Support NeoGAF

[Clear]

I dunno, feels to me that quality has gone up, but quantity has gone down this gen. I think that's certainly the case for Playstation.

As per usual some companies have done better than others, and both indie titles and mobile games have lost their luster in the sense that the amount of media coverage they get is far less than last gen. But then again, that's what happens when the supposed enthusiast media has spent the last few years talking more about politics and social justice than games, only things too big to ignore (in a popularity or controversial sense) get much attention.

 

[IKSTUGA]

I think more quality and less quantity is a pretty good summary of this gen when it comes to AAA. There has been some massive flops though (looking at you EA, lul).

 

[Fuz]

I dunno, feels to me that quality has gone up, but quantity has gone down this gen.

I have the exact opposite impression.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

Just the forum crowd which has steadily gotten more hostile and toxic overtime.

I’ve not seen it offline. Myself and my gaming friends are loving gaming more than ever, even having a ton of fun with very flawed AAA games like Anthem.

It’s the same with movies, TV etc. the hobbies are more enjoyable the less time you spend around the cynical assholes on enthusiast forums. Just like what you like and don’t spend time arguin about it with haters online IMO. Forums are srill good for news and random threads, just avoid arguments over subjective opinions.

 

[dirthead]

Just the forum crowd which has steadily gotten more hostile and toxic overtime.

I’ve not seen it offline. Myself and my gaming friends are loving gaming more than ever, even having a ton of fun with very flawed AAA games like Anthem.

It’s the same with movies, TV etc. the hobbies are more enjoyable the less time you spend around the cynical assholes on enthusiast forums. Just like what you like and don’t spend time arguin about it with haters online IMO. Forums are srill good for news and random threads, just avoid arguments over subjective opinions.

☑ Saying everything is fine while the house is on fire.
☑ Claiming that Anthem is fun.
☑ Blaming consumers for the industry's mistakes.

Astroturfing account? Wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

☑ Saying everything is fine while the house is on fire.
☑ Claiming that Anthem is fun.
☑ Blaming consumers for the industry's mistakes.

Astroturfing account? Wouldn't be surprised.

Lol. Yeah an astroturfing account from 2008 with over 10,000 posts.

Casual gamers don’t give shit about most issues the online diehards complain about, don’t nitpick games to death and just have fun playing games, watching movies etc. They’re just escapist entertainment to most folks and not something to be critiqued to death. If they don’t like something, they forget it and move on to something else instead of wasting energy bitching about it in every related thread they can find.

You’d think the industry was crashing with how negative people are in game forums, yet gaming is making record profits year after year. Even flawed games like Anthem sell a few million copies (still a failure of course given the budget and troubled development) and gave people like my buddy and I over a 100 hours of fun before we got bored of the end game. It’s not a great or even good game, but we still had fun with the combat and shooting the shift in chat while having some drinks. Not everything has to be great to be fun.

Too many online are negative and cynical as hell about things that are meant to be fun. People need to stop being negative and spend more time having fun discussing games, movies or whatever they enjoy and less bitching about the ones they don’t like IMO. What the fuck is the point of engaging in a hobby if it makes one as angry, negative, hostile etc. as it seems to do for so many on enthusiast forums?

 

[dirthead]

Lol. Yeah an astroturfing account from 2008 with over 10,000 posts.

Casual gamers don’t give shit about most issues the online diehards complain about, don’t nitpick games to death and just have fun playing games, watching movies etc. They’re just escapist entertainment to most folks and not something to be critiqued to death. If they don’t like something, they forget it and move on to something else instead of wasting energy bitching about it in every related thread they can find.

You’d think the industry was crashing with how negative people are in game forums, yet gaming is making record profits year after year. Even flawed games like Anthem sell a few million copies (still a failure of course given the budget and troubled development) and gave people like my buddy and I over a 100 hours of fun before we got bored of the end game. It’s not a great or even good game, but we still had fun with the combat and shooting the shift in chat while having some drinks. Not everything has to be great to be fun.

Too many online are negative and cynical as hell about things that are meant to be fun. People need to stop being negative and spend more time having fun discussing games, movies or whatever they enjoy and less bitching about the ones they don’t like IMO. What the fuck is the point of engaging in a hobby if it makes one as angry, negative, hostile etc. as it seems to do for so many on enthusiast forums?

