DLC is good. Nobody has proven that content was held back to be sold later. Planned and prepared for, but not necessarily ripped off the disc and sold later. Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 all have great DLC. Mass Effect 3 has a better ending thanks to DLC. People bitch if even a single file on a disk refers to future DLC as if the publisher is trying to cheat them. But the truth is that at some point a game has to go to a factory and get pressed onto disks. Stuff gets cut, even stuff nearly finished. Thanks to DLC we get that stuff. We used to have to wait for add on packs for PC or full sequels.

Multiplatform is always better. The reason that multiplatform today would sell only as much as their exclusive predecessors is simple. Those people switched systems. If the game was still exclusive it would have sold considerably less.

As for Dark Souls. It sold less on PS3 than Dark Souls because many people who bought the game for hype found out it was too hard and didn't want another game like that. If it hadn't been released on 360 and PC it would have sold terribly as a PS3 exclusive. Nobody buys games because they are exclusive to their chosen platform. You'd have to be a crazy fanboy retard to refuse to buy a game just because it's not exclusive.

I will say this again. I can't get enough single player Halo. It's the best there is. I wish they'd pump it out like a TV show so I wouldn't have to wait so long to enjoy it. It's still the best so I don't see a problem with getting more.

Skyrim is the only game I know of that was shipped with a game breaking bug. It should never have been ported to PS3. But they did it and they thought it was fine. If there was no way to patch it, they still would have shipped it the way it was and would have had to do a recall. At least the patch has given PS3 owners a way to continue playing it even if it still isn't as good as the PC and 360 versions. Without patches we would still have glitches, but even with the patching system we have today it is still rare for a game to get shipped with a game breaking bug. Heck, back before Bungie made Halo they released Myth 2 with a glitch that could wipe out your whole hard drive if you uninstalled the game from the root directory. They had to recall it.

"millions of ppl were starting to lose their jobs"

I think you are exaggerating. Yeah it sucks that people lose their jobs. But it's not as bad as you are making it out to be. New studios are opening all the time and while some are closing other studios are expanding. Some may have to job hunt, but many transfer to other studios or get moved internally within a publisher's network of developers. The IPs from closed studios aren't gone forever, they get sold to other devs or stay under a publisher's umbrella. If they see a profit they'll make the game, sometimes even with some of the original people who made the previous title.

Let me ask you a question regarding the picture above. Is it half full or half empty?

I think you're too pessimistic. There are far too many games for us to enjoy right now. There are more genres and sub-genres of games than ever before. Thanks to digital distrobution we get small indie stuff like Quantom Conundrum, Limbo, Bastion, Shadow Complex, Fez, Super Meat Boy, Dust: And Elysian Tail, Hybrid, and tons more. Go play those and cheer up. Gaming is still good, but you might have to look beyond the store shelf.

I agree with every point completely. Luckily, there are still enough great games to keep me occupied in the little spare time that I have.

kain_kusanagi said: Let me ask you a question regarding the picture above. Is it half full or half empty? I think you're too pessimistic. There are far too many games for us to enjoy right now. There are more genres and sub-genres of games than ever before. Thanks to digital distrobution we get small indie stuff like Quantom Conundrum, Limbo, Bastion, Shadow Complex, Fez, Super Meat Boy, Dust: And Elysian Tail, Hybrid, and tons more. Go play those and cheer up. Gaming is still good, but you might have to look beyond the store shelf.

I think there are a lot of gamers who want to be negative.  Every situation that brings both positives and negatives, they'll concentrate on the negatives and discount the positives.  It's the reason why guys like Jim Sterling at Destructoid have a job, they play up the hate and attempt to turn everything into a tabloid story.  Everything is bad, everything is worse than it used to be, and so on.

There are so many different games being made now, so many genres and types of games that didn't used to get any love.  I don't understand how anyone can not find something they want to play, unlike previous generations where the only real diversity was on PC.   Now, consoles have everything, pretty much, except RTS games.  Why anyone would want to point to one genre and say, "there are too many of this type being made," is beyond me.

And things like DLC, sure there is some that isn't very good or brings little value to the game, but that's pretty easy to bypass.  I just don't buy it.  On the other hand, DLC like General Knoxx's Armory for Borderlands or Old World Blues for Fallout New Vegas delivers experiences that enhance the original game to a vast degree.  When I look at the two sides, I see one that has little impact on me, and I see the other where I got to spend hours and hours on new content in some of my favorite worlds.  That, to me, is a certain win for DLC.

