Good article. I'm a big business buff too. One thing you did not mention is the possibility that all this has led to a new gamer market without cannibalizing the core or traditional gamer market. In other words, I would argue that there is no danger whatsoever to the traditional market despite the cheaper entry level for development... which is questionable because the tools were never really the big expense to begin with. The expensive part is the salaries and marketing. Equipment barely costs between 1% to 5% of total cost on most commercial games.

What availability does do however, is make it harder to compete at the lower level. This is why Zynga is failing and should have their executives replaced immediately before all their money is gone. But the small guys will never be able to compete at the upper end of development which means that that market is still the realm of the professional studios.

I also think that the idea of cannibalization between game platforms and pay styles is overstated. I am sure there is some cross over especially when it comes to MMO's and competitive games like DOTA, however if we actually look at the numbers, overall, nothing has really changed except that we have a new classes of gamers that did not exist before. The old class of gamers however, have grown rapidly as well but they are being ignored in favor of what seemingly is easier money (casual games, and F2P models). In other words, I dont think that the market really shifted except in the eyes of the business executives who just want more money and easier money. What we really did the last 10 years, was grow a new breed of gamers that would have never been "traditional core" gamers to begin with. Skyrim is a perfect example of well the traditional core has grown and its a bit funny that there is so little competition in that particular genre of gaming (open world, rpg, single player).

Love the website too by the way. I have it bookmarked.

Well if that 44% left im sure there would be a lot less redundancies

I don't agree with that. I WISH I could agree with that. But buying habits and customer opinions prove otherwise

We've seen developers in the AAA space try new things and ideas. More often than not, the customers aren't willing to give things a chance, or not enough people buy into the project for it to grow.

Creativity works better in the indie space because the budgets, pressures, and expectations aren't the same.

it's a nice idea and it worked during the PS2/PS3-era when AAA didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. smaller budgets and shorter development time left room for more creativity and more risk. a game didn't need to sell 4 million+ copies to break even. things are different now.

This is the guy who bragged about crunching his staff and having them work through the night. Crunch culture has lost more talent and done more damage to the industry than any other factor. Screw him.