Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Decline The decline of video games visualized in one infographic

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It was never as bad as they acted like, no. I think a lot of it was just butthurt anger at people getting their shit for free.
No, the reason why so many companies screeched about piracy was because it became an easy way for a studio to defend itself after a flop. "We did a good job, our game did not suck, it's a good game! The reason why it's a financial failure is because of those pesky pirates!" It's a great way to shovel the blame onto some anonymous force out there, with no easy way to prove or disprove it. Companies subsequently overreacting with draconian DRM like always online for single player games and the like was a logical consequence of that.

Now devs of shitty games complain that Steam takes too big a cut and doesn't do enough marketing for them (it's a store platform, not a marketing service you retards), also the fact that Steam allows everyone to release their games on it means games get lost in a flood of stuff. That's the reason our game failed, honest, if Steam had better curation our game would have been a massive success! It's not our game's fault!!
 

thesecret1

Arcane
Joined
Jun 30, 2019
Messages
5,675
It was never as bad as they acted like, no. I think a lot of it was just butthurt anger at people getting their shit for free.
No, the reason why so many companies screeched about piracy was because it became an easy way for a studio to defend itself after a flop. "We did a good job, our game did not suck, it's a good game! The reason why it's a financial failure is because of those pesky pirates!" It's a great way to shovel the blame onto some anonymous force out there, with no easy way to prove or disprove it. Companies subsequently overreacting with draconian DRM like always online for single player games and the like was a logical consequence of that.

Now devs of shitty games complain that Steam takes too big a cut and doesn't do enough marketing for them (it's a store platform, not a marketing service you retards), also the fact that Steam allows everyone to release their games on it means games get lost in a flood of stuff. That's the reason our game failed, honest, if Steam had better curation our game would have been a massive success! It's not our game's fault!!
Yeah. After all, you can't expect a single excuse to save your ass forever. Gotta move onto a different excuse once your boss starts seeing through the bullshit. That's likely why the whole crusade against piracy thing kind of fizzled out in the last couple years
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
I'd love a chart that shows where all of that money is going because I think most would find that its consolidated within 5 mega corps and the rest are smaller companies.
Indies would not even show up on the map that's how small the market is.
 

Outlander

Custom Tags Are For Fags.
Patron
Joined
Nov 18, 2011
Messages
4,479
Location
Valley of Mines
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
PC holds its own in that chart pretty well really, compared to console. Granted a lot of that PC revenue now is Fortnite skins instead of Quake games, but hey... the multiplayer aspect of gaming always was a huge chunk I suppose, and Fortnite is also on consoles. Important thing is our revenue share remains steady and significant.

Yes, but I guess you should also keep in mind that a lot of console revenue is due to console gamers having to pay monthly fees to play multiplayer games :lol:
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,811
I'd love a chart that shows where all of that money is going because I think most would find that its consolidated within 5 mega corps and the rest are smaller companies.
Indies would not even show up on the map that's how small the market is.

It all gets funnelled straight to the Gay Jew Society.
 

kreight

Guest
Cant imagine american corps like Nvidia, AMD and Intel dropping their current businesses in order to switch to consoles and mobile gaming. GPUs and CPUs developed by these giants form the bulk of home gaming PCs and their revenues.

Fancy graph btw. Console gaming is more accessible sure. Mobile is super accessible. But you cant make your own video games sitting in front of the console or staring at your phone screen or tablet. You can do it on your home PC.
 

Catacombs

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
5,928
Cant imagine american corps like Nvidia, AMD and Intel dropping their current businesses in order to switch to consoles and mobile gaming.
If there's more money to be made, they'll gladly do it. Those companies are beholden to their shareholders, and they'll do whatever it takes to make sure they make a profit.
 

ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,604
Nice to be working for the master race platform : MOBILE.

I started my video game career on "handheld". That was... interesting. Like when my father tells me what it was to be working in an office in the late 70ies and I am amazed at how much they did with just a simple phone, except it happened to me.

They are missing Web games, where I enjoyed working a lot as it was the first place where you could manipulate a massive amount of data, adjust, and check impact only two days later.
 
