Jugaccino

DEATH OF CONSOLE GAMING

In tragic news, the latest Call of Duty sold a meagre 100,000 units upon release continuing the year on year decline of the franchise for the past 10 years. Is that statement believable? Is it a possibility? Personally that statement at this moment in time is laughable and speculative considering that the latest iteration wiped the entertainment launch board clean as a whistle. Sitting comfortably at the top of the tree as the most profitable game ever to be released it also represents a worrying trend. While Call of Duty to its critics has not changed for the past 4 years and still sells by the bucketload, there are games out there that have genuine persona and quality yet can sell very very little.

Take Singularity for example. A game that clearly has quality as well as a distinct atmospheric tone only let down by the ignorance of the same publishers that publish Call of Duty. Singularity sold in interest very little. Finding a game online seems like winning the lottery. Game franchises like Call of Duty on the more traditional hi-spec gaming machines sit at the top of the tree changing very little yet succeeding massively. In the times of recession, why by a game which you play by yourself whereas you can buy Call of Duty-the game that everyone owns (possibly).

Gaming on consoles should be seen and act like a spectrum. Genres should offer multiple quality titles that should warrant deserving attention. But for every COD each year we have games like Singularity, Vanquish, Shadows of the Damned in that they are good games. I can safely inform you that those games offer high quality entertainment and fun….well mostly-attempting Vanquish on hard is sort of sadistic on yourself-have a whip at the ready its a painful experience. But its fun though and why should games like these be ignored in favour of games that have stayed the same since the near beginnings of this generation of games? Should the medium praise repetition or innovation as after all this is a creative medium and creativity shouldn’t be ignored. Sadly it seems to be the case.

Maybe marketing is a problem. If COD wipes the floor with sales it surely ensues a high budget and a mass marketing profile. With the marketing profile, its the game on the word of everyone’s lips whether being disputed in Parliament for its content/controversy or the social side it brings-it is in a league of its own in many ways. Yet for all the profit it brings in for each passing year, consumers will see through it eventually (I say speculatively) that repetition is not the way forward as it is indeed the way backwards for this and any medium of any kind.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Game Development, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.