Are we on the cusp of a new Great Videogame Crash?

DRM is getting insane. Not even consoles are safe from the DRM machine anymore, with every company and their dog jumping on the online pass bandwagon. While companies give crackers new and interesting challenges and the people who pirate games not really giving a ****, it's the legitimate buyers that are paying the price. As well, games are slipping back into the paradigm of poor quality assurance and lack of innovation. Even Bioware recently published a franchise cash-in for their Dragon Age series. I don't see how much longer this can go on until the video game market crashes again. It's gotten bad that I'm too scared to buy new games now.



Reinforce or refute as you want. Informed discussion is more likely to be voted best answer.Are we on the cusp of a new Great Videogame Crash?
Personally, I think that Extortion Arts - as I like to call them - is really starting to piss off its consumers a lot, but many gamers (I'm not afraid to say) are idiots. They would never dream of boycotting EA Sports as long as they can pump out [Insert Sports Game Re-Release] [Insert Year]. Extortion Arts cares nothing about quality and will do whatever it takes to line their pockets with some more cash. Many people aren't seeing THQ in a positive light anymore either, but I still think that despite their adopting the online pass initiative (I don't care what you say, there is no good to come out of destroying the used games market), they try to help developers and ensure quality. Not as much, but it shows more than EA anyway.



EA is easily one of the largest publishing companies short of the big three: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They have been a very controversial company for a long time, but nobody cares because, hey, they won't get to play football with a controller if EA goes under. Oh yeah, and let's not forget Battlefield, Crysis, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dead Space, The Sims, Command %26amp; Conquer, and any other third-party developed games that EA can get away with acquiring rights to. Those developers go under if Extortion Arts does.



My biggest bite is with Origin. Extortion Arts takes all of their games off of Steam's excellent distribution service (has flaws but it's still great), then puts it on their terrible, terrible service. Steam would discount five dollars from your purchase if you pre-order a game. With Origin, you not only have to pay five dollars to pre-order, but wait in a virtual line to acquire a pre-order, -AND- you lose your games after keeping them for a year. So if you happen to want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic for a little over a year, then EA doesn't care. Tough ****, you have to buy it all over again, at full price naturally (full price being whatever it went down to).



Personally, I would like to see a video game industry crash. What we need is a new Mario, not a new remake of Madden NFL. If not an industry crash, then at the very least Extortion Arts goes under. Maybe then, people will learn how much they cheated gamers like the puppet masters they are. Sure a lot of developers will suffer for it, but the bigger developers will have a better chance of survival and will probably just go find another publisher (even though most, if not all, publishers are corrupt and evil).



Just, please, not Activision.Are we on the cusp of a new Great Videogame Crash?
I think the video game market may be on the verge of crashing again . . But not as hard as before. We already have all of the great titles that were released prior to now so it will be fine in the long run. With the economy as it is there may be a major decrease in sales coming soon. Plus all of the companies are charging more for their consoles via including things that are no longer essential (remember how the DVD player was successful in PS2, but the blue ray wasn't?) , really good question I have never really thought of that happening before. Arcade machines may go extinct if they don't think of some new and innovative technology's fast. Maybe lower the price on them a little, at least on the older one's with outdated game play.