The AAA Game Market Crash of 2019

[dagobaking]

Just now, Hugh Reckum said:

 

Can't even find a place on the 5 year chart where the Dow Jones would need to be in order for your statement to be true. 

lol

 

that chart is showing the dow for 5 years when the charts posted earlier were YTD.

[Kendo 2]

2 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

But the downturn isn't speculative needing canaries. The entire market on average has seen gains and then losses in the exact same pattern as the game stocks. This suggests that it doesn't have anything to do with the industry and is about the economy.

Incorrect.  Brokers project growth through the next fiscal quarter, not the current one.  They always use canaries as a baseline.  And I've already proven with documentation that game industry stocks are almost at a free fall state at this point.  What's happening has nothing to do with an economy of necessity since I've already established that soft drinks, junk food and electronic toys are doing fine, it's the game industry stock that's faltering, not the market as a whole.

[Tyrant99]

6 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

lol

 

that chart is showing the dow for 5 years when the charts posted earlier were YTD.

Yeah. And you quoted my post where I posted this chart where it's very easy to see a recent cliff drop in the context of the historical stock movement:

 

 

Can't claim I'm pulling a fast one on you dude.

 

In no way does this benchmark to Dow, S&P etc.

[dagobaking]

1 minute ago, Kendo 2 said:

Incorrect.  Brokers project growth through the next fiscal quarter, not the current one.  They always use canaries as a baseline.  And I've already proven with documentation that game industry stocks are almost at a free fall state at this point.  What's happening has nothing to do with an economy of necessity since I've already established that soft drinks, junk food and electronic toys are doing fine, it's the game industry stock that's faltering, not the market as a whole.

Broker projections have been proven to be marginally more accurate than throwing darts randomly at newspaper listing of stocks.

 

You have not proven what you claim. Stocks going to levels that they were at 12 months ago is not a free fall. Cherry picking anecdotal stocks that aren't doing as bad is not stronger evidence than the indexes showing an economic downturn on average. These game companies are simply moving with the average of the entire economy.

 

It is unremarkable (in regard to an industry) that an individual stock has changed more dramatically than the average when its still within the same pattern as the indexes.

[dagobaking]

Just now, Hugh Reckum said:

Yeah. And you quoted my post where I posted this chart where it's very easy to see a recent cliff drop in the context of the historical stock movement:

 

 

Can't claim I'm pulling a fast one on you dude.

 

In no way does this benchmark to Dow, S&P etc.

And that chart shows an unsurprising match to the indexes long term as well. In fact, EA did BETTER than average in the middle of 2018. So, it is unremarkable (as an industry metric) that the swing back to early 2018 numbers (like the economy as a whole) is a bit more dramatic.

[Kendo 2]

2 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

Broker projections have been proven to be marginally more accurate than throwing darts randomly at newspaper listing of stocks.

Stating the obvious and I've already addressed that.  It is all speculation; that's what the market is.

2 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

You have not proven what you claim. Stocks going to levels that they were at 12 months ago is not a free fall. Cherry picking anecdotal stocks that aren't doing as bad is not stronger evidence than the indexes showing an economic downturn on average. These game companies are simply moving with the average of the entire economy.

No, they are not.  A company losing 5 billion U.S. is not 'average'.

2 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

It is unremarkable (in regard to an industry) that an individual stock has changed more dramatically than the average when its still within the same pattern as the indexes.

Nice strawman.  It isn't 'an individual stock', but the the AAA game industry as a whole.  And a drop in one third to a half in value is not even in the same zip code as 'average'.

[Canaris]

As a game with almost 30 years of experience and someone who hasnt bought a AAA release in last 5 years i will say - good. Fuck them, let it crash and burn, let the fire cleanse the impurities, the malicious corporations, the shareholder dick sucking culture, the ignorance of gaming press, the corruption, the collution between "journalists" and developers who shame, bully, mock and demean their clients and fans. 

[dagobaking]

Just now, Kendo 2 said:

Stating the obvious and I've already addressed that.  It is all speculation; that's what the market is.

You cited these dart throws when making your argument.

Just now, Kendo 2 said:

No, they are not.  A company losing 5 billion U.S. is not 'average'.

According to the indexes, yes it is right now.

Just now, Kendo 2 said:

Nice strawman.  It isn't 'an individual stock', but the the AAA game industry as a whole.  And a drop in one third to a half in value is not even in the same zip code as 'average'.

lol

 

Yes it is. You guys seem to be misunderstanding the index vs individual charts. The dow shows value dropping the same that was gained over 2018. These video game stocks show the exact same thing.

 

You are making a math error if u think the dow has to drop the same percentage to be a match. The indexes include companies that were growing before video game companies ever existed and they are changed all the time.  They are useful for the pattern. Not for apples to apples.