Actually it's not all flowers and sunshine. Traditional gaming companies' market is slowly getting eaten up by mobile trash.

 

[Saruhashi]

Just the forum crowd which has steadily gotten more hostile and toxic overtime.

I’ve not seen it offline. Myself and my gaming friends are loving gaming more than ever, even having a ton of fun with very flawed AAA games like Anthem.

It’s the same with movies, TV etc. the hobbies are more enjoyable the less time you spend around the cynical assholes on enthusiast forums. Just like what you like and don’t spend time arguin about it with haters online IMO. Forums are srill good for news and random threads, just avoid arguments over subjective opinions.

I think Anthem failed to meet sales targets though?

54 from the usually lenient critics on Metacritic. A 3.4 user score.
Criticism around microtransactions etc.
Possibly the game has objective flaws that, for many people, outweigh the subjective fun?

Surely things can be also more enjoyable when you are engaging with the community and with different opinions and insights into the games themselves?

 

[JimmyJones]

I actively avoid AAA games now.

 

[wvnative]

I feel the exact opposite, with the exception of Sony's first party output, gen 7 AAA games began turning me off the hobby. Games had less content than their gen 6 counterparts and most early games of the gen were plagued with poor performance, bad controls, lots of bugs.

This gen, AAA single player games have more content, better controls, and with only a few exceptions, tend to launch with wayyyyy less bugs. It does suck to see multiplayer games getting microtransactioned to death, but honestly it's mostly American publishers with that problem at least as far as the microtransactions impacting game design. This generation renewed my love of gaming thanks to imo, games getting better.

 

[Zog]

I play mostly retro games. When I do play AAA games I don't buy DLC or MTX's. I never understood the indie game worship, these are mostly games trying to emulate a retro game and I would rather just play real retro games. Retro games are the AAA games of their time but without all the BS.

 

[zenspider]

Agree with OP here, but still not enough.

AAA still has this "sacredness" in the hobby, like we all have to respect the sheer budget and manpower thrown at a title as an intrinsic quality: they are real-er.

 

[iorek21]

This generation is defined by generic open world checklist design with great art and graphics. Nothing was really innovative, save for Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System (and that was back in 2014, five years ago). The closer we will get of something really new is next year's Watch Dogs Legion with its "play as anyone" machanics.

One of the most important games of this generation, The Witcher 3, as great as it is, is just a recollection of every known mechanic in open world and RPGs refined to 10000x, the same can be said for RDR2, God of War, Bloodborne, DOOM and Uncharted 4.

And those games are the AAA magnum opus of this generation; the reality is that most of the AAA games are released either as generic checklist sleepfests (Assassin's Creed ever since Unity), unoptimised messes (also AC Unity, Watch Dogs, Fallout 76, Arkham Knight on PC), or overall unfinished games (Destiny, Anthem, Fallout 76).

Meanwhile, low-profile games such as Persona 5 (not that low), Undertale, Stardew Valley, Divinity Original Sin and Hollow Knight are better than probably 90% of all AAA games released since 2013.

So yeah, people are losing faith on AAA games because nothing is really that great (if not horrible).


I hope that the next generation will be able to deliver us great years in gaming such as 2007, 2009 or 2011....

 

[Riven326]

This generation didn't gave a Mass Effect trilogy.

 

[CSmath22]

I would say no. You might get more jaded as you age, but I don't think 12-year-olds are more jaded than they were 5 years ago.

 

[Petrae]

I’m just worn out. The constant crusades by AAA publishers to extort more and more money through bullshit tactics like “early access”— err, normal releases for $80+ and delayed releases for $60, season pass hype months before the retail game even comes out, the rapid rise of microtransactions, and more have not only made me jaded... but have made me decide not to buy any more modern consoles, including whatever comes next by Nintendo, who isn’t at all immune to the bullshit.

I’m done after nearly 30 years. I’m sick of the bullshit. And, no, indies and alleged “AA” games aren’t enough to make me part with $400+ for a new box. I’m fine with the collection of games that I have now. Hell, I have enough games to play something different every day for more than 8 years once Gen8 wraps up.