Last edited:

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,227
gaming-history-50-years-timeline-revenue-up2.jpg


Fortnite
Pokemon: Go
GTAV
Angry Birds
Minecraft
Candy Crush
WoW
LoL

Why is it the most popular games are always shit? The common factors with these games in most cases are:

-Easy, simple gameplay.
-Social elements.
-Cartoon-like Graphics.
-Backed by huge marketing budgets (of course).

Generally things that make them suitable for all ages and mental functioning. GTAV is the worst game in this list if you ask me. It's SUPPOSED to be a game for adults, complete with age sale restrictions, yet its mind-numbing trash. All the rest are clearly kid and autist-friendly.
 

Melcar

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
35,216
Location
Merida, again
Cant imagine american corps like Nvidia, AMD and Intel dropping their current businesses in order to switch to consoles and mobile gaming. GPUs and CPUs developed by these giants form the bulk of home gaming PCs and their revenues.

Fancy graph btw. Console gaming is more accessible sure. Mobile is super accessible. But you cant make your own video games sitting in front of the console or staring at your phone screen or tablet. You can do it on your home PC.

Neither of those three have all their business in home PCs. They all have diversified portfolios. Nvidia has their greedy hands on virtually anything tech related. AMD has been buying up smaller firms left and right now that they are swimming in jew gold. Intel the same (tho they were slow to react).
Many youtubers are going about the insane demand for PC hardware these days. Guess they forgot all the shortages during the year. People are simply buying now that there is some semblance of supply (and obviously suppliers can't keep up).
Gaming has always been a driving force in PC hardware advances and it will likely never change. Whether it's user end demand or server side (the future is streaming).
 

kreight

Guest
Nowadays cryptocurrency mining became a thing. It does influence supply and demand. Bitcoin goes up and up. Fuck knows what's going to happen in the next 10-20 years.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
This is a really cool infographic. There were two things that amazed me:

(1) The size of the arcade market. I had no idea that it wasn't until the late 90s that consoles overtook arcades as revenue generators, or that it wasn't until ~2020 that the PC gaming market exceeded the arcade market at its peak. Grew up in the 80s, and certainly played arcade games from time to time at pizzerias, the boardwalk, etc., but I doubt it was more than $10 a year. So this is pretty amazing. "By 1982, arcades were already generating more money than both the pop music industry and the box office." That is unbelievable.

(2) I had not appreciated how large the pre-NES console market was. I knew about the glut/die off, and had some slight exposure to pre-NES consoles (I think a neighbor had bought a secondhand Atari, but I don't think any of us enjoyed playing it), but I always viewed them as a fringe market. But if I'm reading this right, the Atari/Colecovision console market was bigger than the NES/SNES/Genesis/PSX/Saturn/etc. market, and it wasn't until X-Box/PS2 era that the console market grew back to the Atari/Colecovision era size. That's kind of amazing.
 

Decado

Old time handsome face wrecker
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
2,544
Location
San Diego
Codex 2014
Can someone explain to me how in the hell is the mobile market so profitable?
I have some games on my smartphone and I didn't pay for them. In fact, none of my mates payed for the games they have on their phones

Handheld market... I knew the DS/PSP era was special. :negative:

I would say it's still alive thanks to the Switch

Read this, it will answer your questions and disgust/horrify you.

https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
Gaming has always been a driving force in PC hardware advances and it will likely never change. Whether it's user end demand or server side (the future is streaming).

you're making the assumption though that games developed on PC will be for the PC market. Which I'd tell you won't be the case going forward. They'll be developing mobile games on PC and shipping mobile games to the PC market similar to what you already see happening on Steam.

I see the PC market turning into an indie enclave tbh you'd get a slight resurgence from the indiepocolypse but you'd end up with a very competitive market for minimal gains which lets face it is better than it is today because today's indie market is really bad. Meanwhile the AAAs will have abandoned consoles entirely in favour for Mobile titles just like Blizzard and Epic have been doing. Just look at how many games now come with MTX despite being full price. Mobile business models are moving into PC and Console because they want that same profitability there as well but it ain't gonna happen because those platforms have higher standards.

