With the economic crisis and with a few studios now closed I think we will see much more sequels for the next 2-3 years. Because of this I think the big money will be in a simple original game.

Two words: Episodic Content.

One of the only things I've agreed with Molyneux on, games are too expensive. Yeah $50 bucks divided by 40 hours...carry the two, I don't want to play games if it is going to run that much at the store, and I certainly don't want to pay anything for an online download that has ZERO physical value, which I think is a big part of consumerism. When a months a little bit tight video games are the first thing I cut, but that's just me. And the Christmas release from September to December have gotten out of hand. People don't have unlimited amounts of money to drop on entertainment and we would be better off releasing titles through out the year, we would be better of making it a point to do that. There is only so much three months of paychecks can buy, and by the time the holidays are over I've forgotten about the games that came out before and during Sep.-Dec., so now they get no money.

But in the end its all retail and everything surrounds Christmas, so what are you going to do?

Well I think our number one priority is for more companies to survive. Money is indeed tight and people seem to be choosing reliable sequels rather than new IPs. While I don't like the option, that just means game companies are gonna have to do what they can to survive for a little while, eventually mainstream will become more adventuresome again and someone will begin to capitalize leading more companies behind.

Until then it will probably be indie producers coming up with the original stuff. Hopefully companies will keep an eye out for this stuff and bring in good potential from the people that can afford the risks of original material.

The idea I would like to toy with would be to have established companies have original IP teams. Low budget projects that sell for less but with the focus on coming up with original ideas. While I'm sure money is tight it seems that these kind of titles might get good attention at a lower price point in our economy. I sincerely believe that a low budget game with a good idea and design behind it can do well with a big name backing it and word of mouth around those looking for more bang for the buck.

That or maybe they should call games "Original Title 2" just so people think its already been received well

Personally, I'd like to see more lower-budget, but high-quality, B-games like Persona 4. I'm a bit sick of AAA releases, most of which fail to sell all that well anyway. Budgets have become ludicrously chubby, but quality hasn't really increased. Design suffers while money is pumped into technology, and we're already talking about the "next" wave of systems.

It's not just the economic "crisis" that the news keeps shoving down our throats; it's a problem in our industry that needs addressing, as Japan erroneously thinks they need to "westernize" and casual games sell like mad. We can learn from that, not by making our designs more "casual" but by spending time ON the design rather than on overpriced graphics technology and billions of voice actors, etc etc etc.

I'm quite sick of triple A.

@ Stephen

That is something that I have heard discussed a few times in the past couple of years.

The movie industry doesn't focus all of its time and money on blockbuster movies. They allocate funds to smaller indie type movies and work with those.

The games industry could do much the same. They could help fund some of these smaller titles. By spending $500k - $1m on a small game for one of the console's DL services or a $30 game could do well to introduce new IP and bolster the indie segment.

Also @ Stephen

I foresee a similar future for this industry and its one that I quite indeed don't want to (I kinda touch on this in my most recently blog entry).

Personally, I have to say, if I was a game writer/director, I'd very rarely make sequels. I'm quite passionate about versatility and I'd think thrice if I feel like about to go down a road i've already traveled.

But I understand these companies are also businesses, their products are investments, and they need to make money. I look at relative sales of games like Zack and Wiki, No More Heroes, Valkyria Chronicles and Mirror's Edge to the all too familiar titles with trailing numbers in the name and I really can't blame the budget providers for conforming to it if they feel they have to for survival. I don't like it, plain and simple, but I also don't like seeing loads of people losing their jobs and studios crumble. I think its natural for people to want to stay in a comfort zone and hesitate to step outside their box, I just don't think such a thing is always in the best interests of this industry.

And @ Jessie

Budgets is another think is touched on in my blog. I feel similar about the AAA budget focus. I understand game development is complex and some endeavors require thoroughly staffing of various contexts of expertise, but when you consider that fact that need to make all that money back (and hopefully plus some) with the current standard price for new games and consumers reluctance to explore the unfamiliar, placing so much of your money on so many of these big-budget projects, as well as the sheer amount of the money in question can get a bit ridiculous. I agree with what you said about more focus on design less salivating over technology. Over my Christmas break from school, I've been playing games like Portal, Haunting Ground, Disgaea and Puzzle Quest and its been some of the most satisfying gaming I've done in a while.

And in direct response to Molyneux, someone commenting on a Kotaku story said something that really made me think, and I probably agree: "If Mirror's Edge retailed for $35 if would've sold a lot more copies".

EA seemed to want to make every single title in their portfolio a million seller...gamers can only buy so many games at the prices they are at.

I agree with much of the comments here, lower priced games are needed. Yes, this means a smaller scope in terms of design, but gamers can only spend so much time with games as well. My backlog of games pile still has Mass Effect and Bioshock in there!

@ Jake: Totally agree. Episodic content is great for a few reasons. First off, if the first episode doesn't sell well, you cut your losses right there, and thus you didn't invest all your budget and time into a game no one wants. Secondly, it can be a form of iterative development where the game starts out in with a simpler design that is polished and tested, with more features added in sequels (also adding value and entices gamers to look at the sequels).

While Garry's MOD is an extreme example, it demonstrates these points.

The only hurdle is that the retail point of sale isn't condusive to episodic content, though prime for digital download services. I'll also concede that it works better for smaller scoped games that are planned to be sold for under $20. I have to ask myself, would Burnout Paradise made as much revenue if it retailed for $20, and sold all of the extra DLC (which up till now has been free) at $5 increments? And so I can see how people have reason to doubt episodic content.

Personally, I like to see pricing based on value. Some games are criminally short and lack multiplayer. Those titles, should not sell for more than $39.99. The more you can offer the game, the higher the value, the higher the price.

Low budget, low retail price original content is a concept I'd like to see expanded upon. It's expected that sequels will sell better than the original as a majority of fans will buy the sequel, and any newcomers are likely to pick up just the latest title in a franchise. Mirroring your investment to your return expectations means you can channel the kinds of funds AAA titles get into proven franchises rather than taking big investment risks.

I honestly don't see price being issue at all. Everyone always speaks as though every game in existence is $60. The reality is: games you WANT are $60. There are plenty of downloadable games available for $15-20. Wii games are $50, DS games are, what, $30. Plenty of PC games run the gambit, and who knows with used games.

The only reason price is an issue is because you're talking like a consumer who wants more for less. That's fine and all, but as an industry, I see no reason why price should go down. Plenty of high-production value games sell for $60, and since I only buy about 5 or so games in a year, it's no big deal for me if I feel I'm getting my money's worth. And that's the thing: if you don't think $60 is worth the high production values, there are alternatives.

In terms of the prosperity of our industry, I think, in spite of all these protests about price, there's still more than enough success with titles like Grand Theft Auto, Fallout, and Gears of War. If some games are failing at the current price, THEN they should reconsider their strategy (less production values, lower price?).

The reality is, for games to go down in price, the production values must, too. But ironically, the games with the highest production values often sell the best (see the big three I mentioned above). I think we can have our cake and eat it too: you can have the big titles that sell for $60 and still turn a profit, and you can have the cheaper budget games. Will the sales of these big games suffer? I doubt it, because $60 for 20+ hours of content is still better than $20 for a 2 hour movie and $15 for an hour long CD. Even in slow economic times, people have entertainment money, they just have the be careful where they put it, and games are still a great return on those dollars.

Games are not overpriced... at all... think about a movie ticket, about 12 bucks for about 1-2 hours of entertainment. A game is about 50 bucks for about 10-60 hours of entertainment.

Personally, the "entertainment hour per dollar" rate of most games is at a very fantastic rate, but only TRUE gamers know how to figure this into the equation when weighing whether or not to purchase a new title. WE know that that $50-60 game is probably going to average about $1-2 per hour of gameplay, sometimes as low as 50 cents per hour if there's a significant amount of (interesting) sidequesting to be done. But the casual gamer isn't looking to plug 40 hours of their week, or even next two weeks, into a game. They want something they can pick up in 30 seconds that's fun, engaging, easy, and probably most importantly, cheap.

But at the same time, I work pretty hard for my dollars and still have a lot of student loan debt from college, so dropping $60 on a new title is still pretty rare for me, even as a hardcore gamer. I usually buy resale or scan the shelves of Wal Mart and Target for their $20-30 sales, and I'm pretty settled on going with GameFly in the near future just to increase my options without getting crazy expensive.