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The amount of big Western games in 2017 seems rather sparse, quantity wise

Thraktor said:
What I'm more interested in is to what extent this is part of a trend, as opposed to a one-off scenario. There's certainly been a drop in the number of big western games being released over the past decade or so (which is unsurprising given the increase in development cost and staff requirements per game), but I would have expected it to tail off at some point, which it doesn't seem to have done. A studio as big as Activision Blizzard releasing only two games over the course of an entire year (one of which an annualised franchise) is pretty crazy when you think of how many games Activision alone used to release not that long ago.
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It actually has stabilized. The industry saw an enormous collapse of boxed games from 2010 - 2015. We went from 742 boxed retail games in 2010 for home consoles / handheld all the way down to 230 in 2015. That's a loss of 500 titles which is crazy. 2016 was the first time since 2010 the industry saw growth in boxed full retail games at 271, the most since 2012. So while indeed there aren't nearly as many games being made anymore as in the past, it seems we've hit rock bottom and have reached a stable state


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But yes the big AAA Publishers are now focusing on fewer, safer bets now days. And also they aren't as quick to write a game off as a failure anymore after its original launch, as driving long term sales through support / updates has become a big priority. Since games are supported / sell longer now days there is less emphasis to push new games out the door at the same rate that they used to.
 
Shin-Ra said:
Seems an odd distinction to make considering Ratchet & Clank launched at $40 retail just last year, and some of the other games listed.
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It's more that I feel the number of $40 type games are actually going up, which is where I was drawing the distinction. I can understand viewing it as a larger title compared to say NHL, despite the price differential.
 
RulkezX said:
That feels like an end of gen list.

Safe
Bland
Boring
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This has been aaa in a nutshell since about 2008-2010 last gen, though.

If you want a mcds cheeseburger you buy aaa, if you want something esoteric and interesting, if a little flawed you buy indie. With the indie market getting bigger we're starting to see those B level budget games come back again which I always thought offered the best of both worlds and more often than not secretly hid some of the best games of the era before budgets ballooned to the point all of those devs died.
 
Seems Japan will be carrying me to summer and onwards to winter isn't so clear. Have a feeling next year, Japanese games will be having this issue.
 
I think the announcement to release of video game is getting shorter and the dev cycle itself longer so plenty to come I bet.
Industry has seen the "No man sky effect" and the "Fallout 4 effect".
And I for one approve of it
 
Damn. Western devs hate Switch so much it looks like they might stop making games altogether.

For real though, I feel like that's a decent list (pending delays, of course). Especially considering what's going on with all the stuff this quarter, this year seems pretty dang awesome to me.
 
I'm with the other posters here in believing this is both scaling back, and the stagnation of AAA meaning a lot of publishers are putting money into safer bets than dropping millions on an outside chance of dominating the market.
 
I feel like we've had this conversation in multiple threads for months now, Nirolak. And now here we are--a year where the AAA games for an entire year is at less than 30, and that's only if we're generous. It's kinda scary. Usually devs at least PLAN for games to come out and they get delayed later--here it's more like...there IS no plan.

On the bright side, there's more room for "big" Japanese games I guess. But I think things stay the same or get worse from here for Major AAA titles. They're all going to shift into some form of GAAS which means fewer titles that are "supported" longer.
 
It would be interesting to compare to the list of games getting active support (DLC or F2P-esque updates) from the same publishers.
 
Without the benefit of hindsight, these all seem like fairly risky projects.

- For Honor
- Horizon: Zero Dawn
- Detroit
- Dreams
- Crackdown
- Sea of Thieves
 
The Dutch Slayer said:
I think the announcement to release of video game is getting shorter and the dev cycle itself longer so plenty to come I bet.
Industry has seen the "No man sky effect" and the "Fallout 4 effect".
And I for one approve of it
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For sure, hell, Nintendo has even pulled it with their console. I find it easier to both be excited and not set me self up too much with a short time frame. Real hype but not over extended over expectant hype, and obviously doesn't suffer from delay frustration.
 
Rap2thaMoon said:
It's like saying that COD isn't an annual series because they aren't named COD7-8 etc, if you release one game in the series every year it's annualised.
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Nah, but I see what he's saying. They're done by different teams every year--CoD even moves in a three year cycle. If you're tired of CoD it's just because you're tired of it, not "they're burned out".
 
