So before this turns into another Skyrim circle jerk.... after I had my 4th CTD last night because of Bethsoft's inability to patch a game correctly, I installed and killed an hour with Orcs Must Die! Awesome game and it's only $15 on Steam. Highly recommended.

"As the newest form of mainstream entertainment."

Wow. I think I'll write my own article entitled, "This new-fangled Internet can be great tool to potentially help your business."

In the future, we may even play video games while we take a shiat.

To be fair to the author (while obviously video games have been "here to stay" for awhile) it's only in about the past decade that they've become predominantly a form of adult entertainment versus kids entertainment.

Development budgets have swelled considerably, as have sales and profits. It's simply a much larger industry now than it was during the 80's and 90's.

Author of said article should be rightly mocked for poorly framing his argument, but if you search hard enough he has a point in there somewhere.

cjmook21: In the future, we may even play video games while we take a shiat.

I thought that was what Angry Birds was made for?

Video games are here to stay, writes columnist who just woke up from 1991 1981

FTFY

The gaming landscape is complicated but three companies dictate where it is heading: Microsoft, with its Xbox 360; Sony, with the PlayStation 3; and Nintendo with the Wii and DS.

Mention the DS but not the PSP or Vita?

/love my PSP

Keywork99: Mention the DS but not the PSP or Vita?

/love my PSP


It's an all-around stupid statement. Facebook and smartphones are having the biggest effect on the shape of gaming right now.

IrateShadow: Keywork99: Mention the DS but not the PSP or Vita?

/love my PSP


It's an all-around stupid statement. Facebook and smartphones are having the biggest effect on the shape of gaming right now.

Oh yay, we get to have this argument again!

/mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games

See, THIS is why I will never get paid to write. This guy probably didn't even get out of bed to write this and e-mail it in. This is 'phoning it in' at it's worst.

bemis23: So before this turns into another Skyrim circle jerk.... after I had my 4th CTD last night because of Bethsoft's inability to patch a game correctly, I installed and killed an hour with Orcs Must Die! Awesome game and it's only $15 on Steam. Highly recommended.

I played the shiat out of orcs must die, it really is amazing.

Skyrim is almost impossible for power gamers to enjoy (the difficulty just doesn't scale right and caps too low), but it's a great way to waste a lot of time regardless.

SuperChuck: Video games are here to stay, writes columnist who just woke up from 1991 1981

FTFY

Not really...

By 1983, videogames were in the verge of extinction.

It was due to the efforts of Nintendo that the whole thing started flourishing again.

All Hail Mario! The modern Mickey Mouse. (Sorry Disney, your rat is irrelevant)

bemis23: /mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games

It's still the videogame market and there is a significant overlap with the console game market. If you don't think that a large portion of Wii owners aren't also primarily Farmville/"Facebook"/mobile gamers then you're simply deceiving yourself.

He's right in that mobile gaming is having a massive, massive effect on the overall Gaming market. Whether you think it 'counts' or not is irrelevant; FB and iPhone games and all that are still games, and are still a powerful, influential and gigantic emerging market that will inevitably attract swaths of users from the traditional VG markets.

Supes: To be fair to the author (while obviously video games have been "here to stay" for awhile) it's only in about the past decade that they've become predominantly a form of adult entertainment versus kids entertainment.

Development budgets have swelled considerably, as have sales and profits. It's simply a much larger industry now than it was during the 80's and 90's.

