Dyack: Industry making more games than consumers can handle

It's not the amount of games that are the issue, it's the timing in which most are releases that is the issue.

1. For everyone posting saying that can't afford multiple titles a month. That's perfectly reasonable, I mean most people cant. That said you still shouldn't want less games. Would you rather have to deal with not playing a game at release and at a time down the road when you can afford it or to not play it all?

What you should do is create a doc where you simply add games you want and then refer to the list when your ready to buy your next game. This way you don't forget any games you wanted to pick up but couldn't.

2. The good thing is games are being spread out across genres. It's not like every game releasing this fall is a FPS. I like all genres (save JRPGs) so I end up buying every major release but not all games are that way. A wider selection of genres is always a good thing.

3. Timing. I seem to be in the minority here reading all the posts, but I'm bored right now with slim pickings on games to play. I own a 360, a PS3 and DS. I buy every game I want at release and right now there isn't much out there. I just finished Call of Juarez which was the last new game I bought. We need more triple A titles released during the summer. Thankfully Spring has picked up in terms of major releases but Summer is still seriously lacking.

4. More titles means better titles. The more competition there is the better games we get. I'm not really looking forward to the new Tony Hawk but at least it's progression. Had Skate never came along, I doubt we'd be seeing a this change with TH.

5. Not everyone likes to play games multiple times. I wish I wasn't this way but I am. Once I know the story, there's no real motivation for me to play through a second time. I'm the same with movies. If I'm going to sit down and invest my time into a game or a movie - I want a fresh experience.

Personally I am more excited for this fall than ever before. I don't like to focus on more than one game a time so obviously I won't be able to play all of them at release but I'd rather have them sitting in my cabinet ready to be played when I want than for them not to be released at. Typically I'll focus on MP games at release since that's when the most players are online. During the day I'll play SP and then MP at night.

There may have been 300 games releases in November but how many were actually triple A titles? 3-5?

Dyack, as usual, is wrong on several points.

1) The movie industry does not have one single standardized format for movies. Major motion pictures release first to movie theaters, then to DVD. But there are as many - if not more - straight-to-TV movies, straight-to-DVD movies, straight-to-YouTube movies. There are also, notably, television programs. Which are very similar to movies (basically the same industry) and compete with them, but which are broadcast on television first, then put on Hulu, then released on DVD. And the cost of making movies is rapidly dropping, such that, if you *really* looked for *all* the movies released in a year or so, you would realize that there are far, far more of these than games.

2) The games industry used to have a single, standardized format that various manufacturers could implement and all developers could code to. It was called the PC. And it's a *pain* to develop for, because no two computers are alike, or have the same specs, or are guaranteed to have the controller you want them to have, so you have to write your game to adapt to a whole range of environments, and controller configurations, etc. And it certainly doesn't benefit the consumer, as the amount of money you spend on a PC whose specs are equivalent to a gaming console is much, much higher. And your games don't work half the time. And in ten years, they won't even run on your *new* computer.

3) I fail to see how a single console would reduce the number of games available. Presumably, this would make life *easier* for publishers, who could now produce more games, which...would all require a huge marketing budget to sell well. Much like it is now. (And, for that matter, how the movie industry is now!)

In conclusion, Denis Dyack wishes he were a film director instead of a game maker.

man, i still have to go back and beat God of War 1, and then play and beat God of War 2 before God of War 3 comes out!

not to mention actually moving beyond the first level in LBP!


I kinda blame this on GTA4, which took my attention for an ENTIRE YEAR.

I just continue to raise my standards.

In the early 80s, I'd play a terrible game for hours and hours (e.g., Space Invaders). In the late 80s, I'd give almost anything an hour or two (e.g., Fester's Quest). In the early 90s, the game had to be at least marginally enjoyable to get an hour or two of play (e.g., Streets of Rage 3). In the late 90s, I'd give a highly rated game (e.g., TLoZ:OoT) about two hours to convince me that it was worthwhile, and nothing else would get more than about 15 minutes to do so. By the early 2000s, I'd cut that down to about an hour for a "game of the year" game (e.g., Morrowind).

Nowdays, a game has to grab me right off the bat, no matter the ratings. I still put too many hours into games that are merely passable (e.g., FallOut 3), but if the game starts out shitty, I just toss it (e.g., Metal Gear Solid 4).

if those 300 games coming out every month were actually developed properly, made people think and not made into a brainwashing walk around, plug-and chug video game....Games that have come out in the past 3-4 years have just turned people's brain to pulp...leaving them to seek out another release title that will just disappoint them again.

so sell less, but quality games...or sell many crappy games...

I've always exercised moderation in my gaming purchases, which precludes having this problem. I only buy the consoles that i absolutely know will keep a steady stream of games i like (Nintendo consoles), and i limit myself to one game a month, except in extreme cases (last time i can think of was November 07 with Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Super Mario Galaxy)

I blame MMOs and DLC.

