[Snes nes]

Oligopoly of the gaming industry

As of September 30, 2013, the Wii has sold 100.30 million consoles worldwide - consistently outselling it's competing consoles. The price of the wii was only changed very late into it's commercial life. And Nintendo?... Barriers to entry There are indeed high barriers to entry in

prezi.com

Video Game Industry Turning into Oligopoly — The Pacifican

“The Tech Industry has seen radical shifts in the past few years, including this one. Facebook’s huge Meta announcement has caused rifts throughout the industry and competing companies have been quick and aggressive to respond. Microsoft has thrown its deep wallets into the ring with the surprising

www.thepacifican.com

I think this is a discussion worth having considering how competitive the landscape could be if the chief competitors weren't so anti-competitive.

 

[Bullet Club]

Hasn't it nearly always been that way at the "AAA" level?

Nintendo, Sony, MS, EA, Acti, Ubi, R*, Square, CDPR, Capcom, Sega

Those have been the main companies releasing AAA games over the past 25 years, and still are the main ones now.

 

[regawdless]

With the current state of the industry, I don't really see a new player breaking into the market. Google tried with Stadia and failed. Even though Google might not have the best track record, there aren't many other companies out there that can allocate more resources to enter this market. It takes a fuck ton of money and is highly risky.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

I could see this being the case.

Every industry has top players, that's not unusual. We can't assume this is happening just because Nintendo, EA, Sony, etc are getting more "powerful".

I think the strongest evidence is that these companies are gripping IPs more tightly. Tech innovation and genre innovation don't sell as well as nostalgia. People are burned out on trying "new" gaming experiences and want to sit and marinate in "retro" experiences that appeal to their existing tastes. this is also why free-to-play works so well, because you can just keep dumping hours into the same game instead of the scary choice of looking for a new daily game. They've got all the psychological tricks in place.

Kinda funny that the guy at the pacifican warns that all this is leading toward unionization... while articles about an "oligopoly" are sure to push things in that exact direction whether it's true or not.

How can you "fairly balance" an industry where the IPs and brands, not the tech or graphical glitz, command the most profit ? The only thing I can think of would be to force the top companies to "share" their characters, kinda like a "forced public domain" thing, with the argument that these brands are so large the "average videogame developer" can't compete with Mario or Minecraft Steve.

 

[Snes nes]

I could see this being the case.

Every industry has top players, that's not unusual. We can't assume this is happening just because Nintendo, EA, Sony, etc are getting more "powerful".

I think the strongest evidence is that these companies are gripping IPs more tightly. Tech innovation and genre innovation don't sell as well as nostalgia. People are burned out on trying "new" gaming experiences and want to sit and marinate in "retro" experiences that appeal to their existing tastes. this is also why free-to-play works so well, because you can just keep dumping hours into the same game instead of the scary choice of looking for a new daily game. They've got all the psychological tricks in place.

Kinda funny that the guy at the pacifican warns that all this is leading toward unionization... while articles about an "oligopoly" are sure to push things in that exact direction whether it's true or not.

How can you "fairly balance" an industry where the IPs and brands, not the tech or graphical glitz, command the most profit ? The only thing I can think of would be to force the top companies to "share" their characters, kinda like a "forced public domain" thing, with the argument that these brands are so large the "average videogame developer" can't compete with Mario or Minecraft Steve.

So your saying ending console exclusives could help solve this Problem?

 

[DonDonDonPata]

So your saying ending console exclusives could help solve this Problem?

maybe. Or making excellent console exclusives that actually push the medium would solve the problem. Markets change. Maybe we really don't need exclusives now. Consoles used to feed off the vibrant arcade scene, so consoles fundamentally changed when arcades dried up. Now consoles feed off old brands and PC scraps. PC feeds off old brands and old promises, re-selling the same games as "the next Crysis" using new, more expensive hardware. Nothing feels truly forward-thinking; even the VR scene is selling mostly on retro promises to 30+ year olds who grew up with the Matrix.

