It was suggested to me (probably through Steve Sailer) that boxing is no longer the huge industry it once was because the proliferation of pay-per-view events has priced new fans out of the market.  The theory is that lifelong sports fans are created in childhood; minimizing the barriers to interacting with the sport results in more consumers in the future.  Now it’s impossible to watch boxing without paying, which eliminates the casual fans and their children.  Such a primal sport will never disappear entirely but it’s likely to become something like horse-racing, important to a monied clique but reaching the public conversation only occasionally.

According to the last point of this Cracked article, gaming--at least console gaming--is going in the same direction.  Microsoft’s XBox One has gotten a lot of flack for their used-game policy--namely, used games no longer exist.  This raises gaming’s entry price, an irritation for an adult player and an obstacle for the curious.

As a former Colecovision player, I can attest to a secondary barrier.  If a potential gamer doesn’t literally get his hands on a console early, he’ll probably never gain the familiarity he’ll need to handle the controllers of modern games.  I was used to a joystick, a single button and numeric keypad that was rarely used.  The cartridges were only capable of holding three levels of each game and I grew bored of the limitations.  When Nintendo came along with a slightly more complex controller, I had already found other entertainment.  Fast forward to the controllers of today and I’ve got no idea what I’m doing; it’s like putting a blind man behind the controls of a bulldozer.  If a kid doesn’t get those skills when he’s a tween then he’s not going to develop them when he’s an adult and has disposable income.

My guess is, if this kind of thinking continues not only will the market shrink but so will the number and types of games offered on consoles.  I can see the console market looking much like your local cineplex, all big-budget, big-name productions with a little something for everybody but loved by almost no one.

Which begs the question:  why go with gaming consoles, anyway, if PCs offer more processing power and flexibility?