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I wholeheartedly agree, just to add that currently even the most competent industry leaders have been seriously struggling in the last few years. - Bethesda's

I wholeheartedly agree, just to add that currently even the most competent industry leaders have been seriously struggling in the last few years. - Bethesda's Starfield and RedFall flops. - The tumultuous Cyberpunk 2077 story from the darling CD Projekt Red. - Many masters of their craft have lost their luster after serious flops or stagnation: BioWare, Dice, Arkane, Crytek, Blizzard, Rocksteady... - The long-term slow death of Ubisoft and its recent big-budget failures with Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar, underwhelming Far Cry 6, also AC Shadows is looking grim. - EA has all but disappeared from the big picture, it was hated before, but now it's just ignored. They failed to properly take advantage of their Star Wars monopoly. - Microsoft is volatile, with aggressive acquisitions and aggressive studio closures, seriously struggling to make Xbox competitive, and a Game Pass that will have difficulties in transitioning from a loss-leader to a real business. - Sony's Concord crash, and generally confused strategy of exclusives vs PC ports/remasters. - The whole failure of Embracer Group trying to gobble up most of AA. Only Rockstar seems unscathed, but mainly because they haven't released anything major since Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) and GTA 5 remains insanely profitable. It would be the first time, but I wouldn't be surprised if GTA 6 was a disaster looking at what has happened to other highly reputable studios like Bethesda, Arkane, Bioware or CDPR. AAA games are just getting too expensive to make now. They can still be highly profitable when they hit the right notes, but it's so much riskier now, you can end up loosing hundreds of millions unexpectedly. Because of the risk, everyone is forced to make more and more anaemic games, which make the situation worse. There seems to be an industry-wide difficulty in leveraging properly creative and talented writers and game designers, even if they don't cost much. It would be nice if it was just AAA, but it's not. There have been some recent success stories on AA with Baldur's Gate 3, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2... But just as many failures too (you don't hear as much about them). Also, there's been a wave of acquisitions and investments from aggressive VC-like money, and even moderate successes are studio-closing failures for them (Hi-Fi Rush, an example of many). And as usual, there are always a few fantastic success stories for Indie games, but big-picture the market is more saturated than ever and the vast majority of indie developers end up making less than minimum wage. Tough times.

rpd9803 2y ago
I mean, I think there is a signifigant portion of video game players that could have told you Starfield and RedFall would underwhelm.. Bethesda players clearly want, nay are begging for more Elder Scrolls and Fallout main line games. I know Bethesda wanted a new IP, but literally their audience was begging them to make the stuff they want to play faster and it seems like they ignored it, at their peril. Agree on everything else, just salty at Bethesda for dropping the ball. I'd also add Valve to the list somewhere as another weird example because they make far too much money distributing games to have as strong an appetite for making them despite a pretty good track record (The hardware... maybe another story)
- oersted 2y ago
  I agree, again, there's a surprising endemic difficulty throughout the whole industry to empower decent writers and designers to make properly engaging and interesting games, and that's not really a budget issue. There's a comparison to be made with Amazon Prime's big-budget flops like Rings of Power, but others like HBO or Apple TV are still managing to reward and empower good writers. It must be an underlying systemic issue, they are not stupid. They keep betting big on things that are obviously doomed from the outset to any average gamer, but they are blind to it. They think these bets are safe because they appeal to a wider audience, but they end up making them even riskier because they don't appeal to anyone. On Valve, they have been doing their own thing for like 15 years. They flirted with being a normal games studio in the Half-Life and Portal era, but that didn't last long. It's not just Steam, most of their games like Dota, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress are still always at the top of the charts in active players, they require such minimal maintenance, and they are wildly profitable due to user generated content and item trading economy. Steam Deck has been surprisingly successful too, and they've taken a decent piece of the pie in VR.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>Sony's Concord crash, and generally confused strategy of exclusives vs PC ports/remasters. Sony has two subsidaries making games: * Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ) through their subsidary Aniplex. They are not to be confused with Sony Music Entertainment (SME), another subsidary. * Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), who are the PlayStation people and historically Sony's video game division. They were previously Sony Computer Entertainment before they moved to California and rebranded. * SMEJ and SIE are equals under the Sony Group Corporation conglomerate. SMEJ more or less minds their own business, their operations concern all entertainment media in Japan including games. Their subsidary Aniplex is their anime, video game, pop music, and overall otaku division. Aniplex's games have been generally well received, with Fate/Grand Order (developed by DelightWorks and subsequently bought out by Aniplex, this is important for later context below) being the foremost example and others such as all the Sword Art Online games. SIE loathes SMEJ and Aniplex because their games by comparison have crashed and burned again and again, Concord being just the most recent example of many. They even spun up a game dev studio called ForwardWorks to defeat Aniplex's DelightWorks, but ForwardWorks like most of their other ventures failed while DelightWorks just kept moving along. SIE is also in the awkward position of approving PlayStation ports of Aniplex's games, despite their hatred. So if you ever wonder why some of Sony's games are crashing and burning, just remember: It's probably by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and they are too busy trying to drag their fellow co-workers down to be making good games.