 

[Snes nes]

maybe. Or making excellent console exclusives that actually push the medium would solve the problem. Markets change. Maybe we really don't need exclusives now. Consoles used to feed off the vibrant arcade scene, so consoles fundamentally changed when arcades dried up. Now consoles feed off old brands and PC scraps. PC feeds off old brands and old promises, re-selling the same games as "the next Crysis" using new, more expensive hardware. Nothing feels truly forward-thinking; even the VR scene is selling mostly on retro promises to 30+ year olds who grew up with the Matrix.

maybe the revitalization of the arcades could shake up the market there's still things that can be done with it. I mean even nintendo still makes arcade machines and the mobile game are going to collapse at some point in the future.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

videogame companies have devalued themselves and their own brands way too much. In the 80s and 90s, we didn't eye every new AAA game with a wary eye. We didn't have a checklist of "red flags" we looked out for. We had glitchy games and bad launches, but there was still some trust between the customers and t he companies, and there was still some.... "respect" (?? perhaps that isn't the correct word) toward these companies. Not anymore. people need to be convinced the product isn't a steaming pay-to-win turd pushed out the door by a committee of execs and market-researchers.

This is occurring at the same time that availability of old games is at an all-time high. It cannot be emphasized enough that modern gaming companies are not only competing against one another, they're competing against their own histories. The old games haven't passed away (yet...) so they act like musicians who are upset the fans "only love the Old Stuff but hate all my new experimental stuff". They have t he attitude of an auteur instead of a plucky toy-maker, and t hey assume every generation is a complete "reset". In reality, the bigger your brand gets, the more the customers will expect you to deliver iterations and improvements on the old experiences they made in the past.

 

[Snes nes]

videogame companies have devalued themselves and their own brands way too much. In the 80s and 90s, we didn't eye every new AAA game with a wary eye. We didn't have a checklist of "red flags" we looked out for. We had glitchy games and bad launches, but there was still some trust between the customers and t he companies, and there was still some.... "respect" (?? perhaps that isn't the correct word) toward these companies. Not anymore. people need to be convinced the product isn't a steaming pay-to-win turd pushed out the door by a committee of execs and market-researchers.

This is occurring at the same time that availability of old games is at an all-time high. It cannot be emphasized enough that modern gaming companies are not only competing against one another, they're competing against their own histories. The old games haven't passed away (yet...) so they act like musicians who are upset the fans "only love the Old Stuff but hate all my new experimental stuff". They have t he attitude of an auteur instead of a plucky toy-maker, and t hey assume every generation is a complete "reset". In reality, the bigger your brand gets, the more the customers will expect you to deliver iterations and improvements on the old experiences they made in the past.

The very idea of rejecting what made you popular to begin with is dumb and a constant rejecting made these franchises popular to begin with has been a weird trend of absolute idiocracy that hurt their franchises more than helped. To erase your own history to go forward with weird revisions that make the games some generic cinematic that has been done to death is dumb in of itself.

 

[Optimus]

Hasn't it nearly always been that way at the "AAA" level?

Nintendo, Sony, MS, EA, Acti, Ubi, R*, Square, CDPR, Capcom, Sega

Those have been the main companies releasing AAA games over the past 25 years, and still are the main ones now.

Feels like you're missing quite a few.

• Midway
• Acclaim
• THQ
• Maxis
• Eidos
• Sierra
• Konami...

There are a few more that I feel like have just been bought out or merged over the years like Microprose. It also really doesn't help having conglomerated monsters like Namco + Bandai and Activision + Blizzard. It hasn't served the industry for these publishers to have fused and morphed into a single entity when each used to publish a half a dozen titles each year.

 

[Optimus]

I feel like the death of the American arcade dried up a lot of the innovation that was pushing experiences in arcades. In arcades, there was an expectation that you would offer new things that couldn't be easily had at home due to cost. Arcades were pushing the envelope on computing as well as new control schemes. You couldn't climb inside of a cockpit at home nor could you easily get a VR-like experience. Arcades weren't limited by industry standard game controllers and similar, and so new ideas could be easily pitched inside of arcades before a company would take the risk of releasing something that required a funky controller.

What we have today is a console gaming market that follows whatever fits its own standard for risk as well as anything that hits gold on PC. It all feels so same-y because it is. You simply don't see big gambles coming from mobile phones or on console. Anybody who might take a big gamble in the hardware arena runs an immediate risk of alienating the AAA publishers...

 

[Bullet Club]

Feels like you're missing quite a few.

I was just mentioning the main ones over the past couple of decades. There will always be companies entering and leaving the AAA space.