Author of said article should be rightly mocked for poorly framing his argument, but if you search hard enough he has a point in there somewhere.

video games were a predominantly adult entertainment back before the 1983 crash, nintendo pushed the industry more towards kids' entertainment, whereupon everybody else pushed in the opposite direction back to adult entertainment - Sony being the initial big victor of that battle

as for how games are played - that's an always evolving field, touchscreen pda-esque smartphones have revolutionized mobile games but they haven't really driven out handheld gaming the way the hype machine would make it seem - there's still a control method/general production value/gameplay that $.99 cent passive games can't capitalize on, not to mention handheld/mobile gaming isn't going to force console gaming out of the way either - even if dedicated hardware went the way of the dodo there's still a huge market for tv gaming in america as long as tv's exist

as for IP's, there's historically a huge turnover rate every 5-6 years, unless you're nintendo or blizzard your one-hit-wonder is going to lose steam eventually simply because better/more interesting games will come along - yes even Call of Duty will suffer the same fate - it even happened to Halo (which nobody believed would ever happen)

the cherry on top is inflation in general - companies like Zynga with overvalued IPO's, traditional AAA games becoming the only valuable gaming purchase for gamers and thus the only valuable investment for publishers also driving up production values ten-fold every 2-3 years

so yeah... gaming has changed, gaming never changes, etc. etc. blah blah

What did he just get Pong?

AdamK: video games were a predominantly adult entertainment back before the 1983 crash, nintendo pushed the industry more towards kids' entertainment, whereupon everybody else pushed in the opposite direction back to adult entertainment

LOL no, get out.

More of the "nintendo is for kiddies" crap.

Yeah, ET was so freaking adult, right?

Ditto for Pac-Man...

And Space Invaders...

tomcatadam: bemis23: /mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games

It's still the videogame market and there is a significant overlap with the console game market. If you don't think that a large portion of Wii owners aren't also primarily Farmville/"Facebook"/mobile gamers then you're simply deceiving yourself.

He's right in that mobile gaming is having a massive, massive effect on the overall Gaming market. Whether you think it 'counts' or not is irrelevant; FB and iPhone games and all that are still games, and are still a powerful, influential and gigantic emerging market that will inevitably attract swaths of users from the traditional VG markets.

Emerging market? Yep, no problem. The point of contention that I take with the argument is the bolded section. People interested in Call of Duty, Skyrim, Uncharted, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, God of War, etc.. aren't going to have their dollars diverted from purchasing those games so they can pick up 50 of the new iPhone games. Mobile gaming is a complementary market, but it isn't drawing significant investment dollars away from traditional platforms.

As far as overlap is concerned you're probably right. I'm sure that a lot of Wii owners do a lot of gaming primarily on their phones and Facebook. That kind of overlap is inevitable when that's exactly the market ("non-gamers") that Nintendo stated they were shooting for with the development of the Wii. I don't see why that matters though. Does the existence of Farmville negate the impact of Skyrim? What effect has the development of Angry Birds had on the investment or revenue generated by the Call of Duty franchise? Is a reasonable person going to swayed to purchase a $1 game instead of a $40 traditional game, rather than just realizing the the $1 game is essentially immaterial and purchasing both? Probably not.

Social media has undoubtedly had a huge impact on gaming, but the ability to link WoW achievements to Facebook or to compare XBox gamerscores online has little to do with the development of mobile/social gaming.

Keywork99: The gaming landscape is complicated but three companies dictate where it is heading: Microsoft, with its Xbox 360; Sony, with the PlayStation 3; and Nintendo with the Wii and DS.

Mention the DS but not the PSP or Vita?

/love my PSP

Considering the price of storage options for the Vita, it's doubtful that Sony portable is the future of anything.

Oh also, videogames were always entertainment predominantly for kids.

It was only when those kids grew up that it started getting more adult oriented since they carried over.

Right now, all of the people in the Western world under the age of 30 have been exposed to videogames in one form or another. For them, videogames are just a normal thing some people do.

rocky_howard: AdamK: video games were a predominantly adult entertainment back before the 1983 crash, nintendo pushed the industry more towards kids' entertainment, whereupon everybody else pushed in the opposite direction back to adult entertainment

LOL no, get out.

More of the "nintendo is for kiddies" crap.

Yeah, ET was so freaking adult, right?

Ditto for Pac-Man...

