The Real Reason The Video Game Industry is Collapsing (The Death of Xbox and Decline of Triple A)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 พ.ค. 2024
- With recent news surrounding Microsoft and the layoffs at Arkane Austin and Tango Gamerworks, as well as the drama surrounding Helldivers 2 and it's restricted sales and reviews, we have to face the truth. The Whirlwind of Triple AAA games, Activision, Blizzard, and ongoing controversy everywhere, we have to talk about the future of games when studios behind Dishonored, Prey, The Evil Within, Redfall, The Evil Within and and Ghostwire Tokyo are left in the dust, when consoles and exclusives no longer matter, and where the almighty dollar is all that matters.
Thank you for watching.
/ mugthief - เกม
Investors are destroying all industries. Gaming is just one sector. Just look at renting prices due to investors buying out apartment complexes and houses. People need to wake up.
Agreed! Like I said, Once A Company becomes Public, this enterprise will only please the greeny dollar eyes of its investors who dont even know whats the soul and passion of a true game.
Greed within gaming industry is just the tip of it all.Corporate greed is very prominent in the workforce,housing,transportation, food etc..... all the while wages stay far below the controlled cost of living. It all goes hand in hand all across the board, unfortunately.
It’s the core structure of capitalism. Without a powerful system to regulate it and keep it in line this sort of cannibalistic collapse of conditions is the only possible outcome. Competition does not function to prevent monopoly or duopoly control without aggressive antitrust which does not exist.
The rot is endemic and total and until people recognize that the CORE problem is most aspects of their lives is shareholder capitalism things will just keep getting worse for us all.
@@munchkingod6💯
one day people need to get off of their asses and vote protest and boycott these companies that ruin our lives like black rock vanguard and state street
Guys, its not the gaming industry. These videos are popping up about every industry. Executives taking excessive pay and mismanaging their companies in order to increase stock prices at the cost of function.
This is very true.
The enshitification of everyday life.
Also the fact that our current system for retirement causes a lot of problems. People with 403Bs, 401Ks, and IRAs cause a ton of obsession with stock prices.
@@Lupostehgreatthose people don’t cause the obsession with stock prices brother. They are just trying to have a modest retirement fund. It is the hedge funds who have huge amount of shares in these blue chips. Not the average worker with a 401k
It goes way beyond that. It has more to do with the Blackrocks of the world promising easy funding if these companies toe the ESG line. They inject all kinds of DEI nonsense into their companies chasing after all that enticing ESG funding and they are killing their own companies in the process. They get their Blackrock funding at the cost of their own consumers. Greed is blinding them as they charge headlong into their own demise.
Entertainment as a whole is collapsing.
Exactly.
the whole world is collapsing
All because of leftism. Democrats are helping the .001% steal the worlds wealth. This is all part of a much bigger plan.
that only means something else has to replace it or step up ,at least thats how it used to be...idk if thats the case anymore...
@@jackstraw4222 Not during a collapse.
The gaming industry took too many pointers from gambling addicts and casino managers.
Can you blame them? The reality is that the shift towards live service/micro transactions/loot boxes are a reflection of demand. You can have masterpiece level games like Pathologic 2 that barely sell enough to keep a small studio afloat while mediocre buggy trash from an established franchise (lets say Fallout 76) or some terrible gacha garbage sell 100x more.
Yes, I can blame them. They charge the increased price of $70 and then load the game with microtransactions for even more money. What they don't tell you is that over half the money made off microtransactions comes from a small group of people: the whales. These are people that buy EVERYTHING regardless of quality, be it fomo, completionist, full on compulsive spending, they don't care. The game's industry is full on exploiting part of their audience and it's a disgusting practice. Especially when a decent sized chunk of their audience keeps fighting against microtransactions, the industry knows we don't like the added storefront in every other game, they don't care
exactly
@@W1ndF4lc0n those people are only buying fallout because if established IP
@@Matanumi That's my point. People will buy literal pile of shit if its from an established IP, but won't support new games even if they are very good. That's the problem, consumer demand. There is very little market demand for quality games among game players.
Shareholders are the downfall of any product, their greed has no limit, they raise prices, cut cost then cut quality and when no one wants the product anymore, they move on to destroy the new product and so on.
