I think what really started the current levels of rot was online passes for used games. They saw that people were playing without paying them directly, and wanted to stop it.
It was unpopular, as were map packs (which split the player base in online games), and here we are now with endless lootboxes and gacha elements. Sure, you can play without paying, but you’ll always feel like a second class citizen if you do. Everything you want will be held deliberately out of reach, and the aspect of “fun” has been reduced to collections and bars filling up.
It’s bred this generation of zombie gamers. I went to see my sister at Christmas, and her husband was playing Fallout 76 “doing his dailies”. I did ask what it was for and he said he didn’t really play it or want anything from the points it gives, and admitted what he was doing was kind of pointless. And then fired up the next game and did the same thing.
I tend to just stay away from multiplayer games these days. They’re pretty much all like that. The idea of playing because it’s fun is dead.
Went into CEX the other week, and saw PS1 games I’d bought when I was already an adult with a job, being sold second hand for more than I’d originally bought them for.
Cell was just PowerPC as was the Xbox 360’s Xenon chip. PowerPC is all but dead now, but the same thing could happen to x86 or ARM in the future. No king rules forever.
But just remember that during the 360/PS3 era when MS were in the lead, it was Sony trying to by all consumer friendly, advocating online cross play and having free online service.
I think the early 3D era is the worst for this. We really had no idea how movement or cameras should work, and there was a lot of flailing trying to get it right, and people didn’t even realise when it was right.
I was there 3000 years ago when Alien Resurrection came out and you used the left stick to walk and sidestep, and the right stick to pan and tilt, and it felt like utter unplayable madness.
They did milk the fuck out of that, I’ll grant you.
But at the same time you couldn’t take them online and end up playing somebody who’d got the latest one and have to fight new characters you’d have no access to.
Dunno how much enthusiasm there is for a homebrew scene because the 1st gen was weak as shit, and the main selling point is you can use them as a PC headset, which is going to get you a better experience than any game run natively on it.
I mean sure, but at the end of the day it’s a pretend spaceship, that you don’t own in any meaningful way, in a videogame that could go offline forever at any point that they deem it unprofitable to continue.
I can’t be alone in finding even the “deeply discounted” prices to be somewhat unreasonable. This is horse armour with ideas above its station.