[Kendo 2]

1 minute ago, Canaris said:

As a game with almost 30 years of experience and someone who hasnt bought a AAA release in last 5 years - good. Fuck them, let it crash and burn, let the fire cleanse the impurities, the malicious corporations, the shareholder dick sucking culture, the ignorance of gaming press, the corruption, the collution between "journalists" and developers who shame, bully, mock and demean their clients and fans. 

The same thing happened in 1983 and the stock market massacred game companies.  The industry tanked and from that we got the indie developers who made games like Wing Commander.  They reset the clock.  Maybe that course correction needs to happen again?  Dunno.

[Kendo 2]

2 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

You are making a math error if u think the dow has to drop the same percentage to be a match. The indexes include companies that were growing before video game companies ever existed and they are changed all the time.  They are useful for the pattern. Not for apples to apples.

You're the one who cited markets as a whole, not me.  Your apples, not mine.

[Canaris]

Just now, Kendo 2 said:

The same thing happened in 1983 and the stock market massacred game companies.  The industry tanked and from that we got the indie developers who made games like Wing Commander.  They reset the clock.  Maybe that course correction needs to happen again?  Dunno.

Well the thing is that i dont care. 

Honestly.

It wont matter to people who make the games i play now - Dwarf Fortress, Aurora 4x, Rimworld etc. AAA industry can die in fire for all i care. 

[Kendo 2]

1 minute ago, Canaris said:

AAA industry can die in fire for all i care. 

?

[dagobaking]

3 minutes ago, Kendo 2 said:

The same thing happened in 1983 and the stock market massacred game companies.  The industry tanked and from that we got the indie developers who made games like Wing Commander.  They reset the clock.  Maybe that course correction needs to happen again?  Dunno.

I would love to see something like that happen personally. I just don't think the current stock prices show we are there right now.

 

Sadly, I think the ship has sailed. The same people that ruined movies are ruining games at an even faster rate.

2 minutes ago, Kendo 2 said:

You're the one who cited markets as a whole, not me.  Your apples, not mine.

I did cite the market, backed up by the indexes. The dart throws aren't more than darts.

 

Check out financial news right now. Everyone is freaking out about the downturn. Most are putting the blame on the fed raising rates and uncertainty stemming from trade wars.

1 minute ago, Canaris said:

Well the thing is that i dont care. 

Honestly.

It wont matter to people who make the games i play now - Dwarf Fortress, Aurora 4x, Rimworld etc. AAA industry can die in fire for all i care. 

word

 

im playing those non-AAA games more than anything these days.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

The debacle within Blizztard would explain why they're remaking Warcraft III--just in time to introduce Classic legacy servers in "summer." I hate to say it but I'm horribly tempted to go back if/when those legacy servers do go live. It's been six years since I left, and that was largely because they were steamlining the game, nerfing everything in sight, and just butchering the plot with these nonsensical tangents and retcons that broke a lovingly assembled body of lore.

 

OTOH, I'm not sure they won't screw up legacy servers somehow. The ambivalence is just killing me.

[KoolHndLuke]

Just my two cents. But I watch more for indie developments anyway. Modding seems to have made a lot of people realize that "Hey, maybe this shit ain't so hard after all?!!" and they will invariably try to make better, more genre specific games and spin-offs than most AAA care to, just without the flashy new graphics and much collaboration/trial and error. Realism Invictus (for Civ4) is something I just discovered and I am blown away at the depth and quality of it and I probably will never want to play any regular Civ game again.

[dagobaking]

Shareholders insist on putting generic business dev types in decision-making positions at these companies. When the products were more successful under the leadership of devs and other creatives.

[patches13]

12 hours ago, 27X said:

lel.

 

Stock prices are shifting the same way they did last year about this time, and Take2 just made the most amount of money of ANY entertainment product (of any kind ever) in human history.

 

Your premise is utter bullshit, simple as.

 

You're conflating quarter gain/losses and expected stock value per shareholder with the actual net, which is not a thing in the charts you provided.

 

You also conveniently failed to mention that all four companies you mentioned made 60% of their NET profits in aftermarket microtransactions, which the stock monitoring also doesn't cover, which is one of the reasons the EU is sniffing all over two of these companies for gambling and consumer violations, meanwhile in good ol USA the opposite is occurring and one of the writers of hilariously bad Star Control III is in DC as we speak, lobbying that electronic interaction companies should be able to charge whatever they want for aftermarket content, and he currently has two different congressional/governmental committees  "reviewing" his counter-proposition, one of whom is chaired by Ajit Pai, and if you think Pai is going to be all Truth Justice and Apple Pie in the face of raw money, welp I got good  arizona beach you buy from me while you're at it.

