April 29, 2005
Game Industry Collapse?
According to noted technology pundit John Dvorak, the game industry is about to collapse due to lack of innovation. He says that graphics have reached a level that improvements may not mattter, also that games are too hard to play now for casual players like himself.I actually think he has a point that the next generation consoles won't be a big step-up in terms of revenue and sales. I think the graphics step function will NOT be as big this time as the PS2 and Xbox was. Moreover it seems most games are re-hashes of the same thing with better graphics. Boring. But are we going to see a collapse like the one after Atari 2600? Probably not. A brief pause will be more like it.
None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth? [Discuss]