Negativity in gaming is always going to be there.  I can understand how personal taste relates to which generation a person likes best, after all I liked the reflex based Atari style more than the memorization style of the NES in a lot of ways, but what I like about the current generation is that it has so much variety.  Disc based games might be somewhat predictable, but downloadable gaming right now is pretty awesome.

I'm pretty pleased with this generation for the most part.  

Wow, do you live in a rose tinted bubble?

I am not negative, I am a realist and as a realist I see things for what they really are.

I say "More companies went out of business than any other", you say "Well so many still have there job". That doesn't address what I said...it just ignores it.

DLC: The proof is blatent unless you need things spelled completely out for you. There are plenty of known cases of on disc DLC being sold to us, Resident Evil 5 much? Soul Caliber's Darth and Apprentice locked? yea, there is your proof. You are just choosing to ignore things that shed a bad light on what you like.

There has also been far too many games shipped that end up needing day one patches, when last gen they didn't have that and games always worked fine.

And you completely skipped over the part about Multiplatform games that shut downs your argument. Games that STAYED exclusive still sold just as well as their previous entries, not dramatically less because it was exclusive. Its no secret there is a lot of overlap of PS360 userbase. The existing fans of the soul series simply bought the game on their console of choice, these are not mysterious new buyers.....they will most undoubtedly be a lot of the same people who bought the first.

And the whole purpose of this thread was to point out the "Down sides" of this Gen, never said this gen was somehow all bad. I still had a lot of fun with games. Some people just can't bare to hear the truth.

If you play Nintendo games you won't have to deal with this! (mostly)

That's because you're 23. I'm 33, and gamers MY age got to enjoy a time when the industry was different. Take DLC for instance. You say you love it, right? Well how much more would you love it if I told you that you could get all your DLC for free? Would you be down with that? Because last gen, all "DLC" was already IN the game. Developers shipped a full product from scratch. When you paid that hard earned $50.00, you got the game AND all DLC in one. This generation, they bumped the price by $10.00, and stripped 30% of the game out to sell to you later.

I could touch on the rest of the issues, but I think you get the point. Gaming has changed, and not completely for the better.

Dissagre with OP.

FP perspective is the most immersive. Skyrim being the best RPG Ive ever played.

My problem this generation is the Japanese abandoned everything that made their games unique and good. Now from Japan we get half arsed RPG's or TPS with lower production values and terrible controls. It jut has spikey hard characters still.

The west evolved their own types of games. The East tried to incorporate the wests approach and it didn't work. Eeeewwww at Dragons Dogma, Resi 4-6 and Final Fantasy 13.

The west imo are making the best Videogames they have ever made. And this generation has been a fantastic one. To be honest as Ive got older, Ive found a lot of Japanese games very typical. Very young. Boring stories, terrible Anime characters compered to previous generations and no real feeling. What happened to Japanese writers since FF7, 8 and 9? nly Lost dyssey this generation ad some truly brilliant storytelling for me from Japan.

@prayformojo

Lol give me a break. Ive been gaming since the SNES who cares how old you are.

Everyone who bitches and moans about this stuff it just living in fantasy land. Its a proven fact games havent gotten more expensive when you factor in inflation. Games havent gotten shorter.

And really developers used to release complete games and they dont anymore? Bullshit. Some companies are cheap asses like Capcom and put DLC on disc but MANY companies like Bethesda, Gearbox, Rockstar, and others put out fantastic DLC. And no I dont deserve to get that for free. They put resources and man hours into it so I should pay for it.

And Im 24 no idea why Vgchartz always says Im a year younger on my profile

Some of my faveourite games on Commodore 64, Nes and Snes you could finish in 2-3 hours. In fact Id say most games now are longer. Not shorter. Trouble was 90% of games back then were platform 2d side scrollers ( wich is ironic considering the OP claims FPS gere overload ). 90% of side scrollers could be completed in less than 6 hours. With certain exceptions like Metroid.

Also todays ingame clocks on saves that tell you how long you hve takn doesnt include all the times you died and retried.

Your blanket statement about older players is wrong.  I've been gaming since the Atari 2600 and I'm very pleased with this generation.  You're also wrong about all DLC being free and in-game.  The best DLC of this generation would simply never have been created.

Frankly, the lack of variety in most previous generations pushed me away from console gaming.  This generation has everything and I'm glad I came back.