That sucks. The game itself was great and its Steam numbers are Concord-bad.
I'd put a lot more weight on "Ubisoft games suck because of all the MTX and games as a service stuff" if people hadn't ghosted the legitimately great zero-MTX traditional mid-sized game.
There was also a little too much game. Instead of putting in every platforming challenge that they could think of for a given set of mechanics, it would have been paced much better if they just picked their two or three best. I’ll bet it doesn’t help that it requires the Ubisoft launcher on Steam either.
Could have said that of Ori and Hollow Knight and people seem to have showed up for those. I don't think this is any worse than they are, FWIW. In any case to even notice that kind of nuance you have to play it. If that was the conversation we're having they'd be making a sequel.
The fact that it initially launched on Epic certainly didn't help its Steam numbers, but it also did much worse than Outlaws and other Ubisoft exclusives there, so the "it's the MTX/GaaS" argument doesn't hold.
Hah. Did you hear about Concord before or after it left a crater visible from space?
In any case, there are two of them, in fact, and they're both good. You may be in time to help save The Rogue Prince of Persia, which is doing even worse, but if you don't mess with Early Access, Lost Crown is still up for sale and it's pretty great.
As a company pushes people away it gets harder to pull them back, so that doesnt take away from their complaints. Also, I’m not sure that the same crowd who plays other ubisoft titles is the crowd that’s interested in a 2d platformer.
Well, it's the same crowd that plays a bunch of games that did better. The game is on the same platforms, Ubisoft or not. And all their GaaS games did much, much better on those same platforms, so yeah, it absolutely takes away from their complaints.
Outlaws may have been a bit of a disappointment and Mirage may have struggled, but Mirage had 5x the player count on its Steam relaunch than Lost Crown did. People want AssCreed and they're gonna get AssCreed forever.
I think there is some confusion here. The game genre is “2d platformer,” I wasn’t referring to where people can play it. It isn’t the most popular genre of gaming, and it’s quite different from ubisofts’ other titles.
Yeah, no, I understood it. I'm saying that there are similar 2d platformers on those same platforms (look, it's not my fault language recycles words for things) that did much, much better.
What do you even mean? Hollow Knight was a massive success, so was Bloodstained, Ori, Metroid Dread, etc. People can’t stop memeing that Silk song is not releasing because they refuse to forget about it, Ubi’s reputation is just in the gutter so to capture the audience that enjoys these games again they have to do multiple good things, not just one and give up.
Those games did well, it doesn’t mean the genre is among the most popular and i bet they didn’t approach those level of sales. I wasn’t throwing shade, that’s just facts. I also mentioned ubis or reputation adding to this.
Right. So you didn't make a difference here, since that's also true of all the Ubi games that did better than this, then.
But this doesn't have any of the other crap people are blaming for Ubi doing poorly. So you'd expect if the outrage was making a dent whatsoever their one game that is relatively clean of that stuff would have done better, not worse, than the other stuff they are putting out.
But nope, the opposite is true.
So hey, not saying you're lying, but I think the collective at least looked at the nice, small 2D metroidvania with no MTX and went "nah", but they were much more willing to give the GaaS-y stuff a try.
Although if I WAS saying you're not being all the way honest, I may guess that you just weren't on board for this anyway and now are performatively feigning outrage for something else after the fact to pretend other people's motivations are aligned with your opinions. But I'm not. So we're good.
So, one, I'm pretty sure in most cases that's not why, for the same reasons we all shared memes of people "boycotting Call of Duty" while appearing online playing Call of Duty.
But even taking everyone at their word, I'm saying the group as a whole is not working by those parameters. Directly, demonstrably in apples to apples comparisons they didn't buy the Ubisoft game that doesn't do the stuff people claim to be mad about and bought other Ubisoft games in larger numbers.
The thing with obstinance is that it's hard to make reality change its mind. Remarkably stubborn, reality.
You really don’t understand that the people who throw money at Ubi’s standard crap and people who 2d Metroidvania games are mostly different people with different values? The CoD/Fifa/Assassin Creed crowd clearly don’t give a fuck about shitty, intrusive launchers and kernel level anti-cheat.
Meanwhile, lovers of Metroidvania games looked at Prince of Persia and it’s competition (games like Nine Sols) and chose one that didn’t install malware on their computer.