There's a bad trend we're seeing and with this current console generation likely being the last the future will be Mobile and with it the design trends will also be Mobile. AAAs will eventually give up that's what I'm seeing likely going to happen the model has been broken for decades and it doesn't translate into sustainable profits. Mobile on the other had provides cheap development with corrupt business model and low turnaround times for the largest profits and gains.

Hate to say it but it don't look too good for us.
 
Last edited:

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
you're making the assumption though that games developed on PC will be for the PC market. Which I'd tell you won't be the case going forward. They'll be developing mobile games on PC and shipping mobile games to the PC market similar to what you already see happening on Steam.

I see the PC market turning into an indie enclave tbh you'd get a slight resurgence from the indiepocolypse but you'd end up with a very competitive market for minimal gains which lets face it is better than it is today because today's indie market is really bad. Meanwhile the AAAs will have abandoned consoles entirely in favour for Mobile titles just like Blizzard and Epic have been doing. Just look at how many games now come with MTX despite being full price. Mobile business models are moving into PC and Console because they want that same profitability there as well but it ain't gonna happen because those platforms have higher standards.

There's a bad trend we're seeing and with this current console generation likely being the last the future will be Mobile and with it the design trends will also be Mobile. AAAs will eventually give up that's what I'm seeing likely going to happen the model has been broken for decades and it doesn't translate into sustainable profits. Mobile on the other had provides cheap development with corrupt business model and low turnaround times for the largest profits and gains.

Hate to say it but it don't look too good for us.

Did you just come out of a coma? This is the shit people were saying before the PS4 launched and sold a bazillion units, battle royale and stuff like R6 Siege took off and indies started making money and bringing serious diversity to the PC platform. Yes mobile is exploding and making a ton of money, but look at the chart... it's not cannibalizing PC and console, it's adding on.
 

Mexi

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jan 6, 2015
Messages
6,811
Man, I randomly played CandyCrush on my cellphone because I had literally like 5 hours to kill. Went to eat, watched a game for a few hours, and sat there playing Candy Crush in an empty restaurant, and damn, I can see how those games can become addictive. I didn't get addictive because games like that bore the fuck out of me, and they're only good for like dicking around for an hour or so.

The thing is that the fucking game isn't anything innovative. It's like Dr. Mario/Tetris or something. It's crazy that these games that are like free to play on a Gameboy have become billion dollar industries. It's like these phaggots never owned a fucking Gameboy. Anyways, fuck, the cellphone games always seems to amaze me. People just throw money at these fucking things.
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
Did you just come out of a coma? This is the shit people were saying before the PS4 launched and sold a bazillion units,

If you look the source of that graph it shows that game sales on console from that generation were fairly stagnate they didn't grow very much. The hardware sold yes but game sales were relatively unchanged. (*PS4 didn't start getting bigger Console to Game Sale Ratios until the PS4 Pro)
PC on the other hand surged but it seems attributed to Asian Free to Play markets.
If you look at the economic trends there is far more push to adopt free to play and far more push to invest in Mobile.
I think the traditional models will die out in favour of Multiplayer Free to Play that's what I see going on. You have studios doing singleplayer still but I'd argue these are more out of the fact that they do make money still but are nearly always made to push a multiplayer mode. Which is why Cyberpunk is doing one and why I expect every major AAA ip will eventually go the same way.

It looks bad. So whilst we're not going to see a total abandonment of the platforms we are going to see studios more likely to push for Mobile parity like they've been doing but I expect it to be more aggressive this generation because look at the damn numbers. Its insane.
 
Last edited:

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
If you look the source of that graph it shows that game sales on console from that generation were fairly stagnate they didn't grow very much. The hardware sold yes but game sales were relatively unchanged.
PC on the other hand surged but it seems attributed to Asian Free to Play markets.
If you look at the economic trends there is far more push to adopt free to play and far more push to invest in Mobile.

Again, people have been saying that for a decade, and yet consoles, PC components and "normal" video games still sell great and make a lot of money. A big reason everyone doesn't switch to mobile is because then that market would be even more flooded than it already is, and there is money to be made making a "AAA" game or a "AA" game or an indie game or whatever. 70 billion dollars in fact, according to that chart, and no one's tossing that out the window saying "fuck it" because something else makes more. It's like how the success of VR doesn't automatically correlate to the death of monitors, they're not identical experiences and the success of A doesn't mean the death of B. Things can coexist.