You need investment for business to grow though, and the truth is pretty much anyone can invest in a lot of these companies. e.g I have some stock in Nintendo, not a lot - about $2k but I can still say i own a crumb of a major company. Single shares are something like $14 now on the NTDOY tracker. If a bunch of fans cobbled their money together and started a "company" (just a legal entity rather than something that had employees etc) they could easily buy a significant chunk of any company and have a say at financial Q+A etc. If anyone wanted to dip out, you just sell their share of the, er, shares
@@ls.c.5682 That would require some investment of time, money, and attention into the industry. Too much effort for casual consumers.
Easier to stay in the cycle: buy the sloppy product, get disappointed, blame it on capitalism, share their discontent with other lazy consumers, and then get excited for the next AAA game. 😂
@@jsnaggz laziness is a pretty small factor in this in the grand scheme of things, and spherexxx was making a more general statement, which applies to all of the current western corporate environment, and with that in mind, yes, some people could afford to contribute a bit in such a way, but not the vast majority, and no, not nearly enough to actually fix the problem, they would still be outnumbered on the board by people who don't understand the industry, but had more money to begin with, and those shareholders each have at least as much invested as we would collectively invest. I do agree that we need to stop consuming the AAA titles and then complaining, the people doing that are also not helping, but they're ultimately the vocal minority. I am someone who hasn't bought a AAA game since I bought Minecraft ages ago, but I'm pretty sure that was before the Microsoft acquisition, so that doesn't even really count. I have played AAA games since, and I have been bought AAA games a few times, but I have not bought them myself.
@@ls.c.5682tell that to Blackrock jewishit CEO a.k.a Larry Fink
Yep. Anytime shareholders are involved everything goes downhill.
This is why I hate it when anything I enjoy goes main stream, it gets milked dry and then discarded
The problem is greed not popularity
@@draco_1876exactly.
I use to be a Dbz fan . But now I can't stand it
@@draco_1876 Popularity enables greed, every time, because everything has a price.
P.S. Anime was better when everyone was pirating it.
@@richardhunter9779 lmfao
One of the biggest mistakes in gaming is the misconception that better graphics equals better games
But better graphics make a good game even better.
And they kind of do. Why should I buy modern hardware if the game looks like from the 80s?
@ninochaosdrache3189 you don't need modern hardware to play good games
@@ninochaosdrache3189 No, a good GAME makes a game better. Graphics are just a bonus.
I am glad someone says it, and I totally agree. As I wrote in another comment, I would like to share my thoughts here as well.
I am of the idea that this is one of the reasons the videogame industry is in danger.
Nowadays the companies worry way more in making a game with the ultimate graphics.
-Now, developing games takes way more time to make, when in the past they were being released in one-two years apart and with quality.
- Their development costs increase way too much because of this.
- Nowadays, it seems developers are more worried about the graphics of the game than in the overall quality of the content. Ultimate graphics, but barebone games.
@@ninochaosdrache3189. Funny enough, most of the games in PS1 and PS2, for instance, are way better than nowadays games.
Share holders are ruining everything literally everything, housing, politics, games, infrastructure, design, etc. literally every time I search why everything suddenly sucks or is unattainable, there's always a shareholder or corporate investor behind it.
The global economy is in a death spiral. The more economic signs look bad, the more shareholders try to milk everything. The more they try to milk everything, the more economic signs look bad.
The wrong side won the cold war
Okay Stalin. Get off your alt account
@@TeddyKrimsony not really, no.
@TeddyKrimsony we'd be worse if Russia won.
Shareholders are enemies of gamers
shareholders are the enemy of any type of creativity, it causes the creator to be scared of doing anything that doesn't make "number go up" and getting sued.
so it all becomes about profit instead of art, beauty, creativity.
@@AKATenn I'd go even further and say shareholders are the enemy of everything. Businesses are created to fill a need and provide something. And it isn't shareholder value. Value is created because the business is good at fulfilling its purpose. Once the purpose becomes making money instead of product, you can bet shareholder value is the next thing down the drain. AAA gaming is about to find that out the hard way.
Shareholders are the enemy of everyone actually they are economic parasitoids that destroy everything they get involved in by forcing it into an unsustainable fools errand for perpetual growth instead of stable consistent ROI and when this untennable impossible task fails it destroys the business while the shareholders golden parachute away to their next victim having extracted all the wealth from the situation and ruining the business for the employees and customers.
@@briansmith303 Amen 🙏
And a lot of other industries 😢
The problem is simple: the Western sector of gaming will probably crash.
And THIS IS WHY: with gaming becoming SO LUCRATIVE, it’s now “infested” with suits, venture capitalists, and angel investors; all people who just want a simple ROI and care NOTHING about the integrity and artistry of making and releasing games, YET these companies have to kowtow to the whims and demands of these idiots pouring money into them.