And Space Invaders...

don't worry, in 20 years people will look back and wonder why the hell adults loved world of warcraft, farmville, angry birds, etc.

and the "nintendo is for kidz" stereotype is true - even tho their games are universally appealing to this day (skyward sword and super mario 3d land are amazing) - marketing to younger audiences is what fueled nintendo in their early days and has influenced their direction ever since, no reason they would ignore what they're good at - same reason sony will always push their "games as cinema" shtick

For some reason, reading that article reminded me of a 1-page piece I read in TIME magazine back in early 1991, right before the SNES came out. I was 12 and had been saving my money for one when my mom brought in the article and said that I was going to waste my money. The name of the article was something like; "Mario is even more super, but will he sell?"

It pretty much talked about how video game consoles were a passing fad. It also mentioned that, despite the updated color palette and graphics, it would be hard to make out any improvements in the games since most Nintendos were hooked up to smaller, ancient TVs that had a fuzzy picture.

I wish I could find that article. Don't feel like searching it out at the moment.

OK, so I just have to rant for a bit. MW3 spoilers if you care.

I finished MW3 single player the other night. Now, I know that for like 99% of the people who buy this game, the single player is probably an afterthought, but still, I've enjoy playing through it. Cheesy story, sure but still fun.

So we save the President and his daughter and whatever, peace is declared, but of course I can't let that bastard Makarov get away after what he did to Soap. We start out in armor and BFG's and we're just tearing through hotel security and it's great. Work our way up to Makarov and then suddenly it turns into cutscene-the video game.

Look, I get it MW3. You have this little "press RT to block the dog attack" gimmick that is fine in small doses. You're telling a story that is very movie-like and I can appreciate that, you want to introduce a game mechanic that gives me something more than "Hey go kill those dudes over there". But don't base the entire ending of your multi-million dollar video game on it. At least have the decency to let me shoot Makarov in the head myself with your slow-motion trick.

RedPhoenix122:

Custer's Revenge...?...lol

That was both an outlier and silly premise that failed horribly, as it should have. Who the fark even thought it'd do good?

AdamK: don't worry, in 20 years people will look back and wonder why the hell adults loved world of warcraft, farmville, angry birds, etc.

Oh, I don't have to wait, I wonder that right now. If they want real farming they should get Harvest Moon games. It even has that romance thing going on. Dunno why the producers aren't taking advantage of that.

and the "nintendo is for kidz" stereotype is true - even tho their games are universally appealing to this day (skyward sword and super mario 3d land are amazing) - marketing to younger audiences is what fueled nintendo in their early days and has influenced their direction ever since

Mmm, yeah, but that's more of a post hoc . Videogames were primarily for kids even before they entered the scene. Thing is Nintendo is a traditionalist company so they didn't want to wildly deviate from what they do. And paid for it when the audiences started to skew for more "adult" oriented tastes.

It's also why they barely care about anything that isn't games, games, games.

Nintendo could have another printing money machine if they ever decided to do an amusement park based on their properties. Just think about it:

A Mario kart track where people drive mario-themed vehicles.

A pony/horse riding segment through Hyrule.

A sort of rollecoaster where the carriage is sphere shaped and you ride through the caves of Planet Zebes with segments for Brinstar, Norfair and such.

A Pilotwings flight sim.

That idea had been circling my mind for a couple years now, but it was when Nintendo recently deployed Mushroom Kingdom over Times Square that it really came to me. Nintendo should do this ASAP!

Of course, they won't because they don't like deviating from their focus: Games. Especially after how burned they got with the trash Hollywood did with Mario.

Pic caption: No limits ... it's an exciting time to be a gamer; (below) ModernWarfare 3.

I know it says (below), but the pic is totally TF2.

Keywork99: /love my PSP

I, too, loves my PSP. I just wish I had the 2nd gen so I could display it on my TV.

Mike_LowELL: The "death of video games" was a completely American phenomenon; computer games were flourishing in Europe and the Japanese market remained quite healthy. The real change in the market was the death of an industry dominated by American developers transformed into two decades of utter dominance by the Japanese. The West responded by taking cover in the computer video game market and then got back into the console market by applying the lessons of computer video games to consoles.

