Being the freak that I am, I take great joy in watching the ebb and flow of the economy as a whole. But, I enjoy watching the video game industry the most. The most recent trend in gaming is consolidation, and of course the reaction from the community is one of disgust. Especially when taking the current the current takeover by EA of Take-Two. Is this really a bad thing?

The short answer is: No.

In the 1980s the industry as a whole collapsed, this was caused by over saturation of the market and the lack of overall quality. What was happening was that the sub industry of reviewing video game was basically non-existent at the time and no one knew what game were good and what was bad. So most AAA games back then would have sold about the same as a real stinker, for example both Turning Point & Mass Effect sold the same. So what happened was there was a loss of incentive to create quality products and eventually the industry collapsed under the weight of monotony & mediocrity.

Since Nintendo came in and saved the industry we have seen massive growth in gamer population and in game production. We are already feeling the effects of this hitting a critical mass, which AAA games did you not play because you couldn't afford them all last holiday season. The number a good looking games coming out this year is astonishing, I personally know that there is no way I can afford all of them let alone have time to play them all. If something is not done the industry will start to buckle under its own girth, soon smaller 3rd party titles will not have any market at all while the AAA's are struggling for viewership. This may stifle creativity by causing fear of taking a chance and failing in a big way.

So how can this be fixed? Well there are two way that I can think of off the top of my head; The overall gaming population needs to expand drastically to accommodate growth, the industry will have to shrink of slow growth till the population of gamers increase. The latter is what is going to have to happen if we are to avoid a implosion. The consolidation of massive companies such as Take Two/EA and others will hopefully slow the release of big titles allowing the industry to make maximum amount of money on a quality product while still allowing smaller 3rd party titles to make a appearance.