I can only speak for myself. But the AAA gaming industry completely lost me as a customer sometime in the last few years. I do own every platform besides Xbox (because you don't need an Xbox if you have a gaming PC). I tried countless so-called AAA games in the last few years and 90+ percent of those were just a big disappointment. Either it was a buggy mess or the games just weren't fun. This led me to ignore AAA releases. Today I'm mainly playing older titles and Indies. The games I love the most often come from small teams with even smaller budgets. It is so obvious that you don't need a truckload of money to make a good game. You just need ideas and creativity. Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Activision and the likes lack that. It seems to me that even Sonys Studios, which I absouletely adored during the PS3 era, have burnt out or something. I don't know, like a said, its totally subjective.
At least my friends feel the same way and I hardly know anyone who is excited for new game releases. Even my 11-year-old son is bored most of the time. The last game he was looking forward to was Cities Skylines 2, and that is already a few months old. When I look at the current release schedules, I almost get depressed. I don't know why the hell I have a PS5 standing here. The last game I bought at launch was Tomb Raider Remastered. Which is technically an old game. And boy is it a good one. Why don't they make games like that anymore? No bazillions of markers telling me exactly what to do. Just myself exploring levels and getting excited for what comes next.
Of course I bought the game for Switch, because why the hell would I buy something like that for the PS5? Nintendo is the exception from the rule in my case. Their games might not be the biggest or most ambitious and the graphics surely aren't up to date. But the games are fun! And that is something that is getting less and less common in the AAA gaming industry. Oh, Valve is also an exception now that I think of it. But they release maybe one game a decade, lol.
Now it might also be me getting old and getting another view at games or something. I won't rule that out. But overall I have a feeling that gaming companies listen too much to their market research and let too little room for creativity in development. When it comes to layoffs, I don't think it's neccessarily a bad thing. Make smaller teams, let them go wild. Release a bunch of smaller, but fun games. Screw highend graphics, those are a waste of money. Graphics are good enough nowadays. Maybe you're releasing 9 flops and 1 hit. I think that will be ok when the budget for those titles combined is less than it is for one so-called AAA-blockbuster these days.
But anyway, I'm no expert, so what the hell do I know.
Official member of VGC's Nintendo family, approved by the one and only RolStoppable. I feel honored.
