Email: llins TO You Gaming may not change if the economy doesn’t also hurt US comics.

While gaming is certainly in decline, they can still find ways to pretend everything’s fine even if they lose most of the audience.

 

And I know this because that’s what American superhero comics have done. Marvel and DC have comic sales in the toilet (sales have capped at a bit over 200K an issue), but they have found ways to make money, mainly from licenses and adaptations, so that they don’t have to actually change the stupid stuff they are doing (politics, character screwing, violence that has no point, and ramping up the sluttiness).

 

They also can pretend that their poor sales are actually high (100K an issue is considered great), and act like whittling down their audience just means they managed to weed out all but the most sycophantic, I mean “most loyal”, of fans (the former EIC at Marvel made Spider Man sell his marriage to the devil, and some comic fans look at something that asinine, and actually act as though it’s not really a bad thing).

 

This is why I consider US superhero comics to be the hardcore fortress. If the hardcore see those companies doing well, then anything can still do well despite a lost market. In order to truly destroy the hardcore, then Marvel and DC might have to fall as well (Disney and Warner will still pick up the pieces, but they will have to implement major do overs).

 

Now I’m specifically mentioning the US because, like newspapers, they are still doing well in other parts of the world. This is because they still have content for everyone, not just the hardcore (for one thing, Disney comics are also made in other parts of the world).

Comics, like books, have been through The Great Depression. It’s not that hard to sell paper. Selling electronic entertainment machines that cost a billion dollars to launch is another matter entirely.

Game consoles and the games that run on them are extremely expensive. With rising costs each generation, something as simple as a 5% decline everywhere would wreak havoc.

There is a graveyard of game consoles that say gaming isn’t an easy business… even in good economic times. Not even Sony or Microsoft are as financially solid as they used to be.