probably not.
OP made the post console-centric, meaning digital distribution is almost a non-factor. XBLA and PSN games barely hit the fraction of what full retail games sell, and it could be argued that smaller $15 downloadable games complement rather than compete for revenue against $60 games. XBL and PSN do sell full retail games as well, but they are still a small part of the overall sales a full retail game has.
Not saying a lack of interest is impossible for next gen, but I don't think late gen console stagnation is much proof. I think this is just the way it tends to go.
It's one of the reasons that new machines get made. People can't stay interested forever and need to excited by new -- and this gen has gone on for a long time. And unlike last gen the prices haven't dropped. PS2 game MSRP at this point was $40.
I also think the quality of the average game has gone up over the past 5 years (I know there is a case for a loss of quality at other levels, but on average I think it's raised) so there is a wider selection of decent stuff for $10-20 which makes $60 looks terrible.
What I'm saying is that I can't think of one reason why they shouldn't be declining right now. And that it probably isn't indicative of the next cycle.
Also, a lot of current Wii U problems were perfectly predicted before it ever launched. If you go back and read through old stuff from a year ago you will seeing people after their E3 talking about what a muddied message it was and how they aren't capturing that same ease of use audience and how all of the touted 3rd party support was just a lot of ports of things you already had. I'm not seeing much of that for the PS4 and I doubt we will see a lot of it for the new Xbox either.
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment