TornadoCreator

Yeah thread merge... also you're wrong. I did write a larger post but fuck it.

The bolded is simply false. Countering doesn't break combos, it's basically the core of the combat system. I didn't mention it in my post because I thought it went without saying but the freeflow combat system is probably the biggest reason why the game was popular. It's just fucking tight. The way you seamlessly chain up hits, counters and takedowns, nothing makes you feel like Batman more than demolishing a dozen guys without taking a single hit or breaking combo. If you button-mashed your way through the game, you were doing it wrong. No seriously, I'm definitely right here... I was only playing it last week (and I know how to play it before you suggest I'm just doing it wrong). Countering breaks combos, fact. If you still have the game, stick it in and try it if you don't believe me. I have the game on PS3 just in case that makes a difference but I doubt it. My PS3 is connected to the internet so it doesn't need patching or anything like that. In combat, pushing 'triangle' to counter an attack resets the combo counter immediately. I thought it was a glitch at first but no, successful counters where resetting my combo every time. I'm sure counters where intended to build up the combo, and hopefully the do in the sequels but not here... perhaps you're mis-remembering. I would have marked it up considerably if counters actually worked.

It wasn't on the first page, and pretty much every forum ever has a "don't necro old threads" rule. If the admin/mods care that much they'll merge the threads. I'm not going to start a conversation in a thread that's already reached it's natural conclusion or derail an ongoing conversation to make my post, that's just silly (and counterintuitive if you want to encourage people to post). It is possible to have multiple conversations about the same subject especially if it's with different people... Becides, I don't care if it's already been discussed by someone else... everythings already been discussed somewhere by someone. *I* haven't discussed it, which is the whole point of a message board surely.

Well, this is disappointing... I posted this review on metacritic. I question sometimes, how some games get trashed in reviews for "repetitive gameplay" or "uninspired combat" while this game is praised endlessly. Whilst admittedly fun at times the flaws in this game are many and difficult to ignore. First the positives; This game is truly a realised vision of Batman. The cast of the animated show provide great voice acting, and the art style is very reminiscent of the show. The stealth elements are well integrated into the game also, giving it a somewhat unique feel. Special mention should be given to the Scarecrow sections, which are tense and very evocative. That's it I'm afraid... Unfortunately, now for the negatives; First, the combat in this game is sickeningly simplified. Repeatedly tapping 'square' will solve most situations, and once you've learned to dodge with 'x' when an enemy telegraphs an attack you're unstoppable. Counterattacking is pointless as it breaks your combo to do so, actually encouraging button mashing over tactics. Secondly, movement and camera; you have to hold down either the crawl or run buttons to centre Batman in the screen, now while a slightly off centre over-the-shoulder camera is standard for these games, this goes way too far. Batman is fixed to the left hand side of the screen, effectively making you blind to anything coming at you from the left. Since when was Batman blind in one eye? Couple this with a walk speed that's too slow and a run speed that's too fast and you'll be squatting you way through the game as though Batman constantly needs the toilet. The lack of a jump button and context sensitive grapple hook controls also contribute to fiddling control that really damages the experience. Next there's the boss fights, or lack-there-of. Most bosses are little more than fighting a wave of goons while the boss cackles and watches from a window somewhere. Occasionally there's a big enemy which is beaten by dodging and having them charge into a wall, a technique used more creatively a decade ago in Spider-Man on the PSOne. Lastly for the negatives there's the 'detective' mode which is insultingly linear. Touted as a means to allow none-linear gameplay, all it actually does is mean you have to cover the screen with a blue filter and follow the trail of glowing orange lights to the next part of the story. There's no actual investigation, puzzle solving, or intrigue; whether you're searching for fingerprints, blood stains, or tobacco smoke, your detective mode can sense it from across the room and instantly gives you a straight line to follow. It's monkey see, monkey do, and using it actively detracts from the great graphics. Now ow if an easy, linear, and by the book comic hero game with maybe a dozen hours of content is what you're looking for, great, but if not you'll be disappointed. It's not that it's a bad game, far from it; it was a fun game for a few hours at least, but everything it's trying to do has been done better. Honestly, the Spider-Man game on the original PSOne has more varied combat, better boss fights, a stronger storyline, more varied locations, similar stealth elements, and a far better camera... and that came out more than 10 years before Arkham Asylum. That's rather sad for a game that's supposedly a pioneer of modern gaming. Score -:- 5/10 - Average So, I was wondering; do people share my opinion? I seem to be massively in the minority and I just don't get what makes this game so great in so many peoples eyes. (Oh, and no, I've not played the sequels yet which I hear improve on this game significantly). What do you think of the game and why?

The way I see it, the game could be a festering pile of crap and it'd still be worth the price I paid for the spare box, in case of future breakages. I've got a scarily fast growing PS3 collection now, about half of which where bought on a whim for under a fiver. If I get more than 2 hours of fun from a game for less than the price of a pint at the pub I don't feel I can reasonably complain. That said, it's made me really struggle to justify any game at release price. It has to be incredible to be worth buying over more than a dozen other games combined. Will let you know what I think of Dark Void though.

Got to agree with Ethan there, it's far easier to misplace a file of only a few hundred MB on a 1.5TB hard drive than it is misplace a game disc or cartridge. I suppose you could burn it to a disc, get a blank case and print up your own label; but at that point it's a home-made physical copy and I'm here to play the games, not become an unpaid part of the production team.

On a whim I set up 50 eBay bids on games, all 99p bids with £2 or less postage. Only won three of them but I got 'Prince Of Persia: The Forgotton Sands', 'Dark Void', and 'Batman: Arkham City' all on PS3; all for a total of £6.

The scary thing is how little of today will survive. We've started to reach the point where we've realised CD technology doesn't last. Some early CDs now refuse to read, the data is just corrupt. Eventually this will happen to all discs; so CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, Hard Drives... all gone. Solid State drives we know corrupt data over time too so they're no help. Pretty much all digital storage will be unusable in 150 years, and even if it was, would the future have machines to read our various formats? Not only does a disc have to survive but the machine that plays that disc has to survive too. It's already hard enough to find a working Jaguar CD, Commodore-64 Disc Drive or Laserdisc Player. Imagine how impossible it'll be to find something to read a UMD, HD-DVD, or something really obscure like a CD-i or Nuon disc in say, the year 4000AD. There are other mediums obviously. VHS may survive longer but magnetic tape and video/camera film rots unless stored properly, and even then it's damaged by simple things like light and water. Stored properly it might last a few hundred years, no more than 500 I'd say. Paper is probably our most reliable medium, but even paper is reduced to cellulose unless kept in ideal conditions, shockingly fast. Annoyingly paper will likely outlast anything digital as the words in a book can't corrupt while it just sits there. Still, even books rarely last more than 1000 years when well preserved because again, they rot. USA will be as though it didn't exist for the most part. Plastics will degrade over the years, and wood will rot. Houses are usually made of wood in USA so they won't last. Large cities may use concrete but everything is regularly destroyed and rebuilt as buildings fall into disrepair. Few buildings are more than 50 years old in an American city compared to say Liverpool in UK where most of the city is over 300 years old or Chester in UK where a sizable chunk of the city is over 1000 years old, and a significant of the roads, walls, and larger monuments etc are over 2200 years old. We just don't build things to last any more. At least stone and brick buildings last more than the wood, glass and alloy buildings of USA, but that's not much. What we know of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians, Inca, Aztec and other ancient races is largely carvings and sculpture... outside of gravestones, our society carves very little into stone now. It may be that in 4000AD more is known of Ancient Greece or the Roman Empire than of the United States Of America. Sure some things like Mt. Rushmore and the Statue Of Liberty may survive... but not much more. It's an interesting thought experiment at least.

Never seem to find the time to read. I should make more time. Will start with an old favourite... Gerald's Game by Stephen King

I won't need to back up..so far the internet has done a decent job of that and showing how to do it Emulators and such. I'm more than certain we will have a 360 and ps3 emulators down the line. That's actually a genuine worry of mine. Emulators are flawed, quite considerably. I've still yet to see a decent Sega Saturn or Gameboy Advance emulator that runs without glitches or performance issues on even modern PCs. My phone has more processing power than those consoles by at least an order of magnitude at this point; it should be facile, trivial even... but still people haven't managed it. Hell most 8/16-BIt emulators have one or two games that just refuse to work properly. So, modern games like PS3... I don't think I'll live to see decent emulation of the PS3. The cell processor, much like the processors in the Sega Saturn, is counter-intuitive at best. The Saturn came out almost 20 years ago and we've yet to properly emulate it; I wouldn't be shocked we still don't have any decent emulators for the PS3 by 2030. They'll likely have working PS4 emulators before they have working PS3 emulators as x86 is far easier architecture to emulate.

Quite right, physical media is far from perfect and with disc protection damn hard, though not impossible, to back up. That said, once I've found a way to rip my discs, I can... backing up digital products is often harder unless the service, or at least the original server is running. I'm a collector though, as I said. For me keeping the physical media in working order and good condition is part of the hobby.

Well technically it was two universities and one technical college; but that's splitting hairs... It's good to see someone who appreciates my intellect; ...in all seriousness though, if I'm wrong I'll admit as much. If someone can counter my points and debate with decent etiquette, I will concede. I'll happily say I hope I'm wrong concerning the scope of this crash and I sincerely hope that the systems are all selling well by next year. Obviously I do, I own three of them. I don't see it happening personally, as the effect of this craah are far larger with the industry also being much larger this time... but no-one can say for sure. One killer app and the industry could recover rather swiftly. I just thought this would make for a fun debate.

In terms of the game industry where games routinely cost over $100 million; no it's fucking chump change. Now stop being a pathetic fanboy offended because I dare have you question your beliefs about the industry and learn the scope of the bloody debate rather than hurling insults. So far you've failed to refute a single point I've made, where as I've refuted EVERY point raised in contention. Try harder rather than resorting to an ad hominem... Google it if the latin is too confusing for you.

Unlike you, I try not to talk out of my ass. That's just the initial kickstarter, do your research right. They're still taking donations. Notice how it says accomplished next to the 48 millions stretch goal? And they're already 34% of the way towards 49. If fans are willing to throw AAA-levels of money to fund a project then yeah, I'd say that qualifies as massive interest. What's your definition? Wikipedia is very much out of date. It claimed it had £6.2 million in a mix of crowdfunding and private investment. I then looked up the Kickstarter... fair enough, my mistake. I was only looking it up on the fly though. Admittedly that's a decent budget. It's still a little lacking for AAA but it won't need a marketing budget. Still it will need to sell a decent amount to be successful as it's own profits funded its creation, therefore it needs twice the profit margin of a standard AAA game to sustain it's developer... which, if self published it could manage. I still wouldn't say "massive interest" just yet as the project isn't finished; anyone who's been waiting for The Last Guardian knows that a game doesn't exist until it's in you hand. I am admittedly quite impressed though. I doubt it's an industry saver, but as I've said, a crash doesn't necessitate a lack of product or even a lack of profitable product... who knows thought, this could admittedly make a difference.

I have no issue with Kickstarter, I've backed a few projects there myself; though I'd back far more if they included a physical release as a stretch goal... I can't collect digital games after all. This must be how vinyl collectors feel about iTunes. When it comes to Kickstarter I just know not to get taken in by the hype. Sure a website says Star Citizen is popular but actually only 31,000 people thought it was good enough to back for the full $30 and actually get the "free" copy when it's finished... even if twice that bought it on release it'd still struggle to top 100,000 sales, which is sad by anyones estimation. It's certainly not "massively popular", and it's all because Kickstarter blows all this hype everywhere. The problem with predicting PC is that not all PC users are gamers, Secondly, PC gaming is much more of a niche than people realise. Even massive mainstays of PC gaming like the Civilization series, sells only around 4-5 million copies on PC. Console ports do much worse rarely topping 1-2 million, when they're selling twice or three times that on consoles. While PC will be unlikely to go anywhere as a medium, if anything PC gaming may experience a boom period if this crash continues; I still doubt it'll hold the line. Physical media on PC is difficult to come by with so few retailers stocking decent selections, and as we've established digital just doesn't attract a massive sub-set of gamers (just look at the anti-XBO rhetoric of last year). PC is a wildcard as always, but unlikely to be the industry saviour... though it may help reboot the industry.

If you haven't heard of Star Citizen then not many news source must reach that rock you live under. I have zero interest in it and yet I hear about it all the goddamned time. It's hardly unimportant or irrelevant, it's the most massively successful video game crowd-funding campaign. It just doesn't stop raking in the millions. So yeah, I think you're full of shit! I just love how you accuse others of ignoring evidence yet keep doing exactly that yourself. What it proves is that there's massive interest in the space sim genre. This is a project that is nearing 50 millions when its initial kickstarter goal was 500 thousands. Your definition of "massive interest" is not the same as mine. There's interest sure, even a viable and possibly sustainable market for the genre... but let's not get ahead of ourselves. If the game actually comes out, and manages reasonable sales; around 1-2 million units solds then sure. Until then it's little more than the promise of a game; hell on Kickstarter they're not even required to compensate the backers if the project goes bust; as I'm sure you've heard with the game Yogscast was making. Also, it wasn't $50 million, it was $2.1 which is a hell of a lot less. Considering most AAA games cost well over $100 million, and even the average big-hit indie game can put it's costs at around $1.5 million, I do wonder what the hell they though they could accomplish with only $500,000. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen - See $2.1 million, hardly that impressive really. When talking about the video game industry at large, it seems this forum has a real problem with scale.

The recession is still biting pretty hard here in Europe. There's a massive housing crisis, inflation issues, and a massive issue with cost of living in metro areas. Some countries are really suffering like Romania, Poland, Russia, and Latvia. It may be over for USA, but it's the issue for the EU and as a disabled person, the social cuts have hurt severely for me... and they're still ongoing. By higher cost of entry, I meant both as a developer and consumer of AAA games. Consoles may be cheaper but the cost of living has risen, budgets are tighter, etc. and the difference isn't much. PS3 launched at £425 which was the equivalent of $850 ($600 = £300, and ¥60,000 = £250 at the time, but we were fucked because the industry hates Europe). PS4 launched at £350 which is $600 because fuck Europe. That's not a massive difference when you consider the PS3 came with a game, the PS4 doesn't. With tighter money though, the cost of entry is higher, especially as DLC, special editions, season passes and microtransactions up the average game from the old £35 to £60-80 or more is you're buying new. As for devs, the difference between indie and AAA is getting bigger every year, does that need further explanation? The last point you make fails to see this industry as I see it. If mobile gaming is stronger than ever but consoles die off... that's the industry dead. How many times must I say that mobile doesn't fucking count?! It's not even close to similar. The Last Of Us has more in common with a good film than it does to Flappy Bird or Candy Crush... these things are not part of the industry I'm talking about any more than a Snickers commercial is part of Hollywood.

That's an 8% increase from 2012 to 2013. I couldn't find profits statistics for 2014 so that's the most recent data we have; and yes, in global business terms $400 million is meagre, it's nothing really. I'm using statistics from NDP in case you're wondering and they do include sales from Steam and mobile devices. If Steam is so great, with the prices as they are, if they where ever going to dominate the market they'd have done it already. The fact is, the public at large don't embrace digital media especially outside USA. Valve making $10 million is truly irrelevant... it's pocket change on the global scale. A standard release game selling a mere 1 million units at retail would make around $35 million, and that's just on one game. Most publishers release a dozen or more games per month, and most aim for far greater sales than that. With the rate that the industry is losing money, digital market can't support it all. It's making money at less than half the rate the industry as a whole is losing it. This means more studio closures and yet more unemployed designers and programmers. That's my point.

I'm not impressed by indie games. Back in the 90s and early 2000s small devs existed. Hell some big franchises today started out as indie games. My issue is that most of them are crap, they're largely lacking in quality control, and they rely far too heavily on nostalgia or baiting YouTubers (thank you PewDiePie you prick*). Show me an indie game worth getting and I'll get it, once they give it a physical release ie. Minecraft, Journey, Super Meat Boy etc. I occasional relent and get the digital if I know there's no chance of a physical release; and it's heavily discounted. The vast majority though are awful. Sure budget shovelware was bad, but was it really Air Control, Flappy Bird, Slender or Goat Simulator levels of bad? I think not. The day indie takes over is the day I go full retro. *I have nothing against PewDiePie, he's actually a cool guy who's helped out a lot of charities etc. but his videos are utter shit and his fanbase moronic.

I swear I'm never going to finish your post... Way to misquote me there. The industry IS built on th multiplayer FPS craze... notice the word IS! As in, currently. The overwhelming majority of AAA games are FPS games almost all of which have multiplayer, whether they need it or not. This means that the current prevailing trend, or industry bubble if you will indulge me, is the multiplayer FPS. How did you fail to understand that statement and instead take it to mean, "the industry has always been based on multiplayer FPSs"? I've not even heard of Star Citizen, therefor it's unimportant. If a game can pass me by without me knowing it exists, when I actively take part in multiple online gaming communities and follow gaming news; it simply doesn't matter. After googling it, I find the game hasn't even fucking released yet... hell, it may never release for all we know; after all Yogscast game got cancelled. So a crowdfunded project has some money; big woop, what does that prove exactly? Nothing. Just that people are such fools they'll pay for the promise of a game some time in the future, rather than buying finished, decent, and complete games. It's the natural extension of the pre-order/early access culture we have now. Besides at that funding level, assuming a standard $60 price point, it sold the equivalent of only 70,000 copies. Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2 sold more than that and that bombed. Even Psychonauts sold more than 200,000 copies and that's famous for being the game no sod bought. If this is your big example of a change in the wind, it's little more than a stale fart. The games industry is two orders of magnitude bigger than Star Citizen, as I thought, it's insignificant. I don't like this fact, hell I hate it. I've never yet actually enjoyed First Person Shooters; but facts remain, the FPS bubble is still where AAA is firmly seated, just look at the PS4 retail lineup. CoD: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Killzone: Shadowfall, Sniper Elite 3, Wolfenstein, and the upcoming Destiny, and CoD: Advanced Warfare. Thief is basically an FPS with a crossbow (it's certainly not the Thief of old). Even Watch_Dogs, Tomb Raider and The Last Of Us have FPS inspired multiplayer shoehorned in. That leaves erm... Assassin's Creed IV and Knack... YAY... Seriously, FPS games make up half the games released at retail nowadays, and you're saying the industry isn't reliant on this genre.

In what universe did the PS3 come out in 2005, because it came out in March 2007 over here and November 2006 in USA, so how is using 2008 figures so bad? I want to see you compare the July 2006 PS3 figures with todays PS4s, that'll be fucking hilarious. 2-3 years?! It's 1.5 years from the US launch and only 15 months from the PAL launch. How can I take you guys seriously when you act like the PS3 was released in mid-2005? Sure the 360 was out, in December 2005 in USA and Japan (ha!), but the rest of the world got a staggered release over the next 2.5 years. Then there's the Wii, which released December 2006, so 18 months before my chosen date. Now considering the Wii U has been out for a little under 2 years, the Vita almost 2.5 years, and the 3DS 2 years 8 months... I think it's pretty even really. Naturally people are only counting the PS4/XBO though because that supports their point. Which is incidental anyway. The point remains, I DON'T want to compare this gen with last gen, I want to compare the industry today with the last six years ie. since the international banking crisis. If you like I'll make the same arguments for July 2008 vs July 2013... before the current generation was even in full swing, and before the PS3/XBO release. You're all focusing on the wrong bit.

You're having an argument with yourself then... my premise is that the games industry is failing, NOT as you seem to think, that the PS4/Xbox One are doing worse in USA than the PS3/360 where doing in USA at this point in their lifecycle. We call this a strawman, rather than argue against my actual points you fabricate something I didn't say and prove it wrong, then claim you proved me wrong. At no point did I say last gen consoles outsold this gens consoles at launch; why are you focusing on this? My position is that the games industry is a bloated mess that cannot sustain itself in it's current form and that the current console generation is entering into a market where they cannot be successful without beating some rather extreme odds. I've sited sales data, profit statistics, and industry events as my reasoning, as well as basing much of my opinion on the observed buying habbits of modern gamers and some basic psychology and economics. This isn't difficult stuff to check... just google it, you can see everything I'm saying is true, or do you expect every conclusion I reach to have a hyperlink directing you to someone else saying the same thing? Having a source for you data, posting pretty graphs, links to new articles, etc. means nothing if you don't know how to interpret these things and reach a conclusion. All you've demonstrated here Ethan is that the PS4 and XBO sold better than last gens consoles did in there opening months in USA, (but not the Wii U, Vita, or 3DS)... this says nothing. So what? Does this fact prevent the gaming industry from going into financial collapse? No, it doesn't. It doesn't make a jot of a difference one way or the other. All you've proven is there was a heavy adoption rate followed by a steep decline of interest in those two consoles, in that one region, in that isolated time frame... which I'll point out was Christmas 2013, so sales being high is hardly a massive shock. Go to this page and do nothing more than extend the page to show 2008-Now and you'll see there's a steady and constant decline in sales across all platforms. http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php Infuriatingly I can't post an image from the Wii U, but this shows what I've been talking about, and thats just hardware... software is just as bad if not worse. Reread my arguments if you have to, but please argue my points, not your strawman.

The problem is Ethan, you're looking at tne wrong statistics. First of all, looking at just USA is extremely biased towards Microsoft and against Nintendo, but you're not paying attention to software sales or profitability. Differences in funding for games changes the meaning of sales figures, for a games to sell 3 million units in 2007 is good, in 2014 it's an outright failure. That final graph is terrible. You have it showing a bell curve from 2004-2014 but fail to mention that VGChartz tracks nothing before the 7th generation, in short their numbers for 2004-2007 are very much incomplete which is why I compare the figures with 2008 and onwards. Did you not find it suspect that the figures where so low in 2004? As for the other graphs, launch window statistics are irrelevant as I included 7th gen statistics in my analysis. I'm analysing the industry now compared with the industry as it was over the last 6 years. I'm not on a fanboy tirade trying to prove the PS4 or Xbox One is a failure. I notice you conveniently leave off the handheld systems for example. Now if you believe this lul in sales is normal, fine. Without more complete data, which I'd have difficulty sourcing I can't show you otherwise. But, I'm not just using sales to justify my position. Stock market standings, studio closure, and publisher bankruptcies are also supporting my claim that the industry is in collapse... and those thing are hard to dispute.

That's only comparing a single snapshot with another single snapshot. Yes by that specific point, the sales of those consoles would indicate that the current generation is doing really well. But we know this insn't the case. Overall, the averages are dropping. I wish I was on a PC so I could post graphs.... VGChartz allows for a comparison in hardware sales and software sales to be displayed in graph form. Take a look at sales over the last 5 years. There is a consistant drop across all platforms. Wider statistics show that this industry is losing more than 15% of it's profits worldwide, every year consistently since 2010. I'm not arguing the merits of any single system, or their profitability individually. I'm arguing that the industry is in a tailspin and I don't see it recovering before everything I like in gaming is lost or warped in a way that makes it unrecognisable. As I've said, if you accept that the crash of '83 happened, you must accept that a similar crash is underway right now.

As it's difficult to mulitiquote using the Wii U, I'm going to address individual points in order. Xbox may well be carved out and set out on it's own but I can't see Sony allowing Playstation to be seperated from it's brand. They're trying too hard to intergrate it into everything with Playstation Now and Playstation TV. Microsoft is most likely to simply sell off the Xbox brand if they feel it's not lucrative enough. Your dismissing of Atari and THQ is intellectually dishonest. You're trivialising them because they're the clearest and most damning piece of evidence I've presented. Let me guess, is Capcom unimportant now too? The creator of Street Fighter, Mega Man, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Devil May Cry... so circling the drain that the ENTIRE COMPANY is worth less than the development costs of GTA V. That's sad. You mention the release dates but that's a false dichotomy, I'm not comparing release to release, I'm comparing 2008 to 2014. The 7th gen release dates where hugely staggered, what was 9 months into the cycle for USA or Japan wasn't for Europe, Australia, Russia, or the Asian territories. You're also heavily skewing this argument towards PS4/XBO like everyone always does. Wii U, Vita, and 3DS are all well into their second years. The fact is though, software and hardware sales in 2008, where more than double what they are today, and that's INCLUDING 7th gen consoles in todays statistics. Notice the 2008 statistics ignore PS2/Xbox/GC/GBA sales. The sales for this year, however way you slice it, are abysmal across the board; especially as video games are supposedly reaching a wider audience as the games industry is apparently becoming more mainstream. The 40 million figure is my own estimate, it's an educated evaluation based on the various factors in the industry as to what boundary the consoles must reach to be successful; nothing more than that. Now if people want to dispute my figures fine, but that's arguing minutiae at best. If someones going to ridicule my estimation without providing a counter argument, they're at that point little more than parading their stupidity. The number doesn't matter, what matters is the consoles aren't close to being ecconomically viable in the current gaming environment, with their current sales. If indie gaming takes over as the predominant force, they could be ecconomically viable with half that or less; but that would require a fundamental change in the industry. "As for certain genres being a lynchpin for the industry, that's just pure bullcrap" - No it's fucking not! And that's not what I said anyway. The entire bloody industry is built on the multiplayer FPS craze, to deny that is to lie to my face. Go on, tell me the First Person Shooter isn't the only thing powering this bloody industry because the second you do that you lose all credibility. Every game, if not a first person shooter itself, at least emulates elements from the genre with multiplayer modes crowbarred into everything. The only thing even remotely close to the FPS craze in dominance is Open World Sandbox, and with the notable exception of GTA V nothing there comes close to the sales and prominance FPS games have. Minecraft is an exceptional circumstance, basing your arguments on that is intellectually dishonest and you know it. Like I said in the first post, a crash does not mean lack of product or lack of profitable product. Hell the crash of '83 directly contributed to a boom period for the Commodore 64. Individual games are not good enough, especially not No Mans Sky, a game yet to even release. You're arguing on hope and hype, just like how three months ago the internet collectively agreed that Titanfall was a smash hit that put the XBO and PS4 on even footing, despite it not being out. Now look, it's a flash in the pan multiplayer FPS launched at a time of oversaturation for the genre, and now it's online lobby's are fucking ghost-towns. Looking at upcoming games tells you little about the industries health. You claim the industry is fine, only the AAA industry is suffering but you fail to realise that IS the industry. Indie games cannot sustain the industry. Most are digital distribution and that's simply not being adopted fast enough. The mainstream are already revolting against the AAA mainstays such as COD/GTA and soon there will be the big flop that shows the disenfranchised masses. It's already in motion with the shocking number of people who flocked back to Black Ops 2 after Titanfall... not Ghosts, BO2. The CoD generation are getting older and are realising they're paying too much for almost