Navigating The Frantic Finances Of The Gaming Industry
Not every stock market or general investment move needs to be a safe bet. Within every volatile market is a rocket of a business opportunity that can make a lot of money before crashing quickly, and the video game industry is a unique player in the volatile earnings world.
Gaming finances aren't predictable and are based on the whims of consumers that are poorly understood by anyone who isn't already a consumer, but there are a lot of indicators to watch if you want to experiment with the market. Here are a few insider indicators that can help you harness the power of gaming industry earnings--either from a distance with small investments, or as a major player who wants to give game developers a chance.
Pick Up The Hype Via Social Media Coverage
When a new game is in development, the world will know through press releases. If it's a new entry in a continued franchise, you can gather some opinions from the previous game's reception, such as through game reviews on sites like Metacritic or aggregated review listings on the game's Wikipedia page.
For games that are the first of its franchise, how do people feel about the developer? Have they recently released a new game? Are they notorious for falling short in development, or is every game they release a smash hit?
Hype can be a great way to see great initial sales and see your stock investment rise, but you need to be careful. The first day of sales after a game releases will be critical, and the only predictable part of volatile gaming markets is that the day after release will give you the best idea of how the company will continue.
High Sales, But A Buggy Finish
The problem with many games is that they can offer an amazing visual spectacle that seems to deliver on promises, but after a few days of gameplay, consumers can discover that they were cheated.
Take the saga of No Man's Sky as an example. The game promised to be a great leap in space simulation and exploration gaming, promoting the following features:
- A living, organic universe of interaction without the player
- Planetary physics
- Ringed planets
- Sand planets
- The ability to fly between star (or travel manually between star systems as opposed to an automated galactic jump interface)
- Rivers
- Interaction with other players in a procedurally-generated (constantly generated based upon exploration)
Many of these features were either not in the game at all, or added significantly after launch. The game showed amazing sales and it took a while for people to truly test the promises of the game, since it was indeed a large universe to explore. That said, it's still a piece of game software that could be analyzed, and many of the features were proven missing with techniques such as cheat tools to place two players on the same location, but showing that the players were not visible to each other.
This meant that the company value was high for quite a few days, but plummeted once news of missing features was not simply released, but slowly accepted across the internet. This could give you time to sell once you see trouble, but such failures can happen much faster.
Along with these observations, a stock market analyzer could help you check out a particular industry or company's performance. Check out sites like outlawstocks.com and contact a stock market analyzer to merge analysis and eyewitness accounts.