I get that you want that to be true, but there is really no indication that this is the case. There are a lot of elements in Ubisoft's recent issues, but there is no good suggestion that any of that train of thought lines up with what we're seeing here.
More to the point, even if it was, all that suggests for Ubi as a course of action is to keep doing what they're doing. I mean, maybe launch on Steam day one, but... yeah, if you monetize the big games better and the fans of the small games won't cut you a break for making them... just don't make them.
No, boycotts are not a corporate death knell. No one is saying that. LITERALLY no one is saying their personal decision or reasoning is the cause of this news.
EVERYONE ks pkinting at shitty things Ubisoft does, says, it caused them to not bjy it and likely is impacting others’ decisions… then you come along going, “NUHUH NUHUH, Ubisoft isn’t losing money because YOU didn’t buy it!”
My dude… we FUCKING KNOW THAT!! We’re saying UBISOFT shot themselves in the foot with shitty behavior. This article is literally about the effects of people not buying en masse, and you’re saying that the NEWS WE ARE READING is not possible…
Just stop. Just stop. Boycotts most often do not work, but THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT!! This is people explaining why they stopped giving Ubisoft money. Holy fuck, you are good at doubling down on a bad idea.
The point here isn't whether this game did poorly. It did. Cool.
The point here is that it did WORSE than other Ubisoft games.
Specifically, worse than Ubisoft games that include all the shitty behavior. More of the shitty behavior, in fact.
So the performance of the game is not correlated to the shitty behavior. Well, maybe more shitty behavior gets you better sales, that would fit, but I'm not going to jump to that.
You'd think if Ubisoft's shitty behavior is scaring people off this game would have done better than Mirage and Mirage better than Outcasts, but that's the opposite of what happened.
People that play games like this PoP don’t generally buy the other games Ubisoft sells. And the people that do play recent Ubisoft games are not going to play this.
That is why things like the anti cheat (for a single player game) turn people off.
This doesn't have anticheat, it has DRM software, though.
But hey, if there is no overlap, then how come this did so much worse than other similarly well liked metroidvanias, right? That's been my point here. People keep pointing out that it's not comparable to other Ubi titles. I disagree, because PoP is PoP, but let's roll with that. It also underperformed compared to other games in the same genre with similar review scores.
So what happened there? Either the Ubi woes are behind this, and then it doesn't make sense because this did worse than other more Ubisofty Ubisoft games, or they are not because different demos, and that doesn't make sense because this did much worse than similar games not from Ubisoft.
I think as far as this tells us anything is that the stink of negativity is not very fact-based when it comes to the core gaming community. That and Ubisoft may not have more money to make by going to middle sized, pure and simple high quality experiences like Rayman or this. Which sucks. Those are the best games they've made in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.
If someone says one thing and does another…people tend to trust the action, not the words. If sales numbers indicate one thing, it doesn’t matter what people say on social media.
Hollow Knight is from 2017, I don't think it was out there draining business form this seven years later. Bloodstained is more recent, and that cost the same as PoP. Also the Ori games, which are priced the same.
Plus this launched half off on Steam and nobody bought it despite being cheaper than Bloodstained and Ori.
So... I mean, it could have been that, but it pretty clearly wasn't that.
Xalavier Nelson Jr talked about this a few times over on Remap Radio.
Strange Scaffold (and many other indie studios) are literally doing what people are asking for. They are making “complete” games with no early access period and no DLC with shockingly high production values for the budget. And people are ignoring them until there is a massive sale AND still going full culture war over the stupidest of shit*. Which means it is increasingly difficult for them to secure any kind of funding even though they have an incredibly solid track record for both development and sales.
And… that is the sad reality. It has been true for decades at this point but it feels increasingly more true now. Games can’t just release “done” because people will forget they exist by the time they are willing to buy them. Look at your steam wishlist and (please don’t actually) tell me if you even remember what all of those are. Instead, people see that Caves of Qud is finally going to hit 1.0 or that Pathfinder 2 has a new DLC or that Fortnite has fucking Goku and that simultaneously reminds them that game exists AND has “new content” so that they can feel justified in being a “patient gamer”.
I can’t speak to this PoP. I know that it is a games media darling and is INCREDIBLY well done but I also tend to not want to give ubi money until yves is gone due to his role in enabling and protecting sexual misconduct which continues to this day. But it is a solid reminder of why so many major publishers refuse to do anything that is not a major franchise (and apparently Prince of Persia no longer is) or has high enough production values that it bypasses the “I’ll wait for a sale” mindset.