no upgrade. The teenagers that got hooked on the first Modern Warfare are in their mid-20s now. They have jobs, kids, responsibilities... they're buying less games. The new generation isn't adopting gaming fast enough, instead they're all on mobile apps. If the consoles lose that demographic, and they are losing it, they lose the selling power. No-one will buy a PS4 to play Octodad, Resogun, and Guacamelee. Indie games are distractions at best, and at worse a regurgitation of SNES/Mega Drive games and no sensible person will buy a whole new system for that nowadays. I reiterate. when the multiplayer FPS bubble bursts it takes the entire industry with it... Sure Android/iOS will still exist. Gaming will continue. It won't even noticeably hurt Nintendo which is the one I expect to still be around in 10 years... but will gaming be recogniseable to us anymore? I don't care about indie crap and mobile microtransaction vehicles; do you? Them replacing the AAA industry, that in my book is the death of gaming. It's like saying pizza still exists because you can still get cheese on toast... it's not even close. Even still though, and this is the true tragedy. Even that isn't going to help. Let's be honest here, in 2012 the American video game industry made aprox. $15 Billion, more than half, $8 Billion was made in brick and mortor retailers. That's a drop of 22% in total sales since 2011, a drop mirrored last year when the industry fell another 19%. The 2012 drop was echoed in Europe which saw a 17% decreace in overall sales which is pretty massive. Now to go back, how much of that $15 Billion is attributed to digital distribution, including both AAA and indie games, on all platforms (consoles, mobile and PC)? Less than $5 Billion, increasing by less than $400 million in 2013. A respectable amount sure, but with a meagre year-over-year increase of less than 8% it's simple mathematics. Digital distribution and indie gaming cannot bear the weight this industry is placing on it. This industry is losing money at a rate that's almost twice the growth rate of the entire digital distribution sector. The industries profit model isn't even close to sustainable based on digital purchases, flash sales, and microtransactions; especially as there's every indication that that bubble itself may be due to burst with bad press concerning rip-off apps and a weary public cautious about spending $0.99 on a scam. Do people honestly think that, if retail released AAA gaming falls by the wayside that people will all gravitate to digital games; namely indie games because they'll "have no other choice", because that's not going to happen. Instead a falloff of new games would more likely see a resurgence in retro-gaming as people start scanning through the unplayed games of the 6th and 7th gen consoles at far reduced prices, whilst those who played predominantly online multiplayer games will simply stop playing. We're still in a global recession and as with other smaller industries, hobbies only remain as such so long as they're convienient. When the specialist comic market collapsed in 2007 people didn't sign up in droves to Marvel Direct. No, the market just disappeared. When WCW was bought out by WWF, in 2001 Vince McMann was quoted as saying, "Now the WCW is gone, their fans will have no choice but to watch our product". But they didn't did they? No, as viewing numbers clearly show, they just stopped watching wrestling. You see video games, much like comics and wrestling, are nothing more than entertainment; while highly enjoyable to their audience sure, in the eyes of the mass market they're an unnecessary expense and an easy thing to cut from the monthly budget. Things that are neither necessary nor, with the impending collapse of retail in this scenario, particularly easy to obtain; are always the first to go if money is tight. That doesn't mean they'll stop gaming outright, but a $5 used game on eBay once every few weeks is hardly sustaining the industry now is it, and there's always the option of piracy. Digital has never yet replaced physical media in any area without taking a broadsword to the userbase first and reducing them significantly in size and video games are no different. Unless a niche side hobby is your vision of the future of video games, indie games are not it's saviour. Given all that, are you still maintaining that the industry has "never been better", when it's clearly been dropping in profitability for the last 5 years, hitting what may be an all time low for the industry since the height of the 16-bit era; yet has higher cost on entry than ever before.