Yup, you're right. Two decades of Jap dominance. Too bad they didn't learn much and most Japanese games nowadays feel so stilted and clunky. It's amazing how all the innovation is coming from Western based companies nowadays while the Japanese ones are still trapped in 80s/90s tropes.

It's even more astounding when you consider turds like Bobby Kotick being at the helm of one of the biggest companies around.

Mike_LowELL:
bemis23: Emerging market? Yep, no problem. The point of contention that I take with the argument is the bolded section. People interested in Call of Duty, Skyrim, Uncharted, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, God of War, etc.. aren't going to have their dollars diverted from purchasing those games so they can pick up 50 of the new iPhone games. Mobile gaming is a complementary market, but it isn't drawing significant investment dollars away from traditional platforms.

In all likelihood, it's drawing away new customers from the expensive console video games (as it's doing with the expensive Nintendo and Sony portable games), which is how come console video game developers have gone absolutely insane with the content delivery, i.e. found the only way they can keep making more money is to charge the same customers more money.

Not to be extremely antagonistic, but citation needed. Last I checked, the XBox360 and PS3 are still selling well. Skyrim revenues were near a quarter of a billion last I checked, and it's not even the #1 major console sale this month (that belongs to Modern Warfare 3 and it's 6.5 million-copy sales and $400 million revenue on launch day alone). Several years after the development of Farmville, Words with Friends, and Angry birds the traditional VG market is still shattering sales records every year. If your hypothesis is true there should be a glut of used systems available and new units would not be moving. Launch day sales would have peaked and upon seeing this investment dollars would have started drying up to develop new AAA titles. That just isn't happening.

Mike_LowELL: In all likelihood, it's drawing away new customers from the expensive console video games (as it's doing with the expensive Nintendo and Sony portable games), which is how come console video game developers have gone absolutely insane with the content delivery, i.e. found the only way they can keep making more money is to charge the same customers more money

The increase in DLC has nothing to do with the mobile market. On average a game with DLC sells more (around 50k copies) than games that do not. DLC within the first month sells better and moves more copies than games without DLC, which is why more games have DLC within the first week now. It has nothing to do with the mobile market and everything to do with the companies seeing a statistic as more profitable and then forcing that model across all of their titles.

bemis23: Words with Friends, and Angry birds the traditional VG market is still shattering sales records every year

Well not this year. Unless this Fall makes up for the rest of the year, revenues were down year over year. With all the companies releasing games at $50million+ development costs at the same time this fall all competing with the wallets fo the same demographic, it's highly unlikely that this year is going to see year over year growth.

bemis23: Oh yay, we get to have this argument again!

/mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games


They are for the moment, but that's changing. The big developers are taking note of whats going on in the casual/social market are are starting to incorporate those elements into major releases. One doesn't need to go much further than Battlenet 2.0 or Steam to see that things are changing.

RedPhoenix122: Lumbar Puncture: The increase in DLC has nothing to do with the mobile market. On average a game with DLC sells more (around 50k copies) than games that do not. DLC within the first month sells better and moves more copies than games without DLC, which is why more games have DLC within the first week now. It has nothing to do with the mobile market and everything to do with the companies seeing a statistic as more profitable and then forcing that model across all of their titles.

True, but the increase of it does have a lot to do with making extra money off of stuff that, in many cases, should be included with the original title. For instance, unlockable characters, or certain game modes. Some games do release large scale, expansion pack style DLC, and for that, I believe it's worth it. But I do find it rather cheap to charge $5-10 a pop for the most minor of things, things that were already and released at the same time or prior to release date.

Absolutely, I hate the trend of DLC that's just unlocked disk content or stuff obviouslly cut out of the game and repackaged as DLC. I don't mind really if it's something like a gun skin, but it's reached ridiculous levels. For Saints Row: The Third you could pre-order the game, buy the seperate $20 Season Pass and there is still day one DLC that at 316kb, is on the disk.

