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.
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.
The differences between those two things have begun to dissolve very quickly in the past 5 or so years, and that’s both why they’re very comparable and why so many people are seeing the writing on the wall for consoles.
There are still a ton of ways to allow for a lot of player freedom without being open world. In fact, I’d say lots of open world games lack the freedom that a much smaller game like Streets of Rogue has, for instance. But yes, Naughty Dog has toyed with open world-ish designs in the Uncharted 4 era and Jak before that.
I mean, I just said they were comparable. To say that they’re not remotely comparable is laughable. But here are a quick few reasons: one of them is in Walmart and the other is not; one appeals to children (not the least of which is the presence of a brand “moat” in Pokemon) in a way that most other electronics do not, which also translates to multiple children in a family each having their own, which drives up sales numbers; one of them already had an international distribution chain to handle territories like Australia rather than having to build one up; one came out 5 years earlier than the other, including existing in a time period where handheld gaming PCs were typically not driving comparable 3D graphics, but that changed a mere few years later with advancements from AMD in the x64 space.
This is a paradigm shift that has occurred since the Switch’s launch. Here’s an interesting thought: do you think there will still be the “port everything to the Switch” crowd for the next Switch when the game already has a PC version ready to go on the Steam Deck? Because I’ll bet they just buy that device, or a competing handheld PC, instead without having to hope that the game they want to play gets a Switch version, and that’s exactly the weakness of the console model in the modern era.
It was an open secret at Gamescom that it’s going to be similar in performance to the Steam Deck or a PS4 except running on ARM. That will be a huge upgrade compared to Tears of the Kingdom struggling to hit 30 FPS at very low resolutions.
Truthfully, all sorts of players are asking for all sorts of things, and you’ve got co-op story-driven games still coming out from other sources. Systems-driven games are way up my alley, and I’ll happily take one of those even without co-op. Besides, if a PlayStation game came out with co-op, it wouldn’t be offline co-op.
The vast majority of Switch games are not made by Nintendo, and the vast majority of those are available on PC and Steam Deck, and typically better versions of those games at that.
Nintendo has acknowledged that a new Switch is coming, and we’ve seen leaks come out of Chinese manufacturing that appear to be legitimate to those in the know.
There’s no need to worry about it, because long-term, this is a good thing for everyone. The market didn’t tolerate multiple home video or audio formats for very long, so it’s kind of a strange anomaly that we tolerated it for video games as long as we did. Now the concept is coming up on the end of its usefulness, especially since the platform holders won’t let up on certification/patch fees, online subscriptions, external digital storefronts, and all sorts of other concessions that have historically made them more money but maybe don’t make sense in the modern era.
But what is interesting and says a lot about the flattening silicon evolution curve is that your game on your monster PC is not going to look or play 3 to 5 times better than on a PS5 Pro console. There is a huge diminishing return now on high end silicon, and that might have an impact on the life cycle duration of console hardware.
Likewise, there are diminishing returns in how much better PS5 Pro games look than base PS5 games, and that’s kind of the problem. Don’t compare a PS5 Pro to a top of the line PC; compare it to a similarly priced PC for the same reasons.
You know that in the wake of Suicide Squad and Saga from Alan Wake II, they stated quite clearly that what was “obviously” their contributions were totally wrong, with Remedy confirming on their end? It may not be inaccurate to state that sensitivity reading or consulting for authenticity when writing diverse characters are services that they offer, but their contributions to each game are not itemized. It’s like when a bad port happens and people see Iron Galaxy in the credits, they want to see this pattern of Iron Galaxy being responsible rather than <beloved creator of game you like> and then throw out any evidence of Iron Galaxy actually being a really good port studio. I get that you want to form patterns of why something you perceive to be wrong is happening, but the truth is that these companies’ contributions are not itemized, because video games work more like a traditional business than Hollywood, and it’s no one’s policy to break out which work was done by a contractor versus in-house, so you’ll actually never know. Instead, Endymion, or whoever it is you watch that picked up on the week’s trending rage bait topic, cosplays as a journalist and infers a whole lot of what Sweet Baby does that they just didn’t do, whereas an actual journalist would get quotes from sources to confirm that it’s true.