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Soundwave on 10 June 2024
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zeldaring said:
Soundwave said:

I'm talking about "graphics enthusiasts" like the ones that propagate and make a lot of noise on message boards like this one (even though this is a sales website). 

That's not "PC gamer", there are tons of PC gamers with low end rigs and tons of PC gamers that don't give a shit about graphics. 

The proof in that pudding is for several years all we heard was "wait till next-gen games with killer graphics arrive! People will flock to them!". Well those games have started to trickle out, things like Unreal Engine 5 showcase Immortals of Aveum, Senua's Saga just released, Alan Wake II, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, the PS5-only Final Fantasy games, even something like Starfield which is a huge release. 

But most of these games are having underwhelming sales, some of them being full blown flops. I even hear stuff like "well people in Japan are buying a PS5 to play Genshin Impact". And people just casually say that without even thinking about it. Really? A smartphone game is the biggest game on a next gen console in a large market? They're playing that over a $100+ million dollar big budget next-gen Final Fantasy game? When the fuck did this just become the norm? If that isn't a glaring red flag that the market is changing in massive ways I don't even know what to say. 

Some people are wildly out to lunch thinking they're still in 2003 or something and the industry more or less is just working like it was back then, it's not even close. This gen is nothing like previous generations at all, we're nearly into the PS5's fifth year and the biggest 3rd party yearly IP (COD) is still on last gen consoles. We have a small handful of "lets push this new hardware" titles and pretty much all of them have failed to light up any sales chart. People don't care. 

We all know graphics don't sell games on their own but that data obviously shows more people care about perfomance and graphics then you think when the majority of PC gamers have more powerful hardware than ps5, they want to run their favorite games at descent resolution and framerate so that throws your argument right out the window.

I don't think it's anywhere near that simple. The whole "I've bought a new console/graphics card and now will buy a graphics showcase game to show it off" I don't think even that is happening anymore. These people "upgrade" in the same sense they upgrade their phone for a few quality of life features, but they really don't care about the performance that much. It's "iPhone-ization" of hardware in general. 

It used to be if you got say a Dreamcast, you would definitely want Soul Calibur even if you're not a big fighting fan to show off the system and say "hey bet your PS1 can't do this" type of thing. I don't think that's really happening at all anymore. 

Lots of people just buy what's on the shelf at a certain point because they just want something new, just like they want the newer iPhone or whatever, take it home and then just go straight back to playing Fortnite or Genshin Impact and pay zero attention to an Alan Wake 2 or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora or Senua's Saga ... zero fucks given. In Japan they can't even bother to show up for FF7 Rebirth, an uber expensive, quite pretty remake of one of most beloved Japanese games ever made, like something is definitely changed massively here. They'd rather play a smartphone game on their PS5? When did that become normal, and how is that just some small thing. It's absurd that this doesn't even get talked about, lol, like "yeah this is just normal now" .... whaaat? 

I think part of the problem in discussing what the industry is now is some people just hold to a belief that "well this is how things worked in the past, so everything will just do that over and over and over again" ... when it's clear things are no where near that simple. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 June 2024