The modern video game industry won’t miss me, and I won’t miss it. Call it a divorce over irreconcilable differences.

 

[Plague Doctor]

In previous gens, games sales mattered for success which meant there was an intrinsic focus on quality and overall appeal in the launch version. You could add story DLC, but if the base game didn't appeal then the DLC was dead in the water.

Now? Monetization and, to a lesser degree, sub services are the goal. The base "game" is a carrot on a stick. Marketing is attempting to condition the audience to accept that the base game is a work in progress and can be bare bones and/or shit.

Overall, quality and depth in games will go down and down namely in the AAA sphere. There will be the occasional masterpiece but nothing in the quantity of previous gens. When we accept and defend shit as a whole, that's exactly what we will be given. We when demand better, things could change.

 

[Zog]

And, no, indies and alleged “AA” games aren’t enough to make me part with $400+ for a new box.

You don't want to buy a PS5 for games that look like they could run on an SNES? Why do you hate indies? LOL

 

[psygn0sis]

For me it's all about variety, this gen has really steppep up after some lackuster years but 7th gen remains way better IMHO. As a PlayStation user I'm feeling sort of letdown because, while Japanese FP still reign (The Last Guardian and Bloodborne are two of the best games of this gen), western FP are all about cinematic (luckly there are Dreams, Concrete Genie etc) and I really miss PS3's western FP output which covered all possible genres.

 

[Riven326]

I’m just worn out. The constant crusades by AAA publishers to extort more and more money through bullshit tactics like “early access”— err, normal releases for $80+ and delayed releases for $60, season pass hype months before the retail game even comes out, the rapid rise of microtransactions, and more have not only made me jaded... but have made me decide not to buy any more modern consoles, including whatever comes next by Nintendo, who isn’t at all immune to the bullshit.

I’m done after nearly 30 years. I’m sick of the bullshit. And, no, indies and alleged “AA” games aren’t enough to make me part with $400+ for a new box. I’m fine with the collection of games that I have now. Hell, I have enough games to play something different every day for more than 8 years once Gen8 wraps up.

The modern video game industry won’t miss me, and I won’t miss it. Call it a divorce over irreconcilable differences.

That's pretty much how I feel as well. It doesn't help that the hand full of franchises that I love are either gone or the quality has taken a nose dive. I rarely ever buy new games anymore.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Lol. Yeah an astroturfing account from 2008 with over 10,000 posts.

Casual gamers don’t give shit about most issues the online diehards complain about, don’t nitpick games to death and just have fun playing games, watching movies etc. They’re just escapist entertainment to most folks and not something to be critiqued to death. If they don’t like something, they forget it and move on to something else instead of wasting energy bitching about it in every related thread they can find.

You’d think the industry was crashing with how negative people are in game forums, yet gaming is making record profits year after year. Even flawed games like Anthem sell a few million copies (still a failure of course given the budget and troubled development) and gave people like my buddy and I over a 100 hours of fun before we got bored of the end game. It’s not a great or even good game, but we still had fun with the combat and shooting the shift in chat while having some drinks. Not everything has to be great to be fun.

Too many online are negative and cynical as hell about things that are meant to be fun. People need to stop being negative and spend more time having fun discussing games, movies or whatever they enjoy and less bitching about the ones they don’t like IMO. What the fuck is the point of engaging in a hobby if it makes one as angry, negative, hostile etc. as it seems to do for so many on enthusiast forums?

Exactly! I hate how people are critical on stuff when they can either ignore it or move on if the experience was bad.

One man's junk is another man's treasure as they say. We have a short life and using it to shit on things sounds pointless!

 

[Zog]

We have a short life and using it to shit on things sounds pointless!

Is it also pointless to praise things?

 

[JCK75]

I can only speak for myself but I certainly am..
there is so little that excites me anymore.

 

[anthraticus]

Is it also pointless to praise things?

Nope. You should only praise and never say anything negative.

 

[Zog]

Nope. You should only praise and never say anything negative.

That's what I was afraid of excited about!

