LlamaLAN

This chap has written a very interesting article if you're in any way at all interested in the games market, console or otherwise. You may not agree with all he says but he's certainly not naive. Is he right or wrong? See what you think of the article Life After the Video Game Crash.

If nothing else, it makes an entertaining read.

I dont like the over-conforntational
writing style, and I dont think that
the predictions of Doom are warranted-
after all, people have been predicting the
Death of the Internet for 10 years.
He also seams to think that, as people grow
out of consoles, no one is replacing them-
I dont play consoles much, but my 10 year old
loves both the X-Box and the GameCube, and
spends a fair amout of cash on them.

I do think that the console market is overcrowded,
and Sony's decision to use the Playstation name
to push the BlueRay HDD-VD player is flawed-
with a stand alone player costing $2-300 more
than a PS3, they may end up selling a Lot of
loss-leading PS3's to people who have little or
no intention of playing games on them, or
subscribing to on-line services.
(also, he's off the mark on the takeup of HD-TV-
I'm in and out of about 10 houses a day for work,
and theres a surprising amout of enourmous
HD-TV's in crappy houses, with bad sofa's and
shitty cars outside).

We could well be in for a period of consolodation
in the console market, like when the PS1 came out,
made gaming 'mainstream', and forced sega out
of hardware - but the Imminant Death Of Gaming
is, I think, Overstated.

I think I agree with you because some true gems have made their way into our homes and I've kept hold of my most favourite games. It's not just the novelty of what new things a game has to offer. If a game has a good combination of gameplay, atmoshpere and storyline, I tend to keep hold of it. If I'm out of new games to play and I actually have some hours spare, I will actually get an old one off the shelf, dust it down, and reinstall for a nostalgic revisit and extra fun. Origin's Crusader series is one such example.

But is that a rarity or the norm?