Industry Lifecycles

Here we go again – “________ are dead! ______ is the new hot thing in videogames!” Whether it’s Indiepocalypses or E.T. carts in Alamogordo, haven’t we been here before? Why yes, yes we have. Some things march forward – like costs – and some spiral around the same familiar patterns. In this talk Raph will describe general patterns of platform shifts in the game industry, the inevitable logic of maturing markets, and how that impacts what the audiences look for.

This talk was presented at Casual Connect in LA on January 16th 2008. It is based on over 250 data points on actual game costs, adjusted for inflation, compared to the typical lifetime earning per customer for that game, and compared to the actual install size including streamed down data. It is a follow-on to the talk “Moore’s Wall” from 2005.

Slides

Video

Article

I wrote an article based on this same data, which was reprinted on GamesBeat and Gamasutra, and covered by numerous outlets. You can find it here.