I went to my local shop’s website. The first game listed is Split Fiction for $70. The game doesn’t even have a cartridge. It’s literally a download code in the box. The PS5/Xbox versions are $65 and are on physical disc.
Who in their right mind is buying this? $70 for a Hogwart’s Legacy game key card? PS5 is $50 new. PS4 is $30.
Is there maybe a generational gap? I am older and I very, very rarely watch videos. Maybe when I am totally stuck in a game will I watch a walkthrough. But just watching other people play is something my kids and their friends do. I think games just caught up to sports, where most fans spend more time watching than playing as well.
I’m past 50 and I still watch multiple gaming videos daily. Neebs gaming, ragg tag, zylbrad, etc. Most of the creators I watch are entertaining no matter what they are doing. I spend more time gaming than watching videos.
Might be. I’m Gen X and have no interest in watching someone play a game in a video. I do like watching someone play in person, though, so I can understand the appeal.
Having recently played through Hifi Rush after the studio closed, it reads very differently when you know the characters who go up against Vandalay and Kale, the most corporate of corporations and evil CEO, are killed by a real life evil corporation.
This is great news and even makes playing through the 1st game more enjoyable knowing we’re (hopefully) getting more!
Churn is inevitable with any subscription service.
The trick is creating just enough value and exclusive content/services that you feel like you’re gonna miss out if you leave. But not too much.
I haven’t seen any incentive to stay with any specific game subscription service via exclusive content or services. But I do see plenty of attempts to lock people into services with shitty tactics. Like forcing save data to the cloud. Good luck moving that saved file to your own personal copy of the game. Or multiple tiered service options with features/games locked behind more expensive options.
I’ve always had an Xbox, but the One is my last. The game pass is like cable TV, hundreds of meh games to choose from, one or two gems…the game library itself is…a lot less than what I can get elsewhere.
it’s just there isant reason for me to get another one or the next version…so I’ll be getting a steam deck.
Steam deck for sure was one of my best purchases the past few years. Sure you can’t play AAA games for more than like an hour before the battery runs out… but you can still play them. Played through the first 50 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn on that bad boy while I was out of town for a few weeks.
Besides that, it’s my FAVORITE way to play indie games. Easily get 3-5 hours on it, and the controls are WAY more comfortable than on the switch. Couple that with steam sales and it’s just fantastic
A strong, cogent argument can be made for having a wide variety of game developers. I don’t see ANYONE saying, “we need more companies like EA, Activision or UbiSoft.”
I wish we lived in a universe, where these platforms can exist on their own, without falling into the trap of needing financial support from literal satan, in companies like Fandom
that universe requires people to pay money for content rather than having advertiser funded content that people will just block anyway. which in 2023 isn’t going to happen
If these were all getting financial support from a large company, why did they all switch on more ads, newsletters, anti-adblockers, and subscription prompts at basically the same time? Must’ve been only crumbs, I think they will move on and be better off. A few less click-bait titles in the aggregators are all that is lost I suppose.
The games “news” coverage system is a-changin’ again, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Large companies are driven by one thing and only one thing. Shareholder value. So they and their subsidiaries will implement policies that drive shareholder value at the cost of everything else.
Avera adds another factor: consumers are buying fewer games and spending more time with select franchises, a trend likely to accelerate as the market continues to shift towards live service titles.
Well, given who the layoffs are hitting, perhaps we're done shifting that way and can start to shift back.
The author then goes on to mention game length, and yeah, I agree. Halo and Gears of War used to be 10 hour linear campaigns, and now they're open world. Assassin's Creed games used to be shy of 30 hours, and now they're over 60 hours. Baldur's Gate 3 is as long or longer than Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 put together; quite frankly, if the game was only Act 1, it would have more than enough content to justify its asking price, and it feels a lot like I just played through an entire trilogy rather than a single game.
People spending more time with fewer games is not a reason, in publishers' minds, to reverse course. It's the intended outcome.
Having the same number of people (or near the same number) playing fewer games, and filling those games with monetization features is cheaper and easier to maintain than having a broad and growing library of titles.
Remember, the ideal for publishers is to have one game that everyone plays that has no content outside of a "spend money" button that players hit over and over again. That's the cheapest product they can put out, and it gives them all the money. They're all seeking everything-for-nothing relationships with customers.
But in a world where we assume that they achieved that, ignoring the long games without microtransactions like Baldur's Gate and Zelda, there are industry-wide effects at a macro level.
I was going to consider Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC instead of PS5. Then they announced it wouldn’t be available on Steam. Now I won’t consider it on PC and likely won’t get it at all in any format.
There are reasons PC gaming is still stupid, and it’s mostly various companies fault.
Yeah that’s on Ubisoft. Third party launchers are always stupid. I bought Splinter Cell Blacklist a while ago and couldn’t get it to act right with their stupid Ubisoft connect or Uplay or whatever so I just returned it.
But the worst is how I bought splinter cell conviction years ago via steam, and can’t even play it anymore because of how they shittily implemented their DRM/launcher. Not buying any more games from them. Used to be my favorite dev back in the day.
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