The chief analyst at Screen Digest, Ben Keen, has said that a trio of new consoles will not help to stimulate an ongoing seven-year slump in the games market.
The analyst predicted that UK sales will not hit the sales high of £2.5 billion encountered in 2008 again until 2015 with predictions of new consoles coming to the market in 2012.
Speaking to an audience at the 2010 London Games Conference, Keen explained of the current market that “We are really at a tipping point here", emphasising that if the digital and social markets of the games industry were not as strong now that the industry as a whole would be in a much worse state.
Keen also highlighted that the overall decline will stick around for some time due to things such as a cyclical hardware decline, piracy, the pre-owned market and the growth of social gaming.
Do you think Keen's observations are accurate? Or is it another case of an analyst wanting to be heard? Any thoughts, feel free to post them down below.
Source: MCV
The analyst predicted that UK sales will not hit the sales high of £2.5 billion encountered in 2008 again until 2015 with predictions of new consoles coming to the market in 2012.
Speaking to an audience at the 2010 London Games Conference, Keen explained of the current market that “We are really at a tipping point here", emphasising that if the digital and social markets of the games industry were not as strong now that the industry as a whole would be in a much worse state.
Keen also highlighted that the overall decline will stick around for some time due to things such as a cyclical hardware decline, piracy, the pre-owned market and the growth of social gaming.
Do you think Keen's observations are accurate? Or is it another case of an analyst wanting to be heard? Any thoughts, feel free to post them down below.
Source: MCV
Comments
Pyro 5 Nov 2010 22:45
1/1
well developers are trying to combat the pre ownded market by offering free downloadable content for newly purchased games and charging people for the content if they purchase second had. I reckon that eventually they will soon start taking bigger chunks out of game disc so you need to download them as free dlc for new copies and make people pay if they have bought the game second hand (activion or Konami are most likely).
the main problem in the future is originality of games whether it be gameplay or story, the further time goes on the more difficult it will be as it gets done over and over again, this can be good or bad dependant on your view.
finally; piracy is so easy these days, only sony is still fighting the piracy off on the ps3 but all other platforms have been breached, the pc and wii being the hotbeds for piracy and 360 still fighting against it. it is a real problem and i cant see a sensible way to combat this WITHOUT creating great annoyances to people who buy games legitly (DRM is annoying where you need the internet to verify your game in orde to play it and my net cuts out a lot)
so a downward trend is pretty much on the money
the main problem in the future is originality of games whether it be gameplay or story, the further time goes on the more difficult it will be as it gets done over and over again, this can be good or bad dependant on your view.
finally; piracy is so easy these days, only sony is still fighting the piracy off on the ps3 but all other platforms have been breached, the pc and wii being the hotbeds for piracy and 360 still fighting against it. it is a real problem and i cant see a sensible way to combat this WITHOUT creating great annoyances to people who buy games legitly (DRM is annoying where you need the internet to verify your game in orde to play it and my net cuts out a lot)
so a downward trend is pretty much on the money