The video game industry is growing old, lazy, and boring

The average age of a “gamer” is 37. This is both a blessing and a curse for the video game industry.

The video game industry is maturing—fast. The average age of a “gamer,” that is, someone who plays video games on a regular basis, is now 37, according to the Entertainment Software Association, an industry trade group. That’s up from last year, when the average came in at around 35 years old.

Surprised? Don’t be. After all, these “greying gamers” were the first generation to grow up with video games as children. As they’ve aged, many apparently kept on playing, delving even deeper into the gaming abyss through consoles, PCs, and now their mobile devices.

If you care to see this older, dare I say, more “refined” sort of gamer, then make your way out west this week to this year’s E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, the gaming industry’s biggest trade show. There you will see plenty of Gen X’ers and Gen Y’ers (is that still a thing?) milling about, many sporting unkempt beards and ironic t-shirts like it’s 2007. Apparently, shaving and adhering to current fashion norms takes way too much time and effort, time away from Assassin’s Creed 32, or some other “new” iteration of a once popular gaming title.

But this older generation of gamers is both a blessing and a curse for the industry. It is a blessing in that as they age, their pockets get deeper, so they potentially have more money to spend on their hobby (assuming they don’t get married and have kids, which, unsurprisingly, many don’t). But it is also a curse, because the industry seems stuck in a time warp.

Simply put, content makers, many of whom are greying gamers themselves, have become lazy. They have failed to innovate on both the hardware and content side of the business, alienating potential young consumers while angering older gamers who crave something newer than just another Call of Duty. Each new game “unveiled” this week in Los Angeles will almost undoubtedly be a mashup of characters and scenes derived from popular movie franchises that debuted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as The Matrix, Starship Troopers, The Terminator, Sailor Moon, and The Hobbit, with a dash of The Fast and the Furious thrown in for good measure. It is getting old.

read more : http://fortune.com/2015/06/15/video-game-industry-innovation/