https://ma.fellr.net/@fell/111504811722666890
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You won't like hearing this, but video games must become more expensive. When I was little, my dad got me a PlayStation 2 for christmas, but without any games. My mum was very generous and took me out to pick two games for it. They were 60€ each. Nowadays you would call those full-price games. But now, 20 years later, a full-price game is still about 60€. If you correct that for inflation, it should really be 86€ now. And that's not even covering the fact that games have massively increased in visual fidelity, which is much more expensive to produce. If you don't want games to be littered with microtransactions or ads, then you have to accept that a regular video game must be at least 90€. (98 USD, 77 GBP, 149 AUD, 134 CAD) #Gaming #GameDev #GameDevelopment #Steam #Inflation #Economy #PlayStation
Can't wait to buy the next installment of insert sports game here/call of duty for 100 USD base, 200 for the dlc, maybe even 300 for the ultimate deluxe extreme version.
You're fixating on individual game sales over the total market. 2008-2009 did not really hit the industry hard. There is a mid-generation lul in the market for consoles that occurs in each console generation but besides that gaming really wasn't particularly affected at all.
I also think you're fixated on console here when PC and mobile platforms have exploded, particularly outside of NA/EU.
What this graph doesn't tell you is that the market is nearly double what this graph shows now, $270bn.
You can't just say "mobile doesn't count" either when the top mobile games are HoK - a moba very similar to League, Genshin Impact which is just a port of pc/console, PubG which is yet another serious game, Roblox, etc etc. The mobile platform is a serious platform at this point where the highest revenue games are genuinely serious games.
Who was playing mobile games in 1996 and what kind of phone would even allow such a thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenuk_MT-2000