I think the traditional models will die out in favour of Multiplayer Free to Play that's what I see going on. You have studios doing singleplayer still but I'd argue these are more out of the fact that they do make money still but are nearly always made to push a multiplayer mode. Which is why Cyberpunk is doing one and why I expect every major AAA ip will eventually go the same way.

It looks bad. So whilst we're not going to see a total abandonment of the platforms we are going to see studios more likely to push for Mobile parity like they've been doing but I expect it to be more aggressive this generation because look at the damn numbers. Its insane.

If your actual argument is "more and more AAA games will be online games" then that's a whole other thing entirely and not tied to mobile at all. Also that's another thing that was a big fear years ago but so far lots and lots of singleplayer games still pour out. Maybe it'll slowly become the realm of AA and indie over time, it's hard to say, but I'm not really worried about it when there's still so much coming out I have a hard time finding time for half of it. And as someone once told me on here, for every Rainbow Six Siege success you get a Division 2 or Ghost Recon Breakpoint failure. Look at what just happened with Avengers. An online game isn't a license to print money either.

And if the future of singleplayer were to become AA and indie for the most part, is that so bad? I don't think so.

tl;dr Calm down shit's fine.
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
And if the future of singleplayer were to become AA and indie for the most part, is that so bad? I don't think so.

That's wishful thinking I think. Never gonna happen.
70 billion dollars in fact, according to that chart, and no one's tossing that out the window saying "fuck it" because something else makes more.
Again not saying that. I'm specifically saying that PC and Console will not be lead platforms so this idea of Mobile lead development does scare me a bit because of the monetisation practices and this habit of psychologically manipulating players at expense to the game quality. Again we've seen it real bad anyway with AAA but its a trend now and it'll get worse with that surge in Mobile market share. The focus is going to move further away from quality I think. Which is bad because the quality was already terrible. Basically we're not turning around if anything we're accelerating more into the chaos.
 

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
Patron
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
5,898
Location
The land of ice and snow.
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
The only problem I have with that little graphic is that it makes no mention of Clash of Clans as the harbinger of doom. Everything that we have to endure today: recurring spending, in-game purchases, addiction-based model and many other such cancers started there.
 

kreight

Guest
The only problem I have with that little graphic is that it makes no mention of Clash of Clans as the harbinger of doom. Everything that we have to endure today: recurring spending, in-game purchases, addiction-based model and many other such cancers started there.
Clash of Clans has nothing to do with it. Its the people who are ready to spend money on mobile games and games in general. Theres no fire without a smoke.

I wouldnt worry about PC gaming, its not going anywhere. Its going to stay as a basis for video games. With the introduction of fast food normal restaurants did not vanish.

I would like to see some sort of a chart showing the connection or the lack thereof between those who play games on mobile and those who play on PC.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

whydoibother

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 2, 2018
Messages
15,478
Location
bulgaristan
Codex Year of the Donut
I don't think people play mobile games INSTEAD of PC games. Maybe in addition to PC games, in situations you wouldn't play a PC game (on the bus, at the waiting room). Maybe people who wouldn't play PC games to begin with (the poor, the c-c-c-ccccCASUALS).
And if we cut off the mobile market, we see a slow steady and healthy growth, despite the graph being drawn to look like a downwards trend. That's just the cartoon of the graph, not the data of the graph. Consoles grow, PC grows, handheld became phones, arcades became dead, VR just arrived. That's the data.
 
Unwanted

†††

Patron
Joined
Sep 21, 2015
Messages
3,544
The only problem I have with that little graphic is that it makes no mention of Clash of Clans as the harbinger of doom. Everything that we have to endure today: recurring spending, in-game purchases, addiction-based model and many other such cancers started there.
Everything started with HORSE ARMOR.

Thanks Todd.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
4,731
Location
Oneoropolis
Everything started with this casual multiplayer shit. True gamer gaming is autistic and single.

Yes, Counter Strike, I'm looking at you.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom