Street Fighter 2 Creator Warns of DS Market Crash

I think gaming consumers are far more aware than they used to be so a glut of games isn't going to be a big issue.

Not that this guy should be worried anyway. Pretty much all the best-selling games are from Nintendo anyway. ;)

It didn't happen with the GameBoy back in the day and it had a shit-ton of games.

Actually I gave this some more thought and I think we are looking at it the wrong way, likely due to how close we are to the issue. I think that he wants market expansion and is worried that it is not sustainable. We should take it out of the DS context as it was merely an example used for rapid market expansion. Thus I think he is not saying the DS is doomed, but the expanded market portion of its install base will fall out. The DS itself would then see only hardcore titles and be fine or a successor focused on more traditional games would abruptly appear.

Thinking about it that way it sounds as though Yoshiki Okamoto is saying that he wants to make sure the expanded audience does not go anywhere. Nintendo needs to make sure that these new gamers stay with gaming rather than remember it as something that they did for a few years. They are not less aware of quality as our ilk would so quickly claim and if the impression they get of Interactive Entertainment (video games) is that they are cheap crap they will go find another form of entertainment.

With people down on the DS I respectfully disagree. Yes there are bad games on the system, but there are also a lot of awesome ones many of which are from third parties. Ninja Gaidan anyone? How about some World Ends With Your? The software sales are doing well also. Didn't they just report that games were selling for it at a rate similar to the PS2? I think the DS will be just fine especially when Dragon Quest 8.

The most interesting thing to come out of this is that the responsibility is put on Nintendo. For a company that is pegged for never reacting we are actually seeing an overreaction. In the past they were told by third parties that they needed to be less restrictive so they did an abrupt 180 to help court them back. The result is there is no quality control. I think that the developers of shitty games need to take responsibility too, regardless of the platform they are working on.

So, no I don't think we are going to see a market crash on any platform and if there is I suspect it will more be a result of budget games that are not sent to market at budget prices. Don't try to sell me a crossword puzzle collection for $40 it won't happen.

The only way I could see a crash in the future of video games is if when graphics improvements are too minuscule to sell games by itself and the industry pumps a ton of remakes out with no innovate new games. Then people would just play their old games and not bother buying anything new.

Glut of available software? I am curious to find out what types of games he plays on the DS. Because there are a ton of good games on the DS, they arn't all fighting or action oriented.

Fun to read about the '84 crash from the perspective of gamers that weren't born yet.

The crash wasn't because of any particular title or system, it was cause the market got saturated with crap. Back then all you had to look at was a nice painting to try to decide if the game was good or not, and if 95% of the games sucked then you were bound to get tired of video games pretty quick.

As an avid gamer of 8 years old at the time, I didn't even realize it happened. I just started playing Apple and C64 computer games instead, and then transitioned back to video games when the NES came out.

this is coming from a guy that's been living off of the same fucking game for 15 years now.

Bad analogy, I know, but It is sort of like comparing the demise of the dinosaurs to the failure of the Pontiac Aztek.

The glut of crappy movies hasn't exactly killed off Hollywood, has it?

The Gaming Industry is way too established for people to become indifferent to it at this point.

I've always thought one of the biggest things that helped with the Atari Crash was the fact that people weren't used to the idea of breaking compatibility. They were used to having a turntable in their house that could play every album they've ever bought and new albums that were coming out. Now they were being told that the new games coming out for the 7800 or whatever wouldn't run on their 2600 and that they'd have to buy a new system to keep playing new games. That, plus the glut of now-inexpensive 2600 games (to the average consumer all games were the same probably) and they said a collective "fuck you" to Atari and their new game system.

Not the only factor of course but I don't see it mentioned all that often.

What the fuck ever.

A major contributor to the atari crash as I understand it was massive first party investment in crap-ware titles by atari. Specifically pac man and ET. I don't see nintendo crapping out a mario game in 4 weeks and then trying to push 12 million units of it onto shelves any time soon.

The gameboy and NES had a crapload of games, many of which were shitty. They didn't really suffer for it. This isn't 1983, the industry has matured and pepole understand that not every game in a box on the shelf is the same...your not buying random widgets...and people get that now more than they used to.

It's hard to see anything negative in the DS' performance, so I guess someone has to try? I've been completely wowed by the DS as a system, and the wonderful array of games for it. In terms of variety of games, it's certainly one of my favorite systems ever.

If there is too much software, I would argue that the DS demographic is much larger than pretty much any other system. It's a huge success among kids 6 and up, and it's a huge success among older folks, not to mention the core gaming age ranges. This huge audience laps up a wide variety of games, so while I'm in love with Professor Layton, it manages to stand alone as a fairly unique gaming proposition, and the six year olds have a similarly reasonable selection of games that happens to barely intersect my interests at all.

Furthermore, this wide demographic appeal is more meaningful for the DS with its more solitary gaming style and cheaper games. That is, an adult can play Brain Age without monopolizing the family TV, and the kid can play Pokemon without driving the parents insane. The games are cheap enough, everyone's got their own interests, and everyone's got their own screen, so there's less need for each and every game to have wide appeal (as you may see with the Wii).

Don't be so quick to dismiss him. Go to your local *mart and check out the rows and rows of utter shit on the DS (and to a lesser extent, the Wii)

wtf.....the DS has been doing well since it was introduced....what....4 years ago or so? Seems like its sticking around to me :p

The DS is like the hottest hand held for kids in the age range of 6-13 (at 13 they should all upgrade to PSP) and I really don't see that stopping and with Pokemon (god can't believe that is still fucking around...I mean i was in jr high when that craze started that was back in 1998) bringing out all the colors made up or real i can understand why they are thinking DS is have to catch up.