So then the corporate execs have to appease these VULTURES by making the “bottom line” FATTER and the easiest way to do that is JETTISON studios and employees, irregardless of whether the game they made was good, bad, a financial success or not.
All while these parasites walk away with EXORBITANT 9-figure BONUSES that they could’ve taken a 20% cut on to preserve the THOUSANDS of livelihoods that they just ruined in the process.
This system is BEYOND FUBAR. The industry’s heading for a crash because it’s now in a “bubble” driven by all the “money people” who prioritized short-term gains over long-term viability and they’ll just “cash out” and float away on their golden parachutes as the industry implodes behind them because they NEVER FACE ACCOUNTABILITY on any of it.
Angels
This highlights a deeper problem with how we run our economic system in the world today.
@istrumguitars i said it before, just cap everybody's salary to 200k and use the rest of these ceo annual salary and total money stashed away (save maybe a million or two) to fix whatever life they've burned in the process. it would fix a lot without increasing inflation because you wouldn't print any money and it would also stop the housing market from selling house at exhorbitant prices. It would also insure that figure generation like millenial and genZ can actually afford housing and food if you use that money to increase their salary. Those ceo and executive and money people are the ones to blame for it. i don't see why future generation should have to pay for those greedy people, let them pay for it. Sadly, a lot of those people are also in politics, so without retroactive term limit, i don't see a way to change this. People don't needs millions or billions of $ to live a decent life, 200k is enough, with an adjustment for inflation depending on the state/country/currency that is. Also it would have to be done all across the western world, but mostly in north america, including canada and the usa. There is no choice, when 1% of the population have nearly 90% of the money, its either we increase inflation through the roof, and people can't afford anything anymore or we held those responsible for it accountable and force them to liquidate the extra money and asset they don't need. it's sad, but its only viable solution that would increase the buying power of everyone not already making 200k. also, no bonus anymore for anybody either way, just so these money people can't shift all of their incone into bonuses that aren't included in their salary. that's the only way i can on how to fix this mess. The boomers litterally made a mess out of everything, it is their responsible to fix it, and to the next generations to hold them accountable for what they did. period.
That's what happens when people who's only creativity entails screwing people out of money are allowed to run the arts. I can count on one hand the amount of new games I've bought in the last 5-6 years that I actually enjoyed.
@@istrumguitars No, it's a problem of companies becoming too large & having priorities shift. The economic system is incidental.
Moral of the story: Get passionate about something while it's niche and once it becomes mainstream, bail.
Moral of the story: keep shareholders away from your company if you want to keep making games that’ll actually be loved and cherished. He gave a bunch of examples of companies that are going strong precisely because they never entered open market.
Well that doesn't make sense. Lots of good game companies have shareholders. Blaming shareholders or anyone who seeks profit for seeking profit is bad. Studios make games for the purpose that it'll make money. @@biazacha
as soon as Blackrock got interested in the gaming industry, it started to die
So slaughter blackrock &/or vanguard? 🤣
@@cryptik3918 sounds good 😅 not that easy tho
@@timh.7169 No amount of money reinforces organs, friend.
Yep
It's always the Jews for some of you, huh.
Gaming, to me, is overdue for an 80s style crash.
Preach. I hope it is apocalyptic so the normies and crazies leave.
yea long overdue,and e sports and other tournaments also need demolished to bits as well...
Except gaming itself has become too big to fail.
If gaming is going to have a "crash" it'll be western only and there will be FAR many more problems in the background (like.... not affording you rent or food)
I don’t get people who talk like this. AAA has been increasingly shit for two decades. That’s not where any of the good games are; thet’re all from AA and smaller budgets as well as indies (including some rare as hens teeth indie AAA titles like Baldur’s gate III and Witcher).
There are more games to play than there is time. Stop feeding the AAA industry.
The AAA/AAAA industry will crash for sure, meanwhile indie games will thrive and survive.
It's because many developers also keep making games that no one wants, while also sitting on gold mine titles for DECADES.
#BRINGBACKTHESABOTEUR
Very true! Bring back Tenchu! Metal Gear! And other games I can't remember right now.
Some examples for me are The Legend of Dragoon, Dark Cloud/Chronicle Series, KOTOR(which they say is still being remade but its taking decades to complete), Jak and Daxter(they brought back Crash Bandicoot), Summoner Series, etc. There are way more of course, but just throwing some out there. I'm just tired of developers making 1 or 2 games and just moving on and abandoning their fans and these worlds they have created for them.
