Little Mr Mahatma

In which the middle-aged Peacenik mouths off about War Drones--and all the other things that make him cranky.

Mr Mahatma--who is a Mr in real life--lives in the valleys of Southern California with his wife, a herd of Dears, and an impressive collection of books. Pnorny!
He is reachable at:
littlemrmahatma@yahoo.com

All writings are copyrighted 2003-2008 and trademarked: Little Mr. Mahatma

tBlog Mirror

Some fun links:
Little Miss Attila - polar opposite and origin of LMM.

Critical Sites:
Dr. Forbush Thinks
Slashdot
Games Slashdot
UserFriendly
James Randi
Snopes
Home of the Underdogs
The Sun Online

For those generous in spirit, heart, and wallet:

Archives
<< current

Little Mr Mahatma

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Death of Movies, PC Games, and Everything Else
Movies didn't make much money last year, at least, in the theaters and the blame goes to those damn movie pirates. PC game sales have slumped too, in part, due to those damn game pirates. Music sales down - damn downloaders.

But the reason why most of the entertainment sales are down isn't because of piracy, it's because of time.

There's too much out there and not enough time to take them all in. You have movies in the theater; you have plays, operas, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, PC games, console games, and so on and so on.

20 years ago I had an Apple computer, a TV, and radio. There weren't many games out and when I played a game like Ultima IV, I played it through beginning to end. On TV - no cable or satellite - I had 6 or 7 channels. Radio was the same in terms of channels of music that I listened to. And don't forget books - those papery things that electronics are so desperate to replace.

My kids have choices between:

TV - regular, cable, and satellite.

Console Games - Playstation 2, X-Box 360, Nintendo Gamecube/Gameboy

PC Games - with demos coming in every month in the magazines or downloadable. Plus, you have Gold, Diamond, Platinum releases and mods out the wazoo.

Internet, IM, etc.

Movies in the theater

DVD movies and TV shows - many with multiple discs

Music via CD, MP3, or records (I still have vinyl)

Books

Time with friends, families, school, etc.

Point being, to all those in Entertainment, is that you are competing with each other *AND* with your own products. When you release a flood of old TV shows on DVD, you are competing against your releases of new movies. The consumer has limited time (and money) for entertainment. With SOOOOOOO many choices, all of you suffer.

One more point, just focusing on PC games, is that there is an abundance of free games. Not pirated games or abandonware but homebrewed games. Tons of them, many of them remakes of the great games from years ago. Many of them released as Freeware by companies as the sales died out. Combine that with the demos and multiplayer online games, there - again! - you have too many choices and not enough time. *AND* you have mods, gazillions of mods. You buy, say, Neverwinter Nights and you can download 100s of hours of mods.

With that, how many games boast 100s of hours of play time? Too many and that's not necessarily a good thing. Sure, as a consumer, you get great bang for the buck *IF* it's a good game. On the other hand, that about 60 hours that could be spent playing another good game.

Too much to do and not enough time. Where's that darn immortality juice?

9:45 AM

0 comment(s)