How the economy affects the game market.

When we see the news about all of the layoffs and businesses closing we hear that the video game industry was recession proof. But we have started to see that that is not really the case. Now I’m not an expert on the whole money thing but this is the way I see things going. First, if people are laid off from their jobs and have little to no money coming in, it's probably a sure thing that spending money on games is going to be out of the question. So if people are not spending money on games then the development companies are not getting their money. If the development companies are not getting their money then they cannot pay their employees. If they can't pay their employees then the employees are going to be laid off. If they have little to no money coming into their households then they are not going to be spending money on games. If they aren't buying games then... well you get the picture.

Second we have the whole problem of the gaming companies putting out games that just suck. Let’s take a look at two of the three major consoles (I don't have a Wii and really know little about the system). I am going to leave PC gaming out of this for now mostly because I don't play PC games. In the past year and the one before, (2008 and 2007 for those who don't know) we had a land slide of games released. I know for a fact that in each of those two years I bought at least 10 games. 20 games in the last two years might seem like a drop in the bucket but let’s do the math. When you by a new game for the XBOX 360 or PS3, (and I mostly buy new games) the price you are going to be paying is around $59.99. Or $60 bucks a pop for the rounding impaired. So that’s $600 dollars a year or $1200 in only the last two years. Add to that the cost of replacement controllers, batteries, and/or XBOX Live. I’m now looking at having spent $1,350. I’d like to think I’m a normal gamer so let’s set that at as the average. That's a lot of money. If I was out of work then I would not be spending so much on the games and in turn the game companies would not get their money. The game companies not getting their money causes them to lay off workers they can't pay and we go down that whole ring-a-round again. Now let’s expand that logic to the people who have lost their job so far this year. As of this morning it was averaged that 185,000 people are now out of work. So let’s again do the math. 185,000 people times $1,350 equals a whopping $2.49 million dollars lost in revenue just this year alone. Keep in mind however that not all of these people are gamers. But even if say, a quarter of them are, that is still a loss of around $600,000. With that lost money not going to the game developers and publishers they are going to lay off more people and we are not going to get games from the people who are laid off and in turn there will be fewer games in the market this year and next.

What does all this mean for the games that do come out? Well I think first we will see games that use old tech and games that find the most audiences. I think that we will see games like COD modern war 2 using the same engine as COD 4. Game companies are not going to invest in new tech when they can use the old tech and make money. I think we have gotten to a point where companies are no longer looking to make a huge profit and have started at looking for a black balance. So with that in mind I think that we will start to see games that have the ability to reach the most people. Let’s face it, Gears of War 2 was f***ing awesome. But it was not a game that my wife, parents, or most people would play. Gears is a hardcore gamers game and I like it that way but in the current market game created for the hardcore are going to become more and more scarce. I think in the near future we are going to start seeing an influx of games that are for the family. I may not own a Wii but I can see what it is doing to the market. Families like playing games together and let’s face the truth; there are a lot more non hardcore gamers in the USA than hardcore gamers. I would say that there are twice as many people who play games that don't think themselves as gamers than there are people who call themselves hardcore. The whole Wii thing is proof of that. So last word on this is I think we will see fewer games released and of the games released many more will be created for the masses.

Third and last point on this. USED GAME SELLS WILL KILL THE INDUSTRY. Yes I said it. There are stores (which will not be named) that sells used games and that is going to put a major hurting the gaming world. Here how it 's going to go. First people are are going to have less money to spend but they still are going to buy games. They are going to try and find the cheapest prices they can and one of the biggest stores (again not named) has the used game market locked up. The problem with the whole used game is that one the numbers of game sold or not reported so the list of most sold game does not include used games and second the game companies does not get a single dime of that money. So their bottom line never changes. And we get back into point number one all over again.

So that is my rant about the economy. What are your thoughts?

--Tiberwolf3rd