I think a big challenge for companies making console games is that now when they're competing with the biggest franchises they're not just competing on graphics

I think a big challenge for companies making console games is that now when they're competing with the biggest franchises they're not just competing on graphics and gameplay, they're competing on time. The best selling triple A games have deep multiplayer experiences that can suck gamers in for 40 to over 100 hours. When a gamer plays one game for 100 hours instead of 10 games for 10 hours that means they're buying far fewer games. Then, even if you make a game witha good multiplayer element, you're still struggling against the tide because you need a big enough player population to keep players engaged. It's the network effect working against you. If all of a given gamer's friends are playing Call of Duty they're less likely to invest in the multiplayer of another game. Or when they do go to another MP game and there aren't many players available for matchmaking, they just give up and move on. The point was well made in this article that what needs to happen is that the game dev industry needs to set more sane goals and sane budgets. There's not a lot of room for games with $30+ million budgets because of the amount of copies that would have to be sold and the fact that gamers only have so much time to play. The only way to get around that would be to significantly expand the player base, which is not happening.