I mean, it’s not true inside a bubble. I’m sure there’s some incredible games that have been made by one person that didn’t find the kind of success that Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, etc did. But at a giant corporation like Ubisoft, they’re not on their own! They have marketing people, interns, studios and sub-studios, finance people, trend analysts, etc.
Ubisoft has some great IPs. But all of their best games came out over 20 years ago! So yes, quality is not the only thing, but it definitely matters.
Don’t forget the king of hardware exclusives: Nintendo! Other than ones with gimmicky motion controls or displays that can’t be easily replicated, most of their games would have the best experience by being more accessible, on better hardware, using better controllers, but Nintendon’t want that. They would also be cheaper!
As another example, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the best game ever made, in my opinion. But there’s a laughable amount of glitches in it and speedrunners can easily tear the game apart. So it’s not perfect. It’s also old and the graphics are dated. If it were somehow still supported today, there would be a high-resolution texture pack released, no doubt about it…
Wow, AAA publishers really did a number on us all, huh? Think of them as “expansions”. The game was absolutely complete on 1.0 and you can still get that version! I have most of my time playing the game on v1.0.
The developer then added more content to the game, for free. The bug fixes have been pretty minor and would have happened with paid updates or without, like any modern game…
There’s farming and fishing, tons to collect and craft and upgrade, there’s dungeons, there’s relationships and rare items, and variety of play in the seasons and festivals… But for me, my favorite thing is just how damn charming it all is. The soundtrack is great and atmospheric, even the sound effect of just chopping down a tree is so perfect and satisfying. And IMO, there’s no game that’s a better example of “play at your own pace”. It’s pretty cheap and appeals to such a wide variety of gamers… So give it a try!