rpd9803 2y ago

I mean, I think there is a signifigant portion of video game players that could have told you Starfield and RedFall would underwhelm.. Bethesda players clearly want, nay are begging for more Elder Scrolls and Fallout main line games. I know Bethesda wanted a new IP, but literally their audience was begging them to make the stuff they want to play faster and it seems like they ignored it, at their peril. Agree on everything else, just salty at Bethesda for dropping the ball. I'd also add Valve to the list somewhere as another weird example because they make far too much money distributing games to have as strong an appetite for making them despite a pretty good track record (The hardware... maybe another story)

oersted 2y ago
I agree, again, there's a surprising endemic difficulty throughout the whole industry to empower decent writers and designers to make properly engaging and interesting games, and that's not really a budget issue. There's a comparison to be made with Amazon Prime's big-budget flops like Rings of Power, but others like HBO or Apple TV are still managing to reward and empower good writers. It must be an underlying systemic issue, they are not stupid. They keep betting big on things that are obviously doomed from the outset to any average gamer, but they are blind to it. They think these bets are safe because they appeal to a wider audience, but they end up making them even riskier because they don't appeal to anyone. On Valve, they have been doing their own thing for like 15 years. They flirted with being a normal games studio in the Half-Life and Portal era, but that didn't last long. It's not just Steam, most of their games like Dota, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress are still always at the top of the charts in active players, they require such minimal maintenance, and they are wildly profitable due to user generated content and item trading economy. Steam Deck has been surprisingly successful too, and they've taken a decent piece of the pie in VR.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>Sony's Concord crash, and generally confused strategy of exclusives vs PC ports/remasters. Sony has two subsidaries making games: * Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ) through their subsidary Aniplex. They are not to be confused with Sony Music Entertainment (SME), another subsidary. * Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), who are the PlayStation people and historically Sony's video game division. They were previously Sony Computer Entertainment before they moved to California and rebranded. * SMEJ and SIE are equals under the Sony Group Corporation conglomerate. SMEJ more or less minds their own business, their operations concern all entertainment media in Japan including games. Their subsidary Aniplex is their anime, video game, pop music, and overall otaku division. Aniplex's games have been generally well received, with Fate/Grand Order (developed by DelightWorks and subsequently bought out by Aniplex, this is important for later context below) being the foremost example and others such as all the Sword Art Online games. SIE loathes SMEJ and Aniplex because their games by comparison have crashed and burned again and again, Concord being just the most recent example of many. They even spun up a game dev studio called ForwardWorks to defeat Aniplex's DelightWorks, but ForwardWorks like most of their other ventures failed while DelightWorks just kept moving along. SIE is also in the awkward position of approving PlayStation ports of Aniplex's games, despite their hatred. So if you ever wonder why some of Sony's games are crashing and burning, just remember: It's probably by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and they are too busy trying to drag their fellow co-workers down to be making good games.