Video report asks: Are video games dead?

video-gamesA two-part series called “Video Games are dead” on DigitalTrends.com examines the increasingly moribund state of the console video game industry, pointing out that video game sales have been falling for months — including a big drop in July.

But the real, less sexy title of the video should be “Video games as we traditionally have known them are dead.” Console games may be dead, but there are a whole bunch of new formats — including online-based games — that are doing just fine.

The show, produced by the online game news program Players Only on DigitalTrends.com features interviews from some of the industry’s top developers and analysts. Among them are analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, developer Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games, Mike Capps and Cliff Blezinski of Epic Games, Brian Crecente of Kotaku, Jesse Divnich of EEDAR, and Lorne Lanning of Oddworld Inhabitants. Yours truly makes an appearance in part 2, which was released this morning.

The video addresses the theme of industry transition that we’ve written about a number of times. The $60 game played on a dedicated console is under attack as new forms of competition emerge. That competition includes cheap used games and web sites that offer online games where you can play for free and only pay for virtual goods a quarter or so at a time. It also includes games played on demand as users tap into high-speed services of companies such as OnLive, Otoy and Gaikai. And it includes the new landscape of games played on mobile devices such as the iPhone, where games are either free or cost 99 cents.

Will the game industry make a comeback as the recovery starts, or will these new kinds of competitors continue to eat away at the core industry’s sales? Lanning, co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, says of the $60 video game, “In five years, it will be like trying to find vinyl” records. Here’s a link to part one and today’s part 2 video is embedded below. The videos aren’t that long, and they’re a good recap of the key issues facing the game industry today.[EMBED1]

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.