The industry is making games that traditional gamers are frequently less interested in playing. If you look at the list of Microsoft's first party releases since 2020 the list is dominated by aging IP remakes. These decisions to release a re-master of version N of a franchise while reimagining it for a wider audience are not landing and are the result of leadership failures that leadership should pay a price for. Of course they will not though. The price of recent poorly received games will fall on the hard working people who grid out these games under the directions of leadership that will golden parachute to the next thing to fail. This industry to chock full of fail-up leaders.
OkayPhysicist•1h ago
> The industry is making games that traditional gamers are frequently less interested in playing.
The problem is that the only thing distinguishing the AAA studios from the teaming masses of indies is their ability to invest massive amounts of money into development. But once you dump that much money into development, it becomes unacceptable to have it flop. Which leads to risk aversion, and attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which leads to releasing the same game over and over again with slight tweaks, or worse, making slop that nobody loves, but enough people buy.
This situation was created by the industry growing beyond its means by capitalizing on untapped demographics for the last 30-odd years. Videogames went from being only for kids, to marketing to kids and men, to marketing to all adults, then expanding into the mobile market and then unlocking the whale economy with microtransactions.
They've run out of new market segments to sell to, and they've discovered the absolute limits of what people are willing to pay. All the AAAs know there's too many of them for the market, they're just all hoping to outlive the other ones.
uberman•1h ago
OkayPhysicist•1h ago
The problem is that the only thing distinguishing the AAA studios from the teaming masses of indies is their ability to invest massive amounts of money into development. But once you dump that much money into development, it becomes unacceptable to have it flop. Which leads to risk aversion, and attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which leads to releasing the same game over and over again with slight tweaks, or worse, making slop that nobody loves, but enough people buy.
This situation was created by the industry growing beyond its means by capitalizing on untapped demographics for the last 30-odd years. Videogames went from being only for kids, to marketing to kids and men, to marketing to all adults, then expanding into the mobile market and then unlocking the whale economy with microtransactions.
They've run out of new market segments to sell to, and they've discovered the absolute limits of what people are willing to pay. All the AAAs know there's too many of them for the market, they're just all hoping to outlive the other ones.