But it wont, because most video games are no longer tied to physical products. It takes very little effort to purchase and delete video games now, and they take up 0 physical space. And, there isn't a new technology to replace the current mediums. They are also much cheaper compared to then.
It was an interesting time in video game history though because the video game market in 1983 became saturated with low quality games and clones because Atari did not enforce any control over 3rd party studios/publishers. People lost trust in product quality and stopped purchasing games. There was a 97% drop in revenue. !!! (not a typo)
Then Nintendo swooped in several years later and enforced quality control.
Recently I heard the Nintendo Switch is opening the doors to 3rd party developers. I think Unity already has a module for creating games for the switch, so the flood is coming, if it hasn't already.
My point is I'm sad to see everything go way of the internet. Procurement is dying and yet is necessary for quality. There's no enforcement in the Android store (and partially the the App Store) per the article. Steam opened its doors to everyone years ago and there are hundreds (or thousands?)* of new games added every day to steam. I believe they changed their algorithm to match games based on sales, not similarity (which makes sense, except my particular favorite genres don't have a lot of competition, so I really have to dig deep to find similar games).
Haha.. maybe I'm just getting old. I just dont want to have to put effort into finding quality products. It's such a waste of time to go pioneering.
Edit: *Correction, it's 100-200 a week, not per day.
I always get a schadenfreude from creative destruction, but with the exception of Covid causing WFH to go mainstream there hasn't been any as of late. There's no bona-fide disruptive innovation today, only a race to the next big thing fueled by essentially free capital. A race in which it's more important to chase the rabbit rather than to catch it. Self driving cars, anyone? Metaverse?
> Recently I heard the Nintendo Switch is opening the doors to 3rd party developers. I think Unity already has a module for creating games for the switch, so the flood is coming, if it hasn't already.
There's 4338 games on the Switch[1] and the eShop has terrible discoverability. The flood is already there.
For comparison, the Wii only had 1595 games released over its existence[2].
Admittedly nowhere near as bad as Steam though, which had 10,263 games released in 2020 alone[3].
There's undoubtedly a flood of trash. But lower barriers to building games isn't making the game industry worse.
Somewhat strained metaphor here, but think of energy. Cheap power generation helped the Industrial Revolution along and caused a ton of awful, smoke belching factories to pop up, and a lot of people hated that. But cheap electricity is also the bedrock of every innovation since (including the type HN likes).
Easier accessibility to whatever resource always generates crap, but that crap always contains a percentage of treasure. And there's a lot of really, really good stuff hidden away on Steam that wouldn't exist without the easier tools we have today.
But it wont, because most video games are no longer tied to physical products. It takes very little effort to purchase and delete video games now, and they take up 0 physical space. And, there isn't a new technology to replace the current mediums. They are also much cheaper compared to then.
It was an interesting time in video game history though because the video game market in 1983 became saturated with low quality games and clones because Atari did not enforce any control over 3rd party studios/publishers. People lost trust in product quality and stopped purchasing games. There was a 97% drop in revenue. !!! (not a typo)
Then Nintendo swooped in several years later and enforced quality control.
Recently I heard the Nintendo Switch is opening the doors to 3rd party developers. I think Unity already has a module for creating games for the switch, so the flood is coming, if it hasn't already.
My point is I'm sad to see everything go way of the internet. Procurement is dying and yet is necessary for quality. There's no enforcement in the Android store (and partially the the App Store) per the article. Steam opened its doors to everyone years ago and there are hundreds (or thousands?)* of new games added every day to steam. I believe they changed their algorithm to match games based on sales, not similarity (which makes sense, except my particular favorite genres don't have a lot of competition, so I really have to dig deep to find similar games).
Haha.. maybe I'm just getting old. I just dont want to have to put effort into finding quality products. It's such a waste of time to go pioneering.
Edit: *Correction, it's 100-200 a week, not per day.