Wii could be the answer

In my last post I talked of the crash of the video game industry of late. As I look closely at sales figures besides the fact that the DS is dominating all sales in terms of consoles the Wii is just trouncing the other new generation systems. I also mentioned in my last post that the video game market is one that is nearly impossible to expand. Well, the Wii has managed to find a way around this. In fact, the Wii is growing so much in popularity amongst the elderly that a lot of retirement homes are investing in them. In the past the video game market has been realisticly limited to males in the age range from 10-35. With the Wii expanding into the older market they are gaining so many more customers than they could have through staying in the current market and developing more like-minded games. In all honestly there is no way that I thought a video game system would be able to enter the market for the elderly because they often don't want to bother with pressing these buttons to control characters that they don't really care about. But with games like Wii sports where they can experience virtual bowling where they actually have to imitate bowling motion there is a new type of virtuality. They can't and often won't want to go try and practice their golf swing but they will happily do it in the comfort of their own living room.
So how did the Wii complete this, they offered something sincerely new to the industry. Yes the Wii offers better graphics than the Gamecube and the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube was. However, compared to what the other generation systems did, the Wii concentrated on creating a whole platform on which games can be based. They offered a new idea, where consumers were actually making movements to control their characters on the screen. They allowed their consumers to mock playing tennis or boxing or running mario around by moving their own arms. Rather than focusing on making our clothing look more real, they concentrated on allowing us to become part of the game. Rather than concentrating on how ridiculous the wii characters look playing Wii sports, we are concentrating on what our own movments are because thats what's making the difference. Working well enough that Microsoft is working on a wii-style controller. Wii has established their competitive advantage and now their competition is scrambling to keep up. So long that Wii concentrates on continuing to develop faster than competition it will continue to dominate the competitors. In the end we all already know we're controlling a character that doesn't exist, and I think most consumers would prefer something else rather than their clothing looking more real, like more control over the character. Something that Nintendo has realized and is making it's priority. In the end, if I'm visiting my grampa to go bowling together because of Nintendo they've done something that none of their competitors have come close to, expanding the market or providing something completely new to the industry.

Crash

As I've mentioned before the video game industry is expanding in that there are more systems are selling each year. However, with the cost that companies are incurring in creating these video games most companies are losing money. For instance, Microsoft lost over four billion dollars with the Xbox. In short, even with the industry expanding, competition is also expanding and there simply aren't enough systmes being sold. So why is this? One article I looked at explored several reasons on why the video game industry is crashing. The two reasons I found most compelling were that the older generation of gamers are doing just that, growing old and not buying any more video games. The second reason I found most compelling was the concept that video games have gone so far with graphics they can't really improve that much more these days.
The first problem is that there is a certain market that the video game market appeals to. This market in reality is pretty stale. There will be those who enjoy playing games in the virtual world and those who don't. Yes it is true that you can develop new consumers and new markets through marketing to them but in the end the entire concept of spending hours going through a virtual story just won't appeal to some people. The idea here is that the people who began buying the Atari when they were young are now too old to realistically buy a new system. While it is true that 25% of gamers are over the age of 30, I'd bet most of those users are on their last system, meaning that they might enjoy games from Gamecube that they played in thier mid twenties but aren't going to buy the next generation system. This is mainly because they don't have time to play through hours of storylines when a lot of the game is based on replication so that they can beat the boss. So with these new generation systems needing more systems to sell to make money, will they be able to as they lose so much of their market in the upcoming years.
The other compelling point was that in terms of graphics games haven't really gone that far in the last ten years. Recently systems are braggin on the fact that cloth and people will look that much more real. Is that the reason we're playing these games in the first place? Aren't we playing because we're controlling a virtual world. This in my mind is a proven point and can be so clearly shown in the pictures used in the article. The game "Goldeneye" looked just about as good as most games these days, it just had a different storyline, in fact probably one that was much more in depth and compelling to users.
In the end, I understand that the industry is growing, the question is it growing quickly enough with the loss of the old generation gamers to continue to make profit? What is it doing besides providing us cleaner graphics and bigger blood spills to keep us coming back?

Handhelds

As I've mentioned in previous posts the market of video games is vast and continues to grow. The idea of controlling something else in a virtual world has shown to be a demand that isn't going anywhere. Well isn't going anywhere in terms of profit, however these virtual worlds may be traveling all across the country soon. This being because handheld games have overtaken console systems in sales as of late. Handheld systems have been around for a long time, the first handheld system of any sort being released in 1979. The first handheld system to grab a real marketshare was the Gameboy in 1989. Although the Gameboy enjoyed a lot of success, it never matched the marketshare of the Nintendo console sytems. Recently the Nintendo DS shot past 50 million unit sales, putting it halfway to the total Gameboy sales in just three years.
The DS has also become the fastest selling console in Japan.So what does that say about where our society is going and what our needs and desires are. Does it mean that we are tired of paying over $300 for a game system that we can't find time to play? Does it mean that we are beginning to get away from the graphics often portraying extreme violence as I've talked about before? Do we not want a game that will last forever like Spore?
My take is that we as a society are in such a hurry that we simply don't have time for game systems that take up as much space, time and money that sytems like XBox 360 do. The scary part in my eyes is that these game sytems are for the most part being sold to people under the age of 25, meaning that a lot of the people under the age of 25 are too hurried to sit down and play normal game consoles. I think that there are pros and cons to this situation. It could mean that the youth are doing more productive things than playing video games of endless violence, but as I've mentioned video games can also provide substantial motor skills amongst other things. It also could mean that we are exhausting our youth to the point that they don't have a sense of recreation. And there is a fine line between understanding recreation and being lazy, the latter which is a problem our country currently faces. But we can't underestimate the value and understanding of the ability to relax and enjoy yourself. A value that I don't believe can be found playing a handheld game when walking to class or riding the bus, a time in which interpersonal skills can be developed. Thats another negative I see is that handhelds are often used to make transportation time to be less painful. This meaning handhelds would be contributing to the lack of interpersonal skills our country has as a whole. In the end, the extreme rise in handheld sales is a distinct sign that our country values our time more than it does recreational time playing video games. This isn't necesarilly a bad thing but could be contributing to our countries lack of interpersonal skills. Regardless, it will be interesting to see where handheld and console sales go.

Future of games

We've established where video games have been and what they are becoming today. The question is what is in the future. Right now the industry is capitalizing on the fact that society is nearly obsessed with the idea of shooter video games. So when games like Spore come out they really give you insight to where video games could be going.
For a long time the society of gamers has followed a particular path concerning each game. Say the new Mario game came out, there would be epopel that rushed to buy that game and beat it as quickly as possible. They would spend 15 hours or so going through all of the levels or finding shortcuts just to get to the end. 50 dollars spent and conquered in less than a day. This can't happen with a game like Spore, and we knew it eventualy would come. Spore is a game in which you start as a single-celled organism and evolve into a species that you create. You can then go on to create towns, cities and planets. Think of Sim City on steroids. The trick is that you play on a network in which you are connected to all of the other video game lovers that are also creating their own planets and planetary systems. In essensce then because it is a game that is constantly developed and changed by all of the users, it will never be conquered. It is even different than simulations such as second life because at the day second life is still a virtual planet Earth with limited boundaries. In a game like Spore th boundaries don't exist. One of the editors of Spore recently said that to counter all of the species on Spore it would literally take hundreds of year real life wise.
Here's my worry. In our society there is already so much time poured into this growing industry of the virtual world. All of this time is generally concentrated on conquering a game and beating the last bad guy so that they can go brag to their friends. What happens when the game doesn't end. I can see it going one of two ways. The first being that games like Spore never really catch on and the world of virtual gaming goes on unaffected by the recent developments. The second option is if this game really catches on and friends are no longer competing against time to beat a game but competing against anyone who decides to start creating their own worlds. In this ever expanding virtual world, where's the last guy, and when would it end?