**Publishers
It’s run by people who understand nothing about gaming
This is so true that it's depressing. The idea of exponential growth is evil and unattainable. Enough is never enough
Corporations are quite literally a cancer on the world
The fun fact is that in this exact industry, exponential growth COULD BE possible. It's just the system which is fucked up. With modern hardware and graphics engine people could just work on virtual assets to make game programming much easier and faster so that people could potentially make a masterpiece in months. But why no one is doing this? Because neither virtual assets nor masterpieces are profitable. It is profitable to just milk a franchise which had 2 to 3 masterpieces like 15 to 25 years ago until people from loving it start to hate it. That's what happened with basically every popular franchise except maybe two or three
Imagine if a 120 million dollar budget film raked in 350 million dollars and the studio said it's a failure? Lol I don't have to imagine it actually happened. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix budget was 150 -200 million dollars and made 942.2 million dollars and according to WB it lost them 167 million dollars. Even with marketing that math ain't mathing lol. So it's not just the games industry. There's a saying in Hollywood about no films are ever profitable or something like that.
If the corporate investors stopped being so greedy. A 100% profit would be a god send
That was WB cooking the books to avoid taxes
The actual movie with marketing cost around 400-450 million, theatres will take their cut which is around 30-40%, this still leaves them with around 200 million Dollars. The loss was because they cooked the books to avoid taxes.
Yeah, because movie needs to make like 2.5-3 times its production budget. Part of it is marketing, sure, but there's also theathers and actors' pay which is ridiculous nowadays. It's disgusting and helpless.
Edit: actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if making movies is a way for money laundering because those costs are ridiculous.
Most likely is a ML scheme a 5th of the time
Xbox management needs to step down.
They never will.. MS will just pour money into them just to try to suck talent out of the market, its the only way they can compete.. ..it seems there will always be xbots like a dog cowering in the corner tail tucked, but i swear most of the engagement i see trying to control the narrative, are xbox marketing posing as consumers.. its wild..
Sony and Nintendo aren't much better at this point. Steam it's also just as evil.
Management is only implementing the directives of directors.
@@johndodo2062
At least Sony and Nintendo make great games, something that XBOX didn't manage to do in over 10 years.
@@ninochaosdrache3189*cough* hi-fi rush came out last year *cough*
I feel like what you’re describing is the endgame for another games industry crash. Where publishers in their greed either pull out or reinvent themselves leaving indies to inherit the industry and rebirth it
We seem to be heading towards that conclusion. Double AA games will inherit the industry
It is because AAA gaming doesn't produce games, they produce business plans, the game aspect is secondary, they all want to make a GTA Online or a Fortshite "live service" that will rake in 5 billion over the next 3-4 years.
But fortnite is objectively a great game, and is the example of how life service Games should be.
If the executives weren't getting giant bonuses, and they weren't paying off reviewers, triple a games would cost half as much to make. Guaranteed
The entire model needs to go.
Top ➡️Bottom
Left ▶️ Right
And everything outside of it.
The sooner big money gets out of gaming the better.
Unfortunately to make big money leave gaming, the customers have to not be idiots willing to buy brand loyalty.
Yeah thats unfortunately not going to happen anytime soon if ever.
But big money is the only way to get awesome games like Devil May Cry, Halo 3, Assassins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2007, GTA San Andreas etc. Indie games aren't capable of making such titles.
@@ninochaosdrache3189those amazing games were made back when their studios were small. Big money came in AFTER those games succeeded
@@ninochaosdrache3189 Yes, they are.
The industry died when bean counters got involved.
It died when investment firms got involved(Blackrock and all of its subsidies)
It died when consoles became the norm and people took the slop and asked for seconds.
I agree with your first two points but consoles have been the “mainstream” method to access games for 30+ years and I don’t really see that changing unless there’s some kind of revolution in access (maybe eventually smart TVs will have enough processing power and/or PCIE + USB ports to hook some simple peripherals up to and game on them natively) because I don’t think PCs will ever become the norm because too many people (especially among the working class) ARE NOT “computer savvy” at all.
@jaythomas468 I know this.
However they are also closed loop systems. Consumers do not own their media with the current(and most likely future) console generations.
I'm not against consoles as a concept. I'm against them because Sony,Nintendo,M$ have all conditioned their consumers to buy slop after slop every year while they pay more for less.
Consoles should be the gateway to gaming. But they are becoming too restrictive.