So… Yeah, as consumers it is not our job or responsibility to protect the people trying to sell us shit. But, if you can afford it, consider buying fewer games overall but prioritizing newer ones that actively do things you think are awesome. From a selfish standpoint, you are more likely to actually play it rather than one of the five games you got for a dollar in a fanatical bundle. But it also REALLY helps those studios to be able to report solid first quarter (or even day one) sales and many games are already launching in the 20-30 USD range anyway.
Like, I don’t know if “really well done metroidvania” is a particularly solid reason. But there is a reason all of us squad tactics sickos went crazy buying nu-xcom and the like back in the day. Because we had gone from such a lack of games that even frigging UFO: Afterlight was worth playing (it isn’t. But Aftermath or whatever the first one in that series is is the best SG-1 game ever made) to suddenly having options. And, a decade later, we have enough options that… paradox fucking murdered HBS because they weren’t pulling projected nu-xcom numbers.
*: Paraphrasing since it has been the better part of a year, but Xalavier was joking that he caught so much hell for basically parroting Swen’s stance that Larian’s BG3 was atypical and can’t be reproduced. Yet people ignored all his VERY leftist takes on economics and social justice. Although, I assume that has shifted if he is still on twitter.
I don't know the guy, but all of that sounds reasonable to me.
BG3 can be replicated, if you have a massive dormant IP that is part of a furiously resurgent franchise and have several hundred million dollars to burn in a years-long development cycle by a studio that has already done pretty much the exact same thing without a license successfully twice.
I wouldn't model my business on aligning that set of circumstances, but I sure am glad Larian did.
To be clear, there's a bunch of other AAA stuff that is also doing quite well with pretty clean, finished games. But for midsize stuff like PoP... woof, yeah, it's so hard to break through.
And you're right, it's a miserable set of incentives that if you launch broken you kinda have a built-in marketing hit because suddenly you're doing live support and adding features. No Man's Sky was a fun one for that. Cyberpunk. But those games did great at launch, so they had the built-in base to keep growing while they fixed the game. PoP launched pretty clean, was small and nobody cared, so it's no wonder Ubi has decided it can make those super talented devs do stuff on the next massive AssCreed or whatever is left of Beyond Good and Evil 2 or The Division or whatever.
They are making “complete” games with no early access period and no DLC with shockingly high production values for the budget. And people are ignoring them until there is a massive sale
I can think of several other variables that may be necessary for success that aren’t being tested in that statement. Like, is it a setting that resonates with people? Yes, I want more Max Payne, but not so much with vampires in it. Then when you find a game that gets acclaim and the audience is there for it, this is a good time to sequel that game, because now there’s brand recognition on the game people like, and they’ll be more willing to spend full price on a game where they’re confident in what they’re getting.
I just refuse to support Ubisoft. I don’t like their practices, or most of their games. I don’t feel I’m missing much by skipping whatever they make. Hopefully they go out of business and a better company can pick up their IPs and make good games, for a decent price, without crazy micro-transactions, 30 different special packs, and a required secondary launcher
Okay, but there was none of that here (except perhaps the launcher), and there was no suggestion in the results that anybody wants to encourage that. So that's definitely not the lesson being learned here.
Also, and I will keep repeating this forever, companies don't make games, people make games.
Also, also, good luck with that. Don't look now, but that's not how major companies going out of business and fire-selling their IPs tends to go.
Look, I'm not sure why it's Ubisoft's turn in the hot seat after EA and Activision, but none of that is a productive outlook or leads to a better outcome, as this one really good, really wholesome game bombing hard goes to show.
Ubisoft is in the hotseat because they let their suits have too much power over the games they produce.
I am a fan of the prince of persia series and based on the reviews I’d seen I was really interested in this title. But their absolute refusal to participate in the steam ecosystem and insistence on pushing their launcher means that I, as someone who values my own time, am not going to bother with their nonsense.
They don’t understand their customers anymore. Not well enough to shift the direction of their company’s initiatives. They deserve to fail even when they do manage to produce fun and interesting games because they are bad at the business aspects of being a game publisher/developer.
They are making progress by not delaying all of their releases on steam but man that launcher is a nuiscance.