However people buy that shiat up. Especially if it is in the first couple of weeks. When a company sees that they can make more money through DLC, and that people buy DLC more often when it's within a few weeks of release (day one DLC sells really well), then the only way to really capitalize on that window of opportunity is to use stuff that would otherwise be in the final game.

My point was that the mobile market has nothing to do with people being suckers, and publishers taking advantage of the fact people are suckers.

Lumbar Puncture: bemis23: Words with Friends, and Angry birds the traditional VG market is still shattering sales records every year

Well not this year. Unless this Fall makes up for the rest of the year, revenues were down year over year. With all the companies releasing games at $50million+ development costs at the same time this fall all competing with the wallets fo the same demographic, it's highly unlikely that this year is going to see year over year growth.

A multibillion dollar November will go a long way towards making up that deficit and there is still December and its holidays to go. Regardless the number of new announced AAA titles isn't decreasing.

IrateShadow: bemis23: Oh yay, we get to have this argument again!

/mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games


They are for the moment, but that's changing. The big developers are taking note of whats going on in the casual/social market are are starting to incorporate those elements into major releases. One doesn't need to go much further than Battlenet 2.0 or Steam to see that things are changing.

I disagree. Integration of social media is one thing, but the closest thing I can think of in integrating casual/mobile gaming is the Plants vs. Zombies minigame in WoW. I wouldn't be surprised to see Blizzard do some kind of Angry Birds knock off or something int he upcoming expansion - but given Blizzard's history of integrating pop culture references and memes into games as humor I wouldn't expect to see that develop further. Primarily because game developers are becoming more conscious of attention dilution. Attempting to integrate too many concepts (including mini games) into a single package is incredibly difficult to accomplish successfully without hurting the overall game's cohesiveness, e.g. GTA 4 and it's dating/socializing mini games.

bemis23: A multibillion dollar November will go a long way towards making up that deficit and there is still December and its holidays to go. Regardless the number of new announced AAA titles isn't decreasing.

Number of newly announced AAA titles isn't what you should be looking at. Number of profitable AAA titles would be. Considering that the big publishers have purchased most of the mid-level development companies (and shut down several of them within just the last year), it can be really bad thing if they can't stay profitable. THQ is in bad shape, Nintendo had a huge loss (which has a lot to do with the Yen being worth more), EA spent an ungodly amount of money on both BF3 and SW:TOR, and so on.

I don't see this as having anything to do with mobile gaming though, just mismanagement of release schedules and so on.

Cotton Rinkenbolts: For some reason, reading that article reminded me of a 1-page piece I read in TIME magazine back in early 1991, right before the SNES came out. I was 12 and had been saving my money for one when my mom brought in the article and said that I was going to waste my money. The name of the article was something like; "Mario is even more super, but will he sell?"

It pretty much talked about how video game consoles were a passing fad. It also mentioned that, despite the updated color palette and graphics, it would be hard to make out any improvements in the games since most Nintendos were hooked up to smaller, ancient TVs that had a fuzzy picture.

I wish I could find that article. Don't feel like searching it out at the moment.

Pretty sure this is it. Enjoy!

Hold On to Your Joysticks
Monday, Jun. 10, 1991 By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT

Sometime in the next few months, an argument is going to break out in the 30 million families infected by the Nintendo video-game craze. The kids, primed by saturation advertising, are going to tell their parents they "gotta have" the awesome new 16-bit Nintendo system for Christmas. The parents, remembering the hundreds of dollars they have invested in the old 8-bit Nintendo, are going to say, "No way."

Nintendo last week began taking bets on how many kids are going to win that argument. At the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, the purveyor of the world's most successful electronic-game system unveiled its long-awaited successor: a gray plastic book-size box called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. When it becomes available in September, Super NES will cost $199.95 (twice the price of the old NES) for the basic game machine, two hand-held controllers, the latest Super Mario Bros. adventure and a $50 coupon for another game. The machine will also be backed by a $95 million nonstop marketing blitz designed to convince every American preadolescent that life without 16 bits wouldn't be worth living.

