| PotentHerbs said: Helldivers 2 will make more money than whatever amount their live service games have lost. Not to mention MLB The Show prints money as a yearly release. Some of you need to get over the live service boogeyman. You are not losing single player games because Sony decided to buy Haven and Bungie. The Last of Us Online getting cancelled doesn't impact the new IP coming out of Santa Monica Studios or Sony Bend. The type of single player games that people want from Sony is certainly not coming from Pixel Opus, London Studio or Firewalk. |
Lots of games made a killing off of loot-box mechanics as well, that doesn't make it a strategy to be lauded. It only takes a few hits to spark a trend, which invariably leads to funds getting funneled into projects of the same ilk, taking it away from other possible venues. Anthem is a prime example - Bioware were still capable of making something great back then, but the EA ghost hovered above them and wanted that sweet GaaS nectar. You mentioning that some profit is made off of what is generally considered a poor trend, doesn't make it a good trend. Heck, even the industry at large disagrees with you, and also subscribe to the "boogeyman" theories.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/70-of-developers-worry-about-the-live-service-models-sustainability-survey-shows/
https://twistedvoxel.com/first-party-studios-upset-playstation-gaas-direction/
Gamers and developers, overall, are not fond of GaaS, it's mostly on the publisher side that the enthusiasm lies. Any publisher and developer has a finite amount of money, it's absurd to claim that GaaS focus won't steer funding away from other projects, such as single-player (and multiplayer) games that people actually want. I also play one franchise that is probably a net negative to the industry (FIFA). I don't play online, and certainly don't purchase card packs for UT, but I would never in a million years suggest that what EA are doing with FIFA is a good thing.
I surely hope that we won't see a future where you not only pay for the connection and the privilege of playing online, but also have to pay subscriptions or regular fees for individual titles on top. It's a very bad development for us as consumers - it will create a market of intermittency and instability, with uneven sales curves and more closures as a result.