@@NikolaiMihailov1
I hear you which is why I buy (almost) everything physical, but I generally don’t have too much of a problem paying full-price for games so long as the quality is present since we’ve actually been eating pretty good in terms of having games that offer much, much more potential HOURS than before while MSRP stayed relatively THE SAME.
The irony with PC, though, too, is that a lot of people buy and use Steam without question even though Steam is still EFFECTIVELY DRM.
But I guess at least on PC, you have “other avenues” if a game becomes inaccessible.
@@jaythomas468exactly, it's tiring when people cry about console gamers and their evils when embracing Steam since inception with a fervor seen only in cults.
@@Xelliz I don't like steam either. I miss physical media.
There is an old saying "If you don't want to do your job someone else will do it for you". The AAA video game corporations don't want to do their job so others will inevitably do it for them.
I warned everyone about this in 2004:
The fact major companies wanted to get involved in gaming and seeing gaming try and go excessively mainstream and attract hollywood rejects was going to be a problem.
_"But gaming is finally going to get the respect it deserves! It's going cinematic! It's accepted by everyone now, not just nerds"._
Well, do you like what you see?
Was it worth it?
You think allowing public investors and casualization made gaming better than it was in the 90s & 00s?
I sure hope you do. Because all of you who cheered this on in the late 00s got what you deserve.
Triple A is about to end up in another Gaming Crash Microsoft,Sony,and many others are destroying it. Indie is the future! Edit:And Nintendo(Reffering to the devs not the publishers) and South Korean Studios.
And korean games are the future. No Politics.
That's why it's sad why these giant companies buy up all these independent studios. They are getting dragged down with AAA.
But yeah, indie is the future.
Amen
I say let it happen, because this industry deserves it.
@homeaway5418 lmao ok buddy those Koreans can't make a fridge or a dishwasher...
The decision to shut down the successful AA studios to cut costs is as brain dead from the business perspective as it is from the gaming side of things. Is it similar to a tech company shutting down its R&D to save money. Yes, it might improve the results for a few quarters or even years, but it is a guaranteed failure long-term. Like, you can be outcompeted if you don't do it, but you *will* be if you do it.
You ask too much from these assholes
Well, i think MS will close their console business, and they will get profit from publishing their majour games on other platforms.
keep the market small, limit competitioners. EA does exactly this since 25 years. As indi-games were on the rise the big players bought them and closed them after a while, has nothing to do with shareholders
Normally speaking your comment would be spot on, but these aren't normal times. The majority of AA studios are already dead, as the creative minds that developed the successful games have all left and their places have been taken by activists and at best second, but more realistically speaking third or even lower tier developers.
What the bean counters at Microsoft and other companies that bought the AA studios for prices based on past successes are doing is cutting out the rot: the activists who're just pursuing their agendas instead of developing new games. Why do you think all successful franchises have been mutilated to push agendas instead of offering decent gameplay?
@@tjroelsma a short look and you will see studios that developed Evil within, Dishonored, HiFi-Rush, Prey, a mobile developer etc are closed. None of these showed signs of being woke, sorry. To throw reality over board because being anti-woke is the same psychosis as being woke
What’s sad is that back in 1980-2010, games were so creative and and insanely innovative. But, what goes up, must come down. And unfortunately, things aren’t looking to good.
I don't even know why I try to comment in TH-cam sections anymore because TH-cam removes my comment like 95% of the time. And I know for a fact that isn't the TH-camr trying to control their comment section by blocking certain words. Not allowed to express your opinions on TH-cam positive or negative anymore well at least in the comment section.
@@YaaSalty...0_osometimes you have to run it through ChatGPT to get it to sound different or screw up the grammar so TH-cam doesn't delete it. Posting TH-cam comments is too much work now.
I think one of the biggest lies we're told is that videogames are getting more expensive to make.
They aren't, companies are just doing bad things like hiring A listers or pushing ultra realistic graphics. There's also the fact that devs have gotten lazy. Which makes sense when you aren't incentivised to work efficiently.
Exactly this!!
Devs have gotten lazy???? My friend, devs these days work like SLAVES just to keep themselves afloat and not get fired... Do some research
This is so true, the bigger a company gets the less efficiënt they work in my experience.
@@TheOriginalMcJunior Video games 15 years ago had less than half the features, were less than 20% of today's games in size, net code has become infinitely bigger in volume and way more complicated since modern games are way more complicated in movement, combat, environments etc...
