hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
General Shank-a-snatch said:The thing is, companies will keep making excuses over and over again to maximize their earnings until the middle-ground reaches our neck. Also, if they made better games then most gamers wouldn't sell them, unless some are in deep financial troubles.
Just because they get more money isn't a guarantee that the quality will stay good or become better. Technology can become even more expensive for the next gen and the game prices would rise too, imagine all the ways devs could squeeze out money with online passes, nonsense DRM, day 1 paid DLC etc.
This and all the other against-arguments in this thread is something that the people who you are referring to should think about for a moment.
I fully agree that additional profits are unlikely to have a strong impact on game quality or quantity given the assumption of greed and desire for rapid growth.
I disagree that if they "made better games" then people wouldn't sell them. Even the best games diminish in enjoyability over time, and (some) people get tired of them, stop playing them, at which point the rational choice may be to sell them. That's not to say there's no effect of game quality on the decision to sell. Obviously, a shitty game or a really short game or a game that is only fun once is very likely to be sold. However, I think there is a place for short games and games that are only fun once.
What would really keep people from selling games is if they were designed to be more addictive, like WOW and CoD, and I'm willing to go out on a limb and say nobody here wants a world in which all games are like that.