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When will the next "E.T." moment happen in the industry? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Back in the 80's, Atari had a monopoly of games and charged absurd amounts of money for titles that pretty much had no quality control. The cost of each cartridge would easily go over $100 in today's money and gamers began to pull back on purchasing anything. This eventually culminated in the infamous E.T. movie tie in that led to pallets of its unsold cartridges ending up in a landfill and crashing the industry.

Now that Nintendo's signaled to the rest of the industry it's okay to sell digital titles at $80 each, how soon do you see gamers collectively hold back on their purchases that will eventually collapse the AAA market? Will the current trade war play a role in the hardware side of things with the collapse? Will all major companies save Nintendo suffer the downturn?

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[-] [email protected] 32 points 4 weeks ago

The E.T. moment is overhyped and a US phenomenon. It never happened in Europe or Japan, for example. Everybody seems to think that the video game crash of 1983 nearly killed the video game industry and that the NES was responsible for reviving it while Europe had a vibrant home computer scene on their Commodores, BBC Micros, Sinclairs and others with games that were better than everything on the 2600.

So what you might see is a crash in certain segments of the market and that happens quite often: There is nobody really releasing new MMORPGs anymore. Single Player FPS have crashed hard and now see a small revival by indie devs. For a while nobody did classic Point'n'Click adventures.

Do you want a prediction? The current cost of graphic cards will crash the classic PC gaming market. There are some enthusiasts who are buying cards for thousands of dollars or building 4.000€ computers. But the majority of gamers will stay on their laptops or might go for cheaper devices like the SteamDeck. But if your game needs more power, needs a modern graphic card and a beefier PC, there are fewer and fewer people who can run it and many people can't afford it. So devs will target lower system specs with to reach the bigger audience

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago

What crashed and brought back was gaming consoles.

No one releases MMO’s? anymore? Dune’s MMO just dropped last week.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

I'm assuming it was hyperbole, not literal.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

This user struggles with absolutes.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

The thing is there are a ton of MMOs that are coming out. Their claim makes no sense if you look at the slated releases.

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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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