I was too hostile to the company in my last message, honestly I used to enjoy their games. And in general I enjoy the types of games they produce. I’m a sucker for open world stuff but I stopped buying their games when they started trying to emulate the EA strategy of remaking the same game every year and inflating dlc.
I’ll happily welcome them back into my library when they drop the launcher component and lean in to steams networking features for easy coop and such.
Just the other day my buddy and I were looking for a coop open world action game with decent combat, he stumbled onto ghost recon wildlands or maybe it was the sequel but either way once we saw it was ubisoft we moved on to look for other title and ended up choosing an entirely different genre despite that being what we were looking for
Yeah, I fully agree that they've stuck to a template far too closely for far too long. That's part of why I'm frustrated that this one went as poorly as it did, since it very much isn't that.
I think the hostility to any non-Steam platform is unwarranted, although annoyance is annoyance. That said, the Ubi launcher on Steam right now is just a pop-up, I don't think it makes you log in each time if you have everything linked.
Last time I fired up a game I owned on steam that required the ubi launcher was a few years ago now and it was really bad then. Like to the point of it automatically creating a new account for me and forcibly linking it to my steam profile despite it not being the account I already had with ubisoft from a registration I had created on an Xbox console previously. It permanently divided my library between multiple ubisoft logins and made accessing the right one really annoying. Their support wouldn’t let me refund or even migrate the title to the correct account and they made it an even further inconvenience by not letting me unlink my steam profile from my (wrong) ubisoft profile without writing in a physical letter for some stupid reason. Something to do with purchase history not overlapping with the steam profile or honestly I don’t even remember anymore but it was more than enough to no longer want to do business with them.
If it’s improved to the point that it’s just a pop-up I’d be willing to consider them again. I really don’t want to support ubisoft themselves but I’d love to support Prince of Persia games. If any other studio owned the IP I would have bought it on release day
Yeah, so I just checked, it brings up a Ubisoft Connect windows and then boots. It has less of a launcher than, say, Baldur's Gate 3.
I don't know if it makes you log in the first time or it creates a new thing for you by default, but I can tell you I had more account and launcher trouble running Warframe on a new PC this week than I did playing any recent Ubisoft game.
BTW, you can link up your Steam account to Warframe now and not have to log in each time and man, that only took a decade. Still didn't piss people off as much as Ubisoft being on Epic, though.
i have a theory about some games not being popular/successful because of the lack of word of mouth and anti-Piracy measures being the reason, maybe someone already made a study on this
Not to my knowledge, but I bet not being on Steam had more to do with it than Denuvo, by far. There is no indication that DRM software discourages sales, to my knowledge. If it does, at worst it breaks even.
I will buy the DRM-free option every time, but every piece of data out there suggests that "I will never play a game with Denuvo" people vastly overestimate how much of a practical impact that stance has.
Me, I'm just weirded out that people are so mad about some solutions they know but not about Steam DRM or any other solution that isn't known widely by name. You know, since I'm sharing all my unpopular gaming hot takes here.
I mean, there are worse areas to run based on gut checks. Ultimately you buy whatever brands make you feel warm and cozy. But just so we're clear, Steam is the granddaddy of both PC DRM and digital distribution with no ownership.
I get thinking their implementation is better, but I don't know that I get "well, this one I actively root for, that one I consider a boycott-worthy deal breaker".
Well, brand and image are relevant, in more ways than direct sales impact (something that "voting with your wallet" often ignores).
But mostly, and this is important, it's worth remembering that Denuvo's clients aren't the people who buy their games, they are the people who sell the games. That's who Denuvo is selling to. And Denuvo, which is a very big, if not the only, name in town for effective DRM on PC, would like to keep being that.
All else being equal, if Denuvo generates negativity in forums and a similar no-name competitor doesn't a client (that's a publisher, not a buyer of the game), may choose to go with the newcomer just to remove the noise, or to prevent an impact on sales they can't verify.
But also, I imagine people working at Denuvo are kind of over being the random boogeyman of gaming du jour while other DRM providers are actively praised or ignored. I'd consider speaking up, too.
I probably wouldn't because there's very little to be gained from that, as this conversation proves, but... you know, I'd consider it.
EDIT: Oh, hey, I hadn't noticed, but the guy actually responds to this explicitly. Pretty much along these lines, actually:
RPS: A lot of companies seem happy enough with the service Denuvo provides to keep using it. Why are you so concerned about public perception? Why not just let people have their theories and carry on doing your thing?