I'm super super hoping to get Detroit and Days Gone this year along with Uncharted Lost Legacy. The first 6 months of this year only has a few small price psn games catching my interest of purchase. Can't wait to see how the rest of 2017 holds up.
 
This will make for much more interesting podcasts and GOTY discussion, as people will be forced to look outside their comfort zone. I'm all for it.
 
I was actually thinking this year is shaping up to be huge. In the second half of the year alone, we will likely be getting:

Star Wars: Battlefront II
Destiny 2
Red Dead Redemption 2
Uncharted: Lost Legacy
Call of Duty (hopefully something non-futuristic)
Assassins Creed semi reboot

I also expect to see a new Arkham style game, and a non-Bethesda developed Fallout.
 
Makes sense after so many big budget games failed to meet sales expectations in the crowded fall/winter 2016 period.

At some point they have to realize there's only so many huge budget games that can come out a year without bankrupting developers/publishers as people only have time/money to buy and play so many games a year. Which is complicated by so many people just playing games as they come out and not going back to ones they missed out on in busy periods as they're focused on the latest and greatest new release.

Also explains the move to games as services. Just have to launch it successfully and then you have a revenue stream locked in as long as you can keep putting out enough compelling content to keep people playing. Even for ones that don't meet expectations like SFV, DLC sales still help offset losses a bit vs. a big budget single player game that's doomed profit wise if it badly misses expectations.
 
Good. Take a break and come back with new (lol yeah right) ideas. If you aren't into Japanese titles this year has to be painfully slow. It's been pretty great so far though, much better than last year.
 
It makes sense- Look at Ubisoft. They are completely occupied with Rainbow Six and For Honor as a service. Seasons and leagues across the year. They are treating releases as long term commitments they build on.



I like this approach, because I think it's silly to spend 3-5 and 80 million dollars on a 10 hour game just to start over from scratch. Now you've made the game, you've got the tools, you got the engine, the licens, the team. You could add so much to build on top of the foundation rather than going back to the drawing board immediately.
The other aspect is that I enjoy seeing titles like FFXIV, ESO, Rainbow Six- Games that were flawed in the beginning but which were not given up on. They were expanded, fixed and remedied. It's less of a waste of resources to just throw the game out.



It also looks like GTA5 and FFXV and Hitman are going in the same direction. This is probably going to happen more and more, and as a result fewer new games are going to be released.
 
It's only sparse for the first half of the year. Fall season will be overloaded with the usual AAA suspects and more.

It's good that Japanese games are getting their chance to shine during these first five months. A better balance between Western and Japanese games has made this gen more appealing to me than the last one.
 
I've been playing every big release at the beginning of this gen, but burned out pretty hard on western triple a games. Skipped many fall rleases last year and can't say I feel like I missed anything, especially now with japanese devs delivering. Besides Red Dead 2 I'm not interested in too many games on that list.
 
dreamlongdead said:
It's only sparse for the first half of the year. Fall season will be overloaded with the usual AAA suspects and more.

It's good that Japanese games are getting their chance to shine during these first five months. A better balance between Western and Japanese games has made this gen more appealing to me than the last one.
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Better balance? This has been the first and only good six months for jspanese games on PS4 since the new systems released! O.o
 
There might be a lower count across the board of games releasing, but it feels like the perfect storm for me. I was just thinking about what games might have to wait if they all hit their targets.
 
dreamlongdead said:
It's only sparse for the first half of the year. Fall season will be overloaded with the usual AAA suspects and more.

It's good that Japanese games are getting their chance to shine during these first five months. A better balance between Western and Japanese games has made this gen more appealing to me than the last one.
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Yeah, it really feels like the Japanese industry has found their footing with HD this gen, and are starting to wise-up to what kind of great things are happening in the larger industry (systemic/emergent gameplay, sandbox-style level design, etc) and doing their best to include these aspects without diluting what makes these Japanese franchises great in the first place. MGSV was incredible, FFXV was really good, Nioh sounds like it's fucking awesome, Persona 5 looks fantastic, Zelda looks like the most exciting entry in the series in a considerable amount of time, Mario Odyssey looks stupidly good at first glance, etc.
 
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