 

[Horatius]

the trends that only greatly impacted the second half of last generation, especially an ever increasing reliance on microtransactions, were in full swing for the entirety of this one, and i think it's led to a large loss of goodwill and a widely dispersed low level tarnishing of most of the major brands. even without taking the most blatant examples of moneygrubbing by publishers, games are weirdly impermanent purchases now, even the best AAA games feel like a 60 dollar rental because you know you aren't getting everything on the box without spending more money.

$ numbers aren't impacted, because the people that do dig it are spending more money than ever, including some massive whales, but as far as wide ranging appeal and adoration goes, most of these companies are in the tank. don't think anyone has any actual affection for ea, activision, ubisoft, etc. anymore, whereas two generations ago people definitely did.

 

[brian0057]

Modern AAA gaming died when The Last of Us was deemed "the Citizen Kane of gaming".

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Is it also pointless to praise things?

That is like....your opinion man.

I just think it is silly to get angry over things that don't matter.

Someone cheating with your wife is perfectly normal.

Getting mad because a game didn't live up to expectations? It is fine but then going online to tell everyone this seems like a waste of energy.

People can praise stuff of course as it gives off healthy vibes to others but it usually only works with people you know as randoms doesn't give the same feeling.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I generally think many AAA studios are greedy shitholes this generation. It's hard to be excited for a new game announcement when you're immediately wondering how it'll be fucked by microtransactions.

 

[PendekarRajawali]

I agree with you, OP. The same thing also happens in Hollywood. It's all about countless superhero movies, sequels, and reboots.

 

[Zog]

That is like....your opinion man.

I just think it is silly to get angry over things that don't matter.

Someone cheating with your wife is perfectly normal.

Getting mad because a game didn't live up to expectations? It is fine but then going online to tell everyone this seems like a waste of energy.

People can praise stuff of course as it gives off healthy vibes to others but it usually only works with people you know as randoms doesn't give the same feeling.

So it comes down to good and bad vibes? Is it bad vibes to complain about other people complaining about games they don't like?

 

[Caffeine]

last gen had some pretty cool games, mass effect, dead space, lost planet, demon/dark souls. this gen not so much.

 

[KingdomHeartsFan]

Well I've noticed I'm playing less AAA games because their vision of online focused loot games with microtransactions up the ass isn't what I want to play.

Last generation I was probably
80% AAA games
20% retro gaming

Now I'm probably
40% AAA games
30% indies
30% retro gaming

 

[Starlight Lotice]

So it comes down to good and bad vibes? Is it bad vibes to complain about other people complaining about games they don't like?

It's not as black and white as that but I don't see why people who hate X Game due to Y should tell other people they hate should hate X because Y upset them.

Discussing why X game is horrible to others isn't bad vibes but telling others to hate X because of Y can influence bad vibes where it isn't needed. The reverse is true for good vibes as some people may not like X game for Y reasons changing Good Vibes into bad.

Enjoy what you enjoy regardless of bad/good vibes from others.

 

[Zog]

It's not as black and white as that but I don't see why people who hate X Game due to Y should tell other people they hate should hate X because Y upset them.

Discussing why X game is horrible to others isn't bad vibes but telling others to hate X because of Y can influence bad vibes where it isn't needed. The reverse is true for good vibes as some people may not like X game for Y reasons changing Good Vibes into bad.

Enjoy what you enjoy regardless of bad/good vibes from others.

Sounds like you don't have much use for gaming forums.

 

[Ellery]

Hard to say. We have some really great AAA games this generation, but I know what you mean.
The generation is still not over yet and my 4 possibly favorite AAA games of this gen are still going to come with :

- Death Stranding
- The Last of Us 2
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Final Fantasy VII Remake

As far as games that are already released go I had a lot of fun with Witcher 3, Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy, God of War, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Metro Exodus, Rise/Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Prey, Zelda BOTW, Evil Within 1/2, Red Dead Redemption 2 and there are still many I have to play yet including Spiderman, Doom, Monster Hunter World etc.

I love big AAA games. The only reason I buy a Playstation. Give me more

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Sounds like you don't have much use for gaming forums.

I interact with people and have fun on here.

I wouldn't come here if everything was toxic.

Banter is always healthy even if you don't enjoy something to the fullest.

 

[Zog]

I wouldn't come here if everything was toxic.

