1983, Could it happen again?

[Lazyjim]

In 1983 the videogame industry as it was imploded. The market lost nearly 93% of it's value, forcing harsh cutbacks everywhere, and several major publishers went under completely.

The result was a shift of home console development away from America and to Japan until the late 90s.

Anyone would agree that there are many thing's wrong with today's industry.
Much of the big budget products are concentrated under the umbrellas of a few really large companies, with the studios themselves often wholly owned by the publisher. With ever larger production values being focused on lines of franchise sequels.

With a new generation of hardware looming on the horizons, amid an unsteady economic climate. And competion edging in from powerful portable units and the innovations in streaming online gaming.On PC there is a growing disconnect between consumer and publisher as each of the major players involve themselves in ever more complex DRM that is all but useless against the pirates, whilst seriously hurting the experiance of actual customers.

And then there is SOPA, the internet is vital to large parts of the videogame community, and the restrictions this act would place upon them are severe.


Could 1983 happen again?

If so what would be the results, would development shift outside North America and Japan? Could consoles survive the trend of convergence in home entertainment technology?
Can the mega-publishers such as EA and Activison, who subsist on a few relatively big budget annual releases, weather such a collapse?

What would be the shape of videogames in the aftermath?

 

[Baldr]

It already did happen(happening). The loss of the B-games market because of the rise of the social games market mixed with the thought that the games industry was recession-proof, when it obviously was not, put a lot of high-profile once profitable studios to close in recent years. There is a possibility that the bigger publisher can go, but that is highly unlikely.

 

[Hazy992]

Nah, the situation is nowhere near as bad as it was in 1983. The main reason the crash happened was because of an oversaturation of poorly made games and hardware. A new system would come out almost every week. This doesn't happen anymore.
On top of that games were nowhere near as popular back then as they are now. There's too big of a market for it to fail, not to mention the huge rise in mobile gaming that'll definitely keep the industry afloat if nothing else does.

Also, just wanted to point out that there was no crash in Europe or Japan; it was purely an American thing

 

[Vault101]

Im no expert...its hard to imagine thease days since its such a huge thing

I would figure back then gaming was more of a niche thing (and we are talking about pre-NES arent we?)

 

[AstylahAthrys]

I don't think the market is saturated with bad games to that point. It was really, REALLY bad in 1983. We have a solid amount of quality games that reach a broad audience making the idea of another crash unlikely. Compared to ET, the worst retail release of last year is pretty decent.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

If SOPA goes through...maybe. It's definitely going to cause irreparable damage to gaming communities and accurate reviews of both software and hardware. (The USA might go back to the times of paid off magazines) It has me worried. It really does. We are close to the end of the lifespan of the consoles and this combined with a censoring of the net might result in the perfect storm of crappy software and hardware.

It might not happen the same way as 1983 but SOPA is definitely not going to be a good influence on the industry from the point of the consumers.

Mario might not save us this time...