Andreas Ullmann: Hard to answer. So maybe it's just… maybe it's even a personal thing. I'm with the company for such a long time. The guys here are like my family, because a lot of the others here are also here for ages. It just hurts to see what's posted out there about us, even though it has been claimed wrong for hundreds of times.
On the other hand, I can imagine that this reputation also has some kind of business impact. I can imagine that certain developers, probably more in the indie region or the smaller region, are not contacting us in the first place if they are looking for solutions.
Because currently, there is only two ways to protect a game against piracy, right? Either you don't, or use our protection. There is no competitor. And I can imagine that there are developers out there who are hesitant to contact us, only because of the reputation. They would probably love to prevent piracy for their game, but they fear the hate and the toxicity of the community if they do so. And maybe they even believe all the claims that are out there - unanswered from us until today - and for this reason don't contact us in the first place.
I always knew Sakurai worked hard to deliver high quality games, but after watching this video, it’s insane.
Creating a whole YouTube channel with 260 videos just because he had a few free months. Doing the majority (pre editing) in just a few months, scripting and recording nearly ever video in advance.
Well the people playing melee today aren’t doing it for the 4 player all items on free for all mode. Most people who play fighting games enjoy the competitive aspect, in which the two are pretty different.
You joke but I would kill for a new Kirby Air Ride game.
You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when they had a Nintendo Direct years ago and threw a “one more thing” at the end which opened with Kirby Air Ride music and Kirby riding in on the warp star, only for it to be a Smash Bros character reveal. The video they put on YouTube after the fact opened with the Smash logo, but it didn’t during the Nintendo Direct.
I would also love a Kirby air ride game… But seeing how they did multiplayer-focused gamrs like Mario tennis and golf, I don’t want today’s Nintendo to make it, if that makes sense.
2027 is a ways off, but Reforger has improved quite a bit and should be enough to hold folks over until then. I do wonder how this will affect mods; Will mod creators delay creating new mods until 4 is out?
Pretty sure Bohemia specifically said that they were planning to stop doing anything with reforger as it was a testing platform for modders and the like.
I specifically didn’t buy it knowing it was a precancelled project and I’m fairly confident that the reforger mods will be transferrable to Arma4.
For sure. Reforger was always meant to be a stepping stone to Arma 4.
What you said regarding mods is why I’m wondering how the modding community will react to the news. If mods are transferable to Arma 4, I would think mod development would continue. But I’ve seen some say they haven’t put any effort into modding Reforger because it’s just a stepping stone game.
I think it’s cause of envy. Every once in a while, a game comes that just seems to do a lot of things and become very very successful (like red dead and gta).
Then these other studios get FOMO and turn to a go big or go home attitude.
So what you end up with is this inflation of features when only a few devs can land a big game like that.
I really feel there would be a market for something like star citizen without all the realism stuff that gets in the way of the gameplay. I’m a backer, and when I can get to playing the game it’s fun, but finding my way to the launch pad after every two years break when I’m trying to checkup on progress sucks.
Years ago I made a space game that was basically, Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, but with spaceships. I made it way too complicated and basically only I could play it, but I’ve often thought that it was a good basis for a game if only I made it less stupid.
I cannot believe nobody has made a space game since, where being the master of your ship is the whole goal. Basically Euro truck simulator in space. One of the nice things about that game is that all the gamey stuff is just handled by menus so that you can actually get to the experience without having to wander around a supplemental environment that doesn’t really add anything to the experience.
It is, it’s also in alpha still. If they were claiming beta in this state I’d be more worried rather than just mad they keep adding stupid shit instead of going full optimization. They have a game, they just need to get it out the door and worry about content in future releases. It’s like the painter who can’t call a painting finished.
There is “this game needs some more baking in the oven” and then there is “let’s stick it in the oven and forget about it, hopefully it’ll get incinerated and we can take everyone’s money”.
Oh well if they’ve only started four times then that’s fine. It’s only a problem if they do it 20 times right, then we worry, but 4 times, nah, that’s standard.
You are correct words do have a meaning. A weird thing for you to bring up since you’re the one incorrectly applying labels here.
Alpha products are available only for internal review, they are not available for public release they are not intended to be viewed by the general populace.
If you’re charging people money for it then it can’t be an alpha because now it’s an external product not an internal sample.