Criticism isn't toxic.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Criticism isn't toxic.

You never said that though. The post I agreed with before was that you should enjoy games regardless of what people say.

You should ask the poster I agreed with his opinion on the manner as I am thinking that you are taking my comments at face value and assuming I am shying away from fair critisism by being pretty aggressive in your posts. I have explained myself in a fair way but you seem insistant that I would be better off not on NeoGAF when I contribute to this site quite a lot, including in the discord.

If you think fun is not allowed then that is fine. I will continue with GAF regardless of your comments

 

[FStubbs]

Personally, I don't think the label "AAA" is really all that useful anymore.

My initial thought was "yes, I am jaded" but then I considered that I have had awesome times with Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 and Sekiro all in the last few months and I think those are "AAA"?

On the other hand you have so many of these online multiplayer flops like Anthem and Fallout 76 that I wonder if that is the "AAA" we are talking about.

Then you have the massive open worlds (mostly Ubisoft) that are not multiplayer but that do come with the full microtransaction treatment and giant maps with about a million things to do. So that's another type of AAA.

Then there's rarer stuff like Red Dead Redemption 2 that seems to have a little bit of everything.

I find myself snapping up and thoroughly enjoying Nintendo's exclusive content but I think the power of the hardware excludes those from the "AAA" category?

When people talk about "AAA" I think it's a category that contains too many different types of games for one to have a consistent view on that section of the industry. Sekiro and Anthem and Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Resident Evil 2 Remake have so few similarities that it seems weird that they would have the same classification.

If we are just talking about big budget games with 12 to 20 hour play-through times containing a bit of story and some good gameplay then I am not jaded at all.

If it's these 70+ hour monsters loaded with repetitive side quests, terribly paced stories, online multiplayer and so on then yeah I find myself looking at the big-name upcoming releases and thinking "nah, I'll pass."

This is why I had suggested "AAAA" for the likes of Anthem.

 

[Bryank75]

Depends where you are playing, if you are on PlayStation you are getting some really incredible AAA games and even if they are not to your taste, you can't deny the quality, funding and talent that goes into them.

Outside Sony WWS there are very few AAA games being produced now, just Rockstar and CDPR in the western AAA space.

Capcom and Square are different cause they are Japanese and have a different tone to their games because of it.

But that is why Xbox didn't do so well this generation, 3rd party AAA collapsed. It's not even that good on PC.... they are still playing games from over 10 years ago and free to play stuff as well as MMO's. None of which are AAA western games.

 

[bobone]

High end games basically look like creepy uncanny valley CG now, so it's all pretty boring.

People are looking more closely at gameplay again and not liking what they see. That's all that's going on.

The One/PS4 generation sucked on wheels gameplay wise. Nothing fresh was really brought to the table. The console game of the generation was a Victorian reskin of Dark Souls...give me a break.

Completely agree. Bloodborne was easily the game of the generation; but it was also one of the only games that gave me a really memorable and lasting experience.
It happens with less games every generation. There were at least a dozen games last gen that were truly standout experiences; new series; new gameplay ideas, etc.
And even more in the gen before that. And before that.

Having 1 or 2 standout games over the course of 5 years is really a bad sign for the future of the industry.
I don't care if people bring up the magnitude of sequels that they may like this gen. There is nothing they do that hadn't already been done on their previous iteration on the 360/PS3.

There is a noticeable drop in volume of AAA releases right now. Look at the barren wasteland of E3 this year. People are stuck playing games that came out years ago, and dumping billions into microtransactions and season passes.

I expect the PS5 generation will be a massive shift from what us old guys are used to seeing from the 1990s onwards.

 

[dirthead]

Completely agree. Bloodborne was easily the game of the generation; but it was also one of the only games that gave me a really memorable and lasting experience.
It happens with less games every generation. There were at least a dozen games last gen that were truly standout experiences; new series; new gameplay ideas, etc.
And even more in the gen before that. And before that.

Having 1 or 2 standout games over the course of 5 years is really a bad sign for the future of the industry.
I don't care if people bring up the magnitude of sequels that they may like this gen. There is nothing they do that hadn't already been done on their previous iteration on the 360/PS3.