It's not going to be an easy sell. In theory, the more powerful computer chip at the heart of Super NES can generate games with richer colors, clearer sound, faster action and more sophisticated play. A 16-biatchip, for example, can create 32,768 colors, compared with 52 for an 8-biatchip. But it's going to be hard to see those improvements on the fuzzy family TVs most Nintendo sets are plugged into. And because the original Nintendo -- and a portable successor called Game Boy -- uses different chips, the old games won't work in the new machine, rendering 200 million cartridges obsolete.

More worrisome for Nintendo are signs that the video-game frenzy the Japanese-owned company stirred up over the past five years may be starting to fizzle. Sales of the old Nintendo system have fallen off sharply (down 46% in the first half of 1991), and discount tags have replaced SOLD OUT signs in toy stores across the U.S. "I played all the games so much, I just got bored with them," says Tomas Romano, 9, of Brooklyn, N.Y. He and his friends now prefer Little League baseball.

Nintendo should be able to drum up enough excitement to sell out this year's supply of 2 million Super NES sets. What's less clear is how long that enthusiasm will last. At best, say analysts, over the next five years Nintendo will sell about two-thirds as many of the new systems as it sold of the old. At worst, Nintendo could end up like Atari, which in the early 1980s tried to replace a wildly successful video-game player with one that was more powerful but incompatible. Atari ended up with a mountain of unsold game cartridges that got loaded onto dump trucks and used as landfill.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973136,00.html

Really enjoying the new Zelda so far (few hours in). I'm enjoying it more than Twilight Princess.

IrateShadow: bemis23: Oh yay, we get to have this argument again!

/mobile and Facebook games are a completely different market from traditional console and PC games


They are for the moment, but that's changing. The big developers are taking note of whats going on in the casual/social market are are starting to incorporate those elements into major releases. One doesn't need to go much further than Battlenet 2.0 or Steam to see that things are changing.

It will change back. The casual market is unpredictable, the attach rate of titles is less, and often sequels tend not to sell well because the casual market is usually satisfied with their original purchase still.

Lumbar Puncture: bemis23: A multibillion dollar November will go a long way towards making up that deficit and there is still December and its holidays to go. Regardless the number of new announced AAA titles isn't decreasing.

Number of newly announced AAA titles isn't what you should be looking at. Number of profitable AAA titles would be. Considering that the big publishers have purchased most of the mid-level development companies (and shut down several of them within just the last year), it can be really bad thing if they can't stay profitable. THQ is in bad shape, Nintendo had a huge loss (which has a lot to do with the Yen being worth more), EA spent an ungodly amount of money on both BF3 and SW:TOR, and so on.

I don't see this as having anything to do with mobile gaming though, just mismanagement of release schedules and so on.

My only point in looking at the number of new AAA titles was to illustrate that investment dollars to create new games isn't drying up (yet, as long as they remain profitable - to your point). Your point is entirely correct, I was just shooting for something a little bit different.

That doesn't mean they now make big budget failures like Hollywood but eh. Namco, all I wanted was Ace Combat updated. Why did you have to change it to a pile of shiat? Still bitter that Ace Combat New Horizon and Gran Turismo 5 were shiat. Also, I hate how online play has become everything to the point that you have a shiatty single player campaign/etc. Skyrim and Fallout 3, and Oblivion before such/etc showed just how much fun you can have by playing on your own and story.

bemis23: My only point in looking at the number of new AAA titles was to illustrate that investment dollars to create new games isn't drying up (yet, as long as they remain profitable - to your point). Your point is entirely correct, I was just shooting for something a little bit different

No worries, I completely see where you are coming from as well. Hell Microsoft announced they sold like a million Xbox 360s on Black Friday alone, and while video game sales are lagging, console sales (aside from the Wii) are still strong which shows demand. Will probably stay strong as the PS3 gets to the $200 price range and the Xbox gets cheaper.