In video games development, and more broadly in software development, Alpha state refers to a feature incomplete and largely untested state and is unrelated to internal/external sales, review, testing or release.
Alpha software is not thoroughly tested by the developer before it is released to customers.
While outside of recent trends, particularly in crowd funded games development, alpha releases to customers for paid software are less common they do occur and don’t have any bearing on the alpha state of the software.
In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon for proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions.
Further
A feature-complete (FC) version of a piece of software has all of its planned or primary features implemented but is not yet final due to bugs, performance or stability issues. This occurs at the end of alpha testing in development.
And for Beta
Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete but likely to contain several known or unknown bugs
I am both a qualified software developer, and have worked in the video games industry. I hope you have learnt something.
Okay whatever you need to say to justify it to yourself.
This game came out before I went into university I’ve now graduated and could have completed a doctorate and it still wouldn’t have been in beta yet. Is the development studio near black hole or something what’s going on here.
I’ll be “that guy” but according to Chris Roberts (the guy who owns CIG that is making the game) star citizen is supposed to be a “space life” game. It’s not an “arcade game” where there is a specific game type it is built around. You’re supposed to just be a dude/dudette living your life out in space and do what you want which can include all the things you mentioned. I personally want that very much. There are a million games out there that do the basic space pew pew thing or mining, but nothing like a life sim.
There’s going to be more than just hunger and dehydration, they built toilets and showers into some ships for a specific reason not just atheistics lol
Yeah, the problem is it wasn’t sold as a space life game a decade ago. And there’s a vast gulf between space life sim and actually having to eat/pee. It was already controversial when he said capital ships wouldn’t despawn so you’ll have to hide it and keep a 24/7 watch to make sure it isn’t stolen. A game isn’t supposed to be a job, there’s got to be a happy medium there.
"Of course it was cost-intensive to program an engine that will render every single eyelash at a resolution that will require the player to buy an additional graphics card for each eyelash concurrently on-screen, but now we only need twelve and a half billion people to buy, no, what am I saying, to pre-order and pre-pay the Ultra-Super-Deluxe-Collector’s Edition and we’ll start to turn a profit."
Single player games with a good story and fun replayability are what I’m after. Or co-op. Occasionally, a fun multiplayer with a risky, innovative design like Lethal Company.
If a game requires me to collect 100 goddamn feathers, or press X 20 times to “survive” a heavily scripted encounter, you are doing your game wrong. Look at Black Mesa, look at Subnatica. Look at the games that took risks like Lethal Company or Elite Dangerous. You don’t have to appeal to everyone. You have to tell a story well, and the gameplay should be unique and interesting. Larian understood that with Divinity 2, and made improvements to both story and gameplay in BG3.
Unfortunately the good taste of people who actively comment about games often has only slight overlap with what makes money.
Three of the top ten US game earners in 2024 were yearly sports game rehashes. One of the top ten games was Call Of Duty. One was Fortnite.
These are money making machines. We can argue and beg and plead all we want. There is a huge mass of gamers out there was simply don’t care, and who will continue to buy formulaic rehashes and microtransaction infested treadmills.
The AAA publishers are not in it for the art. Look at AA and indie if you want games that are willing to appeal to a niche. I’m talking to you and everyone else reading this because this might actually have an effect. Saying what AAA publishers and developers should do is pointless, not like they will ever read it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
I would argue the market for every kind of game is expanding. There’s a bigger market for Tetris now than there was in 1987, in terms of actual economic resources that could go into making Tetris profitably.
The Tetris market is a smaller percentage share of the overall gaming market, but in absolute terms it’s more money than it was in 1987.
That’s my suspicion at least.
Then the challenge is connecting that market slice with the dev shop that wants to serve that market slice. Which isn’t trivial. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.
Every market is getting bigger, based on at least these four factors:
More cultural acceptance of gaming
Higher percentage of humanity achieving economic status where leisure becomes relevant
Proliferation of technology to greater portion of humanity
Expansion of human population
All markets are growing.
Heck, the market for COBOL programmers is larger today than ever before. That’s really interesting if you think about it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.
Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.
Good story and fun replayability (to me that means branching story paths and discoverability) is tough to combine. I’m hopeful for generative AI’s ability to make good stories that are also unique. Real, in depth dialogue that stays in character, AI directors for new story paths, that kind of thing.
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