There is a noticeable drop in volume of AAA releases right now. Look at the barren wasteland of E3 this year. People are stuck playing games that came out years ago, and dumping billions into microtransactions and season passes.

I expect the PS5 generation will be a massive shift from what us old guys are used to seeing from the 1990s onwards.

The fact that people are excited about playing 2006 World of Warcraft again in 2019 tells you what a rut gaming is in right now. If the industry was doing its job, something like that would be seen as a fucking joke. Where's the new, next generation MMO? Where are the next generation games? This generation is a complete misfire.

 

[Carna]

I find myself being less interested in games as times goes by, after that borderlands 3 about misgendering a robot. I know it's only gonna get worse unless the next decade undos all this "I'm offended by this" shit

But hey, at least there's Gravity Rush

 

[Hypereides]

(...)

I expect the PS5 generation will be a massive shift from what us old guys are used to seeing from the 1990s onwards.

I totally agree with you. Which is why I've already come to terms with it and began preparing for it by expanding my library of 6th and 7th generation games. I genuinely hoped this generation would turn out to be great, but after the 7th I got hesitant and decided to observe how it would unfold. All I've noticed is game content getting increasingly more and more carved out and grotesque monetization going into overdrive.

I suspect the next generation will leave some people feeling disillusioned and disenfranchised in regards to the industry.

 

[Zog]

You never said that though. The post I agreed with before was that you should enjoy games regardless of what people say.

You should ask the poster I agreed with his opinion on the manner as I am thinking that you are taking my comments at face value and assuming I am shying away from fair critisism by being pretty aggressive in your posts. I have explained myself in a fair way but you seem insistant that I would be better off not on NeoGAF when I contribute to this site quite a lot, including in the discord.

If you think fun is not allowed then that is fine. I will continue with GAF regardless of your comments

I'm sorry that you took my posts as hostile, I never intended that and I apologize for not being clear enough. Have a great day.

 

[bobone]

I totally agree with you. Which is why I've already come to terms with it and began preparing for it by expanding my library of 6th and 7th generation games. I genuinely hoped this generation would turn out to be great, but after the 7th I got hesitant and decided to observe how it would unfold. All I've noticed is game content getting increasingly more and more carved out and grotesque monetization going into overdrive.

I suspect the next generation will leave some people feeling disillusioned and disenfranchised in regards to the industry.

I'm with you on that. I picked up so many OG Xbox games the last few years because prices dropped like crazy.
I played literally everything worth playing on the Gamecube, but I've got a nice backlog of PS2; and now a dozen Xbox games to play.
I'll be very happy in front of my old CRT during next gen while everyone else is busy paying $20 for their emotes and then complaining about a lack of new games.

 

[Petrae]

I totally agree with you. Which is why I've already come to terms with it and began preparing for it by expanding my library of 6th and 7th generation games. I genuinely hoped this generation would turn out to be great, but after the 7th I got hesitant and decided to observe how it would unfold. All I've noticed is game content getting increasingly more and more carved out and grotesque monetization going into overdrive.

I suspect the next generation will leave some people feeling disillusioned and disenfranchised in regards to the industry.

Truth be told, I wasn’t going to bother with Gen8. I was already disenchanted with modern console gaming after the second half of Gen7 had introduced a lot of shit that I didn’t care for. While Online Passes weren’t long for this world, other shit like retailer-specific preorder bonuses, Season Passes, and an overall increased focus on extra content for games rather than the base game itself really had me on the outs.

It took an almost ridiculous trade-in deal for my PS3 (which was gathering dust) to “upgrade” to a PS4 in 2015, which I still use today but is incredibly outdated and runs most games like shit thanks to the arrival of the PS4 Pro. The ability to use an external HDD saved me from giving up on the PS4 altogether, as I had run out of storage space and didn’t want to bother with surgery to install a bigger drive internally.

I hoped that my disillusionment would subside as time went on, but it didn’t. The problems got worse. Microtransactions became standardized. Season Passes got even more prevalent. Retailer-specific preorder bonuses continued. Add to that ginormous Day One patches, which— along with mandatory installations of up to 50GB from a disc— meant that I consistently had to wait 30-60+ minutes to play the game I just bought, which further infuriated me. Then there’s the relatively new practice of having to wait three extra days to play a game at launch if you don’t spend at least $80 and/or buy it digitally, and now this morality and gender politics war that’s engulfed and mortally wounded video games.