It's not that there's too many games. It's that we're playing the same ones too much. We can't keep wasting 50 hours on a title, like we did in on FF the 90s.

Rock Band and Eve Online accounts for about 75% of my gaming time. The rest is spent on "casual" titles like Boom Blox, Crayon Physics and Peggle.

Suggesting that the industry should slow down is crazy. I don't want the industry to shut down so I can smell the roses. If I miss a good game here or there, whatever, why should I care as long as the industry is continuously creating great content?

On another note, Dyack deserves to have his comments posted as news about as much as the lead developer for Superman 64.

Too Many games is a problem for the developers who need to recoup their investment and (hopefully) make a profit. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the options out there. I only have so much time to play and money to buy. I end up waiting for used versions, or for the games to hit the bargain bin. Not much of a business case for the developers, but it's a buyer's market.

I'm a working adult who has a finite amount of time for videogames (10-15 hours/week max), but I still have all three systems. There are always a handful of games for each system I want to play at any given time. So yes, I ALMOST feel as if there are too many. As weird as it might sound, I'm almost relieved when I end up disappointed with a hotly anticipated game, because that means that I won't spend a lot of time on it and can move on to the next game in my list!

Clearly, this man gets it...for once.

I'm so overwhelmed I throw up in my toilet the moment I wake up. There are plenty of games I want, so many. And most of them are good quality.

It would be nice if everything was kind of spread out a bit. But I have been impressed with some amazing games that have been released recently (Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge, Gears of War 2).

This almost makes me sort of appreciate the Bioshock 2 delay.

I think there is one company to blame for the overwhelming: Activision. Think about it. In recent years, they have released a Call of Duty and Guitar Hero game every darn year, and that's infuriating. I can't keep up with the madness. I think people would appreciate those games more if they released them over a somewhat vast span of time.

"We're making more games than consumers can possibly consume."

That's kind of the point of a free market economy... you might as well say, "there are too many different brands of soda, how can I possibly try them all?"

This is what happens in competitive business environments - you put out products and try to convince consumers to buy them. This happens with virtually everything, not just games.

Without a doubt, there are way too many crappy games
and NEVER ENOUGH GREAT GAMES!

There are too many games released IF you want to play them all. Most of us here probably fall into that category. Just like we'd watch more movies if we had more time, or spend more time at the beach, or...

Excess is everywhere. We're spoiled. We go to BB $9.99 game sales, pick up 20 games, and let them sit for months and months--and some newer, better game nearly always jumps to the top of the list.

It's not a question of supply and demand for games; there are a lot of games, and there is a demand to play them. No question about that.

It's supply and demand for TIME to play games. And as we get older, the supply of time goes down, down, down...

This has been my line of thinking for a while now. That and not being able to have any sort of defense against crappy games. I can't return them for a full refund, like I could to Wal-Mart with any product that doesn't work to my satisfaction. I can only "trade them in" for a small amount of my money back. Why do you think consumers are starting to feel like there are so many crappy games out there? Would Too Human for example be as crappy of a game if it were shipped at $25? $20? $10? If you go low enough, the price will be good enough to offset the crappyness so to speak. But even at $10 bucks a game, if the holidays release 500 games and you want a chunk of them, that's a large amount of your change jar.

That's why I think it would be far better for the systems to move to a more subscription based model. $50 a month nets me any and all games I want to play on the Playstation? Done! All while keeping the physical medium an option for those that don't want to pay.

It's either that or you reduce the game price to be more palatable to consumers, the magical $20 mark, so people can impulse buy a game, and we won't feel as burned as if we bought Transformers or Damnation or the latest copy of Madden that only improves the rosters.

Although I have a feeling that it would be abused by the higherups into more of a tiered structure, like cable T.V. where you have to pay large amounts of money to get anything worthwhile.

Yes, the games industry is pumping out too many games - too many crappy games. Yes, every once in a while we get a phenomenal game like Fallout 3, Crackdown, Super Mario Galaxy, but for the most part the crap dripping out of the industry is either lacking in innovation or hobbled by incomplete production. I'm spending as much time playing games from 1998 as I am with games from 2008, and often replaying good games rather than enjoying new ones. Perhaps if fewer games were competing for the same dollars, better games would get made.

The gaming world needs to listen to Dennis Dyack more often, he's a very smart guy and knows what this industry needs.

I own 3 consoles, because I want to play the best that all 3 companies have to offer on their respective systems, but it's exhausting... there's just too much out there.

For example, I completely forgot about Conduit when it was released, because I was caught up playing other games. It's no fault to Conduit, it's just that there are far too many games being released. Currently I'm playing Red Faction, which is amazing - but how many gamers are missing out on this game because other games are clogging up their time?

Yes, I am feeling overwhelmed.

Dyack seems to be right.

I hate that picture and that smirk. Should of plastered DSG over it.