Are there even any really good games coming out this year?
Further, didn’t the Switch 2 already break sales records? 5.4 million consoles? 1.8 million of them in the US?
Looking at the roster of games that have come out so far this year, it looks pretty barren for genuinely quality games. Maybe people just haven’t bought a lot of the kind of forgettable titles? The only games that seem popular that aren’t remakes or re-releases of previous games are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Split Fiction, Death Stranding 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Elden Ring Nightreign. Of those, only the first four listed score above 90 on Metacritic. Even stuff like Monster Hunter Wilds has been deeply panned.
I think it’s probably a mixture of high prices, lack of money, Switch 2 sales and waiting on better Switch 2 titles other than just Mario Kart World, as well as a lackluster roster of other quality games.
Games suck now. Movies too. Culture in decline. We (millennials and gen x) got to see the art form (gaming and at least short form video on youtube and vimeo and stuff) evolve from studios owned by people who were passionate about the craft to the current state of big business making “safe” investments. It’s not that only bad games will ever come out from now on, indie studios exist and some big studios take chances, but there will always be a sea of remakes, remasters, endless sequels, generic safe garbage, etc
Also data is about 18-24 year old spending. I bet a lot of switch 2 purchases were by people 30+ for their kids
At this point what would make the most sense is an “Xbox Series Z” for people that want higher-performing games. I just don’t see thousands of people buying another $600 console for like 5 games, when most will continue to support the Xbox One. (Yes, Xbox One - most games on the front page of their store still support their old console)
PS5 Pro wanted to do RT at smooth framerates but turned out to be way too undercooked. We’re seeing glimpses of that on XSX too with Indiana Jones and Dragon’s Dogma 2 (that 40 FPS VRR window makes it work). It’s working as a tech demo that’s building appetite for more because of how transformative to the experience in both games that is. If Microsoft could deliver it at this timing it would be extra awkward for Sony who need to keep on going with current hardware for a couple more years not to look like Sega with 32X and Saturn. Even if Nvidia shows something revolutionary with new line of GPUs it will be prohibitively expensive in the context of consoles anyway.
Yes, I think it’s going to be quite expensive. They’ve been saying it’s going to be an enormous leap in performance, and that’s not going to come cheap.
IF 2026 was a real date that wouldn’t matter that much. Microsoft wants to be the first one to sell you the last console you will need be able to afford to. People will get it for generationally better experience but there’s not much else to look out for on the horizon. Hardware got too expensive for the consumer and games beyond certain budgets are much too risky. Consider upcoming trade wars and overall bleak economic outlook and you have to assume every player is looking for a survival strategy. Market analysts say that Microsoft is going to become software publisher primarily again but this makes no sense to me. Game Pass Cloud and Xbox are the only places where they don’t have to share the spoils with owners of other platforms. Obviously they’ll want to keep it going regardless of circumstances. Microsoft could be banking on getting high-end market for now and transition with revisions of the same hardware into lower segments with time as market conditions improve.
I’m very stoned currently so I can’t vouch for the quality of my analysis long term but I will stand by it for now.
Our shareholders can’t buy another private jet to pollute the environment, so fuck off. Jake, you can stay though. You’ve been promoted to hold every job with a 5% raise.
I much prefer to play on Gamepass at the moment. From my personal experience, I will simply never have the time to play again to 90% of my games. It’s just impossible (even if I stopped playing new games today, I am not sure I will be able to do so before I die). Since it’s way cheaper to play this way, I don’t see the point of buying new games anymore (I still buy a few games per year, and just cancel my membership while playing them such as Nintendo games or games I really want to play day one like Cyberpunk).
Besides, over the years, I built up an emulation setup with all the games I played (and old games I would likely play at some point, since I dedicate 50% of my play time to retrogaming). It’s not like it is necessary to own them to play them if you want a nostalgia trip a few decades after their initial release.
Besides, the vast majority of those games will still be available in the future (physical copies, online stores, remaster/remakes, piracy, emulation). I believe it is unnecessary to own every single game in the fear of the being able to (potentially) play it once again in 10 years.
I agree that the gamepass model will likely collapse at some point if it becomes too popular, but it’s not a problem to take advantage to it while it’s profitable and drop it when it’s not anymore (just unsubscribe when you don’t use it, which is what I do 4-6 months per year to play other games).
I will simply never have the time to play again to 90% of my games. It’s just impossible (even if I stopped playing new games today, I am not sure I will be able to do so before I die). Since it’s way cheaper to play this way, I don’t see the point of buying new games anymore
My reason is kind of the opposite: I have very little time to play games, so I choose quality over quantity. What I see on GamePass is an endless supply of mediocrity. I’d rather buy a few really good games at full price than spend the little time I have playing whatever Microsoft padded their catalog with.
Depends on your taste I guess. I don’t play those games because they are there, but because they are « on my list ». I don’t think games like Ori, Hades, Hi-Fi rush, Call of the sea, Persona 5, etc are trash. And when nothing interests me anymore, I just unsubscribe and come back a few months later when there are at least a few interesting games. I agree that I wouldn’t only play on gamepass :).
I don’t think games like Ori, Hades, Hi-Fi rush, Call of the sea, Persona 5, etc are trash
I’m not saying they are trash, they are either really old or just decent games. I would say it’s mostly games I would rate a 7 or 8 out of 10. But with limited time available for gaming, there are enough games that I would rate a 9 or 10 to fill the available time. So why would I not just exclusively play only very top tier games?
GamePass is nice if you’re 16, can’t afford to buy full price games and have lots of free time. You get a lot of play time out of a limited budget with decent enough games.
But when you’re 40+ with a full time job, you make a different trade-off. You have much less free time but a higher income. You then tend to go for quality over quantity. Make every hour you can spend gaming count.
Well, I am 30+ years old and have no problem to buy games full price. I would have played those games even if they weren’t on the Gamepass. That’s why I said it’s more a question of taste in gaming that explains why you consider such games just « decent ». I think if you try to list your « 9 or 10 out of 10 games », I will have no or little interest in most of them (and that’s fine, no one is wrong here ^^).
My message was more to take advantage of the Gamepass for the games that are worth it, for the time it is worth it. Even if 99% of the games were trash, it would still be worth it to subscribe and play those 1% (and unsubscribe when you are done).
You bet they’d want that. But now that I think about it, the whole point of the Xbox series was to play game pass. If you have game pass on playstation/Nintendo, why would you even think about getting an Xbox? Maybe they don’t want to sell systems anymore?
At this point it wouldn’t even surprise me if they wanna end Xbox in its current form. To my knowledge it’s very low margin if it’s not a net negative, so using other platforms instead to host it would end up with them making more in the long run.
Lots of companies have products that exist just to compete with a rival’s product and keep the pressure on them, I’m sure Microsoft has plenty of products that exist just so they have the “you know we could drop this deal we have with you at any point and use our own version, so offer us a good deal”. I imagine they’ll keep the xbox around even if the likes of Sony and Nintendo do support game pass just so Microsoft have always got that bargaining chip of “alright then, we’ll run it on our own machine” if the others decide they want to change the terms of the deal.
gamespot.com
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