Microsoft in general. Gamepass is a great service, but aside from that, they dropped the ball this whole generation. First party output has been really poor. Not a developer exactly, but w/e.

Nintendo depending on what you consider "this generation". If you mean the Wii U, then obviously they deserve a spot. It was a case where the software and hardware team apparently couldn't get together and figure out what the fuck they were doing. After Nintendo Land, no games came out that really made use of the Wii U Gamepad. Which may be because the gamepad sucked, or may be because the developers sucked at utilizing it. Chicken and egg.

But the biggest problem with the Wii U IMO was that it just didn't have good games. They decided to release the sequel to arguably their biggest franchise, Wii Sports, as 5 separate initially digital only games, with nothing added but online play. Wii Fit was a digital first release that for some strange reason added little new content while taking away old content. As for Nintendo's core releases they were the definition of playing it safe. Mario 3D World, DKTF, NSMBU. All good games but nothing that would be fresh enough to create a buzz that would get people talking about the Wii U.

Of course, if you mean the Switch as this generation, they're killing it. They came out of the gate with something new and exciting (obviously Zelda and not 1-2 Switch) and really frontloaded the launch. Whereas the Wii U got its best games relatively late, Switch had them up front, and a good impression is important.

I mentioned Nintendo as a whole, but Hal Labaratory gets a special shoutout. So far on the Switch they've released Kirby Star Allies which is just ok, and some mildly entertaining spin offs and small games. The Wii and 3DS were pretty good times for Kirby, but none of his games have really been exciting for a while.

Bioware is an obvious candidtate. Mass Effect 3 was so good up to the last 5 minutes but just couldn't stick the landing. They went with the strategy of trying to have a sequel that replaces all of the characters from the original franchise, and that pretty much never works. It didn't help that the game was obviously rushed out, and was extremely lacking in TLC. Like many other companies chasing the latest trend, they found out that loot based GAAS models aren't a license to print money. I'm hoping they can manage a comeback by returning to the Milky Way Mass Effect, but I'm skeptical.

Rocksteady Studios. Aside from the VR title, they've only released one game in the last generation, and I really did not enjoy it. The Batmobile could have been a fun thing to add a bit of variety but jamming it into every nook and cranny of the game was not the way to go.

Irrational Games. The developer doesn't really exist anymore... so it doesn't get much worse than that does it? They didn't release anything since Infinite. We'll see if their rebranded company ever does anything of note.

Retro Studios. They've released one game in a decade. And it was pretty good, but still.

Yeah first party wise I'd definitely agree with Microsoft with the Xbone and Nintendo with the Wii U, both failed to provide either compelling hardware or sufficient compelling software, and both were a massive step down from their amazing 7th gen predecessors.

Not sure if you meant hardware to apply to XBox One, but in terms of hardware, it's fine. It's not like I can really tell much of a difference if I play a game on my PS4 or Xbox One. But Microsoft handed off its two biggest franchises to third party devs, and didn't really create any new franchises. Which is why they're buying up developers now.

I think the Wii U could have been successful. But the marketing team, software team, and hardware teams just couldn't all get together to figure it out. I think the gamepad had some cool applications, and it had some good games, and Miiverse was a really interesting idea. But the various ideas never game together. I worked retail at the time, and it was kind of hard to figure out how to sell the thing. Whereas I think the Switch isn't quite as interesting, but with just the debut trailer they were able to easily explain the main selling point.

But I'm a little concerned with Nintendo atm. Obviously, the Switch is going to break 100m with relative ease, but at this point Nintendo should be setting itself up for the future by using the big install base to launch new franchises. That's something they really didn't do well with the Wii/DS, and it bit them in the ass. Conversely, it's something Sony did really well with the PS3 and 4, and it paid off bigly.

I won't mention any specific developers, but AAA game industry as a whole has been a huge letdown this generation. Not only the big publishers decreased their output significantly and played really safe by releasing only the yearly entries of established franchises to guarantee the easy money, but in terms of gameplay itself, it's always the same old nowadays. The AAA industry this gen degraded to the point that it can not provide new experiences and it can not surprise. The game design in AAA titles is built with only one thing in mind - is to make more money for greedy publishers. And it of course, leaves a negative impact on game design as well. CDPR tried to experiment and released a very ambitious game with Cyberpunk, but it didn't go well for them unfortunately. What makes it even worse, is that after Cyberpunk fiasco, all AAA devs will see that it is the right thing for their business to continue milking the same franchises instead of investing in ambitious new projects.

I didn't mean Xbone was bad hardware per se, more that gamers weren't exactly enchanted with playing more for a less powerful box than PS4, with Kinect initially bundled. 

And yeah I'd also like to see Nintendo launch more new franchises with Switch; they have done a few, like Ring Fit Adventure, ARMS, and Labo, but more would always be better.

I get why the Kinect was bundled. It's really had to make a peripheral successful if it's not bundled with the system. Kinect on 360 sold about 22 million units which is great for a peripheral, but 22 million isn't a very attractive userbase for a developer, so few companies besides Microsoft really bothered making anything that required much of a budget.

But, the Kinect simply wasn't good enough to get a Wii Sports kind of gamer to drop 500 bucks, and to the Halo/GTA gamer, it was just an extra hundred bucks for something they'd never use. 

So, I get the logic. Someone at Microsoft invested a lot of money and their reputation in the Kinect and to make it work it had to be bundled. But it was just a lost cause. They should have just admitted defeat and moved on from it. 

Nintendo actually solved that issue very nicely with the Switch. It has basically the same motion control functionality as the Wii, but in a way that doesn't add much to the price. Wish they'd make more games that took advantage of that though. Big area of potential growth.  

Well said.

It's been a generation of mostly minimal risk and maximum exploitation as far as the AAA sector goes. Generic, focus-tested experiences lacking any imagination and littered with microtransactions and bugs.

That's just insanely wrong. You just compared LTD sales of Halo 3 to 3 months of sales of Halo 5. At that time the Xbox One sold 20m units, so attach rate was 25%. You can add several millions more to that number.

I would say that is a sign of industry maturity and your experience as gamer. The more you see the less new stuff there is going to be seem.

22M was a ballpark of Xbox og, GC, WiiU and some other systems. PSVR is like under 5M and still have plenty of games being released for it. Well even if you pick the total number of gaming grade VR machines it doesn't cut pass 20M.

The XBox ang GC were similar enough to PS2 that if you worked on games for them, you could probably get them working on the PS2 without much too much additional cost. There were very few games that were exclusive to GC or XBox unless made by Microsoft or paid for by them. And a lot of companies didn't even think it was worth the extra effort to make PS2 games for the XBox One or Gamecube.

As for PSVR... it really depends on what you mean by plenty of games. There's a bunch of small games and VR support for existing PS4 games sometimes. It's a niche platform. Which is fine if that's what they're going for, but that's not what the idea behind the Kinect was. Microsoft wanted the Kinect to capture the Wii market, not be a niche add on.