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When will the next "E.T." moment happen in the industry? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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Back in the 80's, Atari had a monopoly of games and charged absurd amounts of money for titles that pretty much had no quality control. The cost of each cartridge would easily go over $100 in today's money and gamers began to pull back on purchasing anything. This eventually culminated in the infamous E.T. movie tie in that led to pallets of its unsold cartridges ending up in a landfill and crashing the industry.

Now that Nintendo's signaled to the rest of the industry it's okay to sell digital titles at $80 each, how soon do you see gamers collectively hold back on their purchases that will eventually collapse the AAA market? Will the current trade war play a role in the hardware side of things with the collapse? Will all major companies save Nintendo suffer the downturn?

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[-] pory@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

The GAAS crashouts are the modern equivalent. Shareholders were sold the idea of "our own Fortnite! Infinite money forever!". What they got was Concord. Anthem. Marathon. There'll still be cash-grab GAAS out there, but eventually investors are going to put it together that it's not a safe gamble.

But unlike the ET "moment", video games as an industry, product, and art medium are here to stay. Making the things is too accessible now for the entire concept to ever be at risk again. The ET moment didn't just threaten Atari, it threatened the concept of home consoles. Trying to imagine a single steaming pile of shit or even industry trend "threatening video games" now is like imagining a movie so bad that it kills cinema. Even if every single shareholder-backed games studio got rugpulled tomorrow, there are plenty of other studios out there to pick up the slack.

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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