The F.E.A.R. demo (which I just played yesterday) made me realize how much I’ve been missing, and now I’ve got a couple of games I’m looking forward for the season. My only worry now is being able to shell out the bucks to keep on playin.

I would like to show off this video, from Crytek, demonstrating a FarCry-like setting but with visuals we expect to see with DirectX 10 capable graphics. It’s stuff like that which just reinforces my views. Watch it, it’s 4.4 MB and quite cool, despite the poor camera quality.

Let me try to offer some counter-perspective.

The “sky is falling” mentality is not related to the quality of the games being released. If that were true I would expect that review scores would be plummeting and the critics would be screaming about how crappy all of the new games have gotten. The games themselves aren’t the problem.

The problem, or the perceived problem, is in the way games are going to be made. It is, by now, almost a given that the consumer cost of videogames is going to rise about twenty percent from $50 USD to $60 USD, which is a significant jump in price, especially with the state of the world economy right now.

I know that most people aren’t buying a hundred games in a year and the relative costs are going to be low, but why is the price of the game going up? Simple, the cost of developing the game is going up. Large teams are put together to make those fancy graphics or those realistic physics, though I think that’s just one team, the Havok team, but whatever.

In anycase, when more money is on the line, there is less acceptable risk taken with a game. The belief amongst some gamers and journalists is that risk averse developers like Electronic Arts will play it safe by developing games with incremental, or no upgrades, to the core game while simply updating the graphics to keep the look fresh.

Will that happen? I don’t know.

Two of the games you mentioned, Phantom Dust and Psychonauts, were developed by Majesco, a publisher who specifically wanted to bring quirky, unique games to market, is tanking. You will most likely not see franchise sequels to those games, ever.

Katamari Damacy was an awesome game, part of the appeal was the twenty dollars it cost to play six hours of ball rolling. I had a good time with it, will I drop thirty bucks to get the sequel. Probably not, not until its on the DS anyway.

Is there some sort of “Manufactured Crisis” going on? Perhaps. There is no denying that last year, and this year even the games have by and large been awesome. Will that trend continue? I’m sure. Will games become more expensive? Definitely. Will I be able to buy as many games next generation as I did this? Probably not. Is the sky falling? Depends on how many of you answered “probably not.”