It's no secret the developer situation hasn't been at it's best as of late. Profits have been falling and we have seen a lot of developers shut their stalls (especially here in the UK). Has someone at CE got the solution?

With profits dwindling and many smaller devcos closing down, what is the way forward?

Jayseven: At the moment the smaller companies are dying out, and as I see it the main reason this is happening is due to those darned "casual gamers"! Thanks to "them" any game that wants to top the charts only has to be one of a couple of things; a licenced game or a sequel to a successful one. Thanks to this there is little room for new games to break into the market. So who gets the licences? The biggest bidder, and the biggest bidder tends to be the biggest companies (mostly EA), which means that EA get the lions share of the market and don't leave much for the strugglers. So to get round this, smaller companies perhaps try to be more original, and the problem with this is that original games are unproven formulas, so producers will be less willing ot part with their cash to get the game out, and less willing to put money into advertising the game.

So what can these companies do? You tell me, I can't see much option, except to keep trying to get their original games out in the open, and hope for a change in market fashion, which isn't likely to happen for a good while...

And are profits dwindling? As far as I can see, profits are at an all time high, it's just where this profit is going that is getting the smaller dev companies closed. Maybe the only option is for development companies to STOP POPPING UP all over the place... surely the less companies there are the more profit each will earn, so maybe all these dev companies dying on us is just natural survival of the fittest? The leftover companies will try that little bit harder to succeed where others have failed.

So my summary (which probably has little to do with what I've said) is... Once the market's ideals have changed; once gamers stop being so damned shallow, then they will maybe feel like buying a new game as opposed to a yearly rehash of the same one. Maybe then the companies will be able to get a look in on the sales chart.

Blackbird: Yes, a lot of development companies are closing their stables. Still, a lot of the bigger companies consist of smaller (and sometimes independant) developers. THQ for example has a few smaller co's developing their GBA games. Due to this, you can't really say that "all THQ games look alike" (something which was often said about big companies, like EA).

Start-ups have more difficulties than before, I agree. Games such as Spiraltone and Command & Destroy Advance (both GBA games) were never picked up by a publisher, and their developers are (or: are destined to be) figurally dead. This makes me mad/sad. Good games are forgotten, while Scooby Doo 4 is being announced when we still haven't played Scooby Doo 3.

My point today is that there still are some companies willing AND succeeding, yet we need the publishers to give them a fair chance.

Tim The bubble is bursting. The weak and/or less funded developers are biting the dust now. Big companies like EA, Vivendi, SCi, and THQ will be taking over small developers. SCi, for example, acquired the financial instable Pivotal Games, which we know from the Conflict Desert Storm series, as it would else be forced to shut its doors. Then when the market stabilises again, small developers will pop up like mushrooms!

It isn't as easy to earn some money as developers nowadays. But we will hit the end of the tunnel sometime. The only questions is when this will happen. Maybe during the next console rush?

Ash: It was bound to happen, every business turns this way. Look at the music industry, when it became a big thing there were many small companies and these either closed down or joint the bigger companies. The same is happening with games, especially as games are very expensive to make nowadays.

There are benefits, people can work together and help build skills and develop ideas, but of course theres the negative sides. Creative genious is lost to incorporate greed and many people who have aspired to be game creators for their whole lives have lost out and turned to another line of work.

Javid: It's a shame true, it will happen eventually and I dont think there's any way of stopping it. The way forward I think is to make sure these inventful, imaginative developers get noticed and used as much as possible for their ideas when bought out, to all mix and make great games maybe they wouldn't of been able to make before when they were in their smaller company. This is assuming when they get bought out the developers are taken on, if not... it plainly sucks.

Conor: Unlike jayseven, I don't think it's fair or practical to lay the blame solely at the casual gamers. A far more likely reason for developers' woes would probably be the cost of developing games.

As well as things like licenses (do developers pay licenses, or is it just the publishers? Answers much obliged) it would be helpful if the technological costs of developing games could be brought down. Lowering the actual cost of all that hardware needed to bring an idea to life would probably be a good idea.

I also think that, out of necessity mostly, the actual games themselves will become less expensive to develop for. I'm no expert, but it must cost a packet to make these long, gorgeous cutscenes and huge game worlds, and photorealistic graphics and orchestratic sound. Perhaps something like Viewtiful Joe is the answer. The game had a small development field, and the actual game is rather unambitious (in scope, not design). There's no photorealism in sight; I don't think it would cost that much to do the visuals (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, my own ignorance is quickly becoming apparent), certainly something like Doom III would be far more expensive.

To be honest, there's more to it than development cost. The whole structure of games development needs to be changed. How exactly, I really don't know.