While recent headlines such as “Game sales crash!” and “Games retail collapses!” don’t paint a rosy picture, we believe the report of the death of console games is an exaggeration. Yet an uncertain future faces those console games companies that choose not to evolve rapidly.
The great games market split: the
Big V revisited
In early 2010 there was strong reaction to our views that some console games publishers were "going down a very risky path...in the long term...they run the risk of becoming like traditional media companues. Cash generative, but declining and cost driven." So we were not surprised by the even stronger reaction last year when we said that "the games market had fundamentally
split into “Value” and “Volume” markets, both by sector and geography. The two
speed market this is creating may have more rapid and profound effects on the
games market than it did on the media market, with meteoric rises for some and slow
going for others.” We called it the “Big V”:
