Speaking to friends who game has been rather depressing recently. All I hear is how bored of it all they are and how there is "nothing out". I've given up eulogising WoW or the 360 achievements system and have got bored of explaining the flawed economics of releasing bugger all games over the summer. Instead I've resorted to producing a calendar so we can tick off the days until Pro Evo 6, one of only two games - the other being Lego Star Wars 2 - that excites them all.
But maybe this gaming ennui is more than just the summer lull. The PS3 is already discounted due to cost and a perception that it will offer merely more of the same shooting/driving etc. 360 is still not convincing a lot of them - despite my protests - and the PS2 is seen as essentially a Guitar Hero console. Handhelds? Again, seen as a snack rather than proper gaming.
Perhaps it's an age thing as everyone I spoke to was 30 or over. Marketeers and analysts often talk of the 16-34 audience but you could knock 10 years off the latter figure when it comes to the appeal of many game releases. Gamers who have been through the broken promises - Mario 64/3D aside - of four or five "transition" periods may have finally given up when they realised that "next-gen" now appears to mean bland sci-fi first person shooters and urban action games. You could argue that this is a grumpy old-ish men thing that will be fixed come the Autumn game deluge, but the question remains. Have gaming's elder statesmen, the 30-something veterans of the C64/ZX Spectrum era, given up on gaming or has gaming given up on them?