 

Your speculation there at the bottom is also p lol as a new console cycle is about to start in about a year and change so the industry is going to fork between the two sets of consoles per manufacturer so overall profit growth will be down next year because of split SKUs for both M$ and Sony, again nothing new.

 

As for new stuff, none of these companies is doing new IPs to begin with, the most growth in new IPS is squarely in Asia right now, amongst AA devs like From/Softbank/Arc and a few AAA like Bamco.

 

UBI has been doing reskins of FC for three years and people buy them like candy, Activision just got done fucking blizzard out of their senior staff and has pretty much determined that esports that aren't overwatch and hearthstone and the expenses going with it can fuck right off, so they're gonna have plenty of money and layoffs/incentivized retirements have already been underway since q3 of this year, Take2 just made the most amount of money ever for a thing, and EA has two sports DLC MTX unveilings coming up that netted them one and half BILLION dollars in revenue last year coming up, and we haven't even mentioned the chinese mobile market just opened up to two of these companies. You know why For Honor keeps getting DLC? China.

 

This apocalypse you're talking about already happened two years ago, and that AAA is unsustainable is also a known thing for about a decade, and in the meantime all four companies will laugh all the way to the bank, and falling stocks mean jack, EA got shithammered over andromeda and SWBF2 and here they are all smiles once again, cause FIFA and Madden is quite literally money for nothing and chicks for free.

 

 

Well said. I'd also add that there are gaming companies that do turn a profit, just not the 4 listed. CD Projekt jumps to mind right away as a example.

[winny257]

myself personally no matter, Game developers are coming, Game developers go, One thing always stays the same for me, *I buy since long time no more any dirt*! 

[KoolHndLuke]

6 minutes ago, winny257 said:

dirt

Wir können nur versuchen, die Leute darüber zu informieren, dass es bessere Alternativen gibt - und einige von ihnen sind frei und offen! Dumm nur schwer zu reparieren.

 

We can only try to inform people that there are better alternatives out there- and some of them are free and open sourced!! Hard to fix stupid though.

[GrimReaper]

I don't know much about the stock market but I can only hope that the big players fall. Might be that their rapid growth of the past years or so, thanks to microtransactions and lootboxes, is finally catching up to them. You need to sustain your growth, after all, and I don't see that being possible. If it will be another crash or not, I have no idea. But it'll be fun to watch the whole thing regardless. The antics of the gaming industry and those that are involved with it one way or the other (hi, games journalism) are almost more entertaining than playing games.

[KoolHndLuke]

19 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

the big players fall

EA should be staked through the fucking heart and have it's head severed...... just to be sure. Beth/Zen needs to be bitch-slapped until they come to their senses. Can't say what to do with the rest.

[COLOCO]

Video game is a passion like Movie if you here to make "$" stay on the multis*** standard innovation game like you know the new standard!

 

+

 

Most of AAA game threat sexuality like they talk to 16 year old peoples but on all of them you see (+18)

They show all violence and gore but stay very light on these subjects!

I am aware of these hypocrites!

I really don't like this way of doing thing..

It's like a f******* Communists show.

 

[Kendo 2]

On 12/21/2018 at 3:59 AM, Kendo 2 said:

In summation; there will most likely be layoffs, budget cuts and product streamlining to keep the corporations in the black.

For those who said I was wrong...

 

[Z0mBieP00Nani]

I mean.. at this point they might as well stop being pussies and take a risk. They're going to go under either way otherwise, surely they MUST see this.

 

Some of those companies you list are part of the problem anyway, buying up everybody else and then stubbornly ruining them with their crappy practices *COUGH, EA, ACTIVISION, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH*...

 

Good riddance!

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Maybe it is schadenfreude but I'm just loving watching these companies go down because they screwed up and have no one to blame but themselves. That doesn't mean they stop trying to blame anyone and everyone but themselves. Instead it makes them look even more pathetic if and when they are forced to admit it's their own fault.

 

Economic Darwinism is a harsh mistress and it's taken down video game giants before. If you're old enough to remember when Atari was the top name in video games, you may remember when a then-upstart company that was better known for making playing cards threw their hat into the video game arena: Nintendo. They, along with Sega, were riding high for nearly twenty years until Sony and Microsoft introduced their own consoles and toppled them. Now they're mere shadows of what they were in their glory days. They're still around but they're not kings of the hill anymore. Nintendo is still trying to reclaim its old glory via the portable market but I can foresee competition from smartphones in a couple of years. $200+ for a system and some games or a free phone for renewing my contract that can play games that are sort-of-free?

 

The same thing is happening here. These companies had their time and instead of listening to the people who made them big, they decided they knew better and got caught with their pants down. History is repeating itself and it ain't on their sides.