Yeah, I’m not making the same mistake again. I’ve spent the last few years shoring up my retro collection by a couple of thousand games so that I can “retire” and play games that involve NONE of the shit that’s so royally pissed me off and made me so jaded over the last 9 years. Things didn’t get better in my eyes. They got exponentially worse.

Most others don’t feel as strongly negative as I do, and that’s fine. They accept this “evolution” of video games, or are at least willing to live with it. Me? I’ve had enough. Gen9 will mark a good point to make a complete break from modern video games and go back to retro-only. I won’t be invested and don’t want to be invested, and whether the industry continues to soar or if it crashes and burns, I’ll have nothing to do with it.

 

[Roni]

This is just yet another sign the AAA market is about to crash and it isn't going to be pretty.

Lots of heavy hitters just not selling as desired. Square's entire western catalogue has pretty much gone that route, I feel. Deus Ex on hiatus, Tomb Raider's future is not very clear, Hitman is gone...

The most successful ones these past few years were the ones that either found a stride in production process or went niche. Or both, look at Capcom!

Ubisoft is pumping out games with wildly different looks and feels and we all know it's pretty much the same game design structure. Does it matter? Not really. Ubisoft became so good at making the same game with a different face that they could afford to push out 5 big titles a year and still make a huge profit selling well but not spectacularly. That's because they target casuals that spend the occasional $60 on something cool in a genre they like. They end up selling something to you, it's all more or less the same in the end. That's a smart strategy for making money right now and staying big.

Capcom is streamlining their designs and making smaller, tighter games that appeal to a very hardcore audience. They're probably the most varied company in terms of game design right now. That's a smart strategy for having a varied and original portfolio at a modest budget.

That's because, right now, every AAA venture is becoming a huge gambit.

EA doesn't have the courage to create anything really new anymore. That's why any new venture that wasn't a large licensed franchise game or sports wouldn't really work. That's why they killed off every franchise they couldn't turn into a casino. Anyone could tell Anthem was using Bioware's dying name to sell a Destiny clone.
EA's only hope of staying relevant is for someone to wake up in there and put EA Originals front and center. That's been their most interesting output lately.

Something radical will have to change at some point.

 

[FStubbs]

This is just yet another sign the AAA market is about to crash and it isn't going to be pretty.

Lots of heavy hitters just not selling as desired. Square's entire western catalogue has pretty much gone that route, I feel. Deus Ex on hiatus, Tomb Raider's future is not very clear, Hitman is gone...

The most successful ones these past few years were the ones that either found a stride in production process or went niche. Or both, look at Capcom!

Ubisoft is pumping out games with wildly different looks and feels and we all know it's pretty much the same game design structure. Does it matter? Not really. Ubisoft became so good at making the same game with a different face that they could afford to push out 5 big titles a year and still make a huge profit selling well but not spectacularly. That's because they target casuals that spend the occasional $60 on something cool in a genre they like. They end up selling something to you, it's all more or less the same in the end. That's a smart strategy for making money right now and staying big.

Capcom is streamlining their designs and making smaller, tighter games that appeal to a very hardcore audience. They're probably the most varied company in terms of game design right now. That's a smart strategy for having a varied and original portfolio at a modest budget.

That's because, right now, every AAA venture is becoming a huge gambit.

EA doesn't have the courage to create anything really new anymore. That's why any new venture that wasn't a large licensed franchise game or sports wouldn't really work. That's why they killed off every franchise they couldn't turn into a casino. Anyone could tell Anthem was using Bioware's dying name to sell a Destiny clone.
EA's only hope of staying relevant is for someone to wake up in there and put EA Originals front and center. That's been their most interesting output lately.

Something radical will have to change at some point.

I think that something radical would be a complete crash. If we aren't seeing it happening right now in slow motion with the failure of games like Anthem.

AAA is riding on higher graphical fidelity, online server infrastructure, and hype at this point. We could reach the point of diminishing returns with graphics next gen and hype is already fading as people become more jaded. How much longer can this keep going?