TheGameCollective

According to this article on GameIndustry.biz, research carried out by SwapGame, UK consumers are sitting on £1.8bn worth of used games. Of the 2000 people surveyed, they found that 22% of consumers have 10 or more games in their collection which they haven’t played in over 6 months – that’s alot of money when you think that on average consumers buy 5 new games per year, meaning that half of the unused games are less than a year old! And 12% claim to buy 10 or more new titles per year. That’s alot of money to be sitting on!
The research also found that 10% of consumers throw their unwanted games away, some have money to burn I guess, while 67% say they have a special place for their completed games. Hmm, who’s paying for these games? It’d be interesting to know the average ages of the survey participants.
Also, 38% of gamers have a total of over £100 worth of unused games at home, and over 36% claim to spend only between 1-5 hours playing a game before moving on to a new one. Sounds like they’re not purchasing good games! While finally, 63% of gamers buy their games brand new.

How many of us are thinking of the next generation of console? PS4 and Wii 2 – what improvements might they bring to our gaming needs? Typically, the improvements were easy to predict – greatly improved graphics, processing power and functionality. That is, until Nintendo produced the Wii, or rather, they spotted a trend in gaming and exploited it to great effect. By producing a cheap and graphics light console and instead, targeting the kids purse string holders and appealing to good parents concern for their children’s health, Nintendo single handedly turned the decades long gaming trend on its head. The idea of getting up and moving about to play a game was new and, it would appear, inspiring. Ignoring the fact that the Wii remote and nunchuck were only able to detect general movements, the new control device was innovative and caught imaginations the world over!

Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, created consoles that fitted into the trend very nicely, obeying and (generally at least) satisfying the hardcore gamer’s needs.  The PS3 and Xbox 360 are powerful gaming machines, with the traditional joypad as the main controlling device.

The success of the Wii raised some serious questions – Is the age of increasing graphical montage coming to an end? Is the hardcore gaming market shrinking or becoming bored of gaming?? Neither – the general consensus is (as far as I have interpreted) that gamer appetites have grown more diverse. Consider the popularity of games on Facebook and Yahoo and other social sites, booming markets, which have poor graphics, and focus instead on game play and the social gaming aspect. Evidence perhaps that gameplay is of prime importance to gamers. There’s still a monster demand for ‘Hardcore gaming’, feeding the improving graphics movement and makes up games such as COD4 and Gears of War – complex games in terms of control and skill to play. And then there’s Wii sports, great gameplay that all the family can play and games which can be picked up with friends and everyone can get involved, couples and all. Gamer’s want their games to become more engaging!

So, step in Natal and PlayStation Motion Controller. Microsoft’s and Sony’s responses to the gaming market’s gamplayability desires. Both of these systems offer huge potential in gameplay and are set to turn gaming on it’s nogen with greater enthusiasm than Ninendo’s aging stick. And if Sony and Microsoft can pull the new systems off, I reckon, enough to breath plenty of extra life into both the Xbox 360 and PS3, enabling both companies to put of the next generation of console for at least another 5 years. These two new control systems could well put Nintendo at risk of falling far behind in the console arena – even considering the Wii Motion Plus. The Wii will become the assteically poor cousin, making the need for a Wii 2 more important if Nintendo to maintain its current lead – I’ll hazard a guess at 3 years!

The future if gaming is looking very interesting indeed!