So yeah in terms of staff needed and time needed for development they are way more money hungry... Saying that creating Crash Bandicoot on PS1 costs the same as making a modern AAA game is ridiculously stupid
@@nikosfotidas8543they never said that? Its common knowledge that the bigger something is the less efficient it becomes, too many cooks in the kitchen.
Gamers willingly bought every piece of garbage put in front of their faces.
This is part of the reason AAA can release unfinished and patch later. Gamers preorder and have to wait so long they'll play anything instead of waiting longer and voting with their wallets
Triple A gaming has been a complete trash fire of greed and incompetence for over a decade. Indy gaming and AA developers have been going strong, and innovating awesome games. Why are we mourning the death of AAA developers again?
I say lets root for more layoffs, more reduction of the AAA space. If Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft or EA laid off 50% of their workforce tomorrow, we should all celebrate. Hopefully some of the developers that actually give a crap are able to transition to a studio where they have a chance to make a good game.
Correction AAA gaming is dead indie gaming is not.
Exactly, i hope Xbox and MS keeps firing all the great talent they have locked up working on projects they were promised they would never have to, Phil in the media talking about letting creativity thrive hands off style, and then make Arcane make a looter shooter with flipping vampires written by their DEI outside consultants.. bleech.
Nice point, the bright side of layoffs, really good thinking dude!
The problem of people are losing jobs because of dickhead shareholders and CEOs
At the moment, the only fucking thing I'm mourning from AAA gaming and Xbox's protracted death is Tango Gameworks getting royally screwed and the painful thought that we won't see any more Hi-Fi Rush content... well, Hi-Fi Rush content that isn't a soulless cash-grab, anyway.
I’m a 40 year old woman gamer, I just bought my first PS5 (first console other than Atari and Wii) just under two years ago. So I don’t really know much about what goes on behind the scenes, two things solidified my decision to start gaming, the aftermath of covid and the video game Stray. So far I’ve completed Astro’s Playroom, Stray, Ratchet and clank (the two newest games), Detroit Become Human, Heavy Rain and Deliver Us Mars. I have premium monthly so I can try different games and discover what I really like. I really hope I continue to enjoy because I’m having a lot of fun. I have come so far in skill since Astros Playroom 🤣
Detroit Become Human is such a masterpiece. This is the game that pushed my to invest into the ps4 ecosystem.
I still dont own a current gen console. I’m waiting.
@@johnbartender3451 I love Detroit Become Human, I’ve played it multiple times. I don’t really have anything modern to compare it too, but the PS5 graphics are amazing.
I had and still have two PS2 consoles, other one got broke at summer cottage during a lightning storm, I was extremely salty indeed! I've been on Xbox since the first Xbox and now planning to get the coming PS5 pro console whenever it arrives, so I'm probably returning to Playstation immediately after few decades!
Good for you
Welcome to the club, Lady :)
Best games I've played recently were Helldiver's 2, Stellar Blade, Palworld, Valheim, Lies of P, BG3 and Enshrouded. None of those games are AAA. The AAA studios are screwed and are starting to realize it.
Nice list.
Yep all bangers
Elden Ring
No one is good to me
Games aren't dying, the quadruple A, 200 million dollar games are dying. Like, you'd believe that after investing so much dough in a single project, these corporations would be very interested in making sure the games are going to sell but instead they make terrible, flawed games jam packed with mtx like some Frankenstein monster with minimal chances of living. That's why small indie studios need to be mindful when approach by these gluttonous corpos, because they are not trying to invest into them and build up, they are using them as cushion and scapegoats for when then patchwork abominations inevitably bomb.
That reminds me the hosts on Kinda Funny and Cog on Last Stand Media were all for indies selling their studios and getting a bag full of money.
This is so awful. I hate this timeline, ngl. I know everyone has to readjust and blah blah blah. But why let go of such talent? It's sickening.
I noticed you mentioned "timeline" do you subscribe to the CERN timeline jump? Something is off. Not sure if it was a Thanos snap or a timeline jump but something happened.
@@dandee6331 no, just a turn of phrase to say that I hate what is going on now and wish it was different.
@julilla1 oh well there is a theory that is out there that we are not on the same timeline we were on 4-5 years ago....I have heard others discuss it. I mean shit is so weird now I am not ruling anything out.
Thanos is literal fictional character
Although something does seem off. Could be me though
It's basically the same with EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS out there. Shareholder greed is on a rampage and burning everything in its wake and soon the humanity will collapse again because of it.
I would give this a treble thumbs up if possible. And the sad thing is is there is nothing we can can do about it expect hope the we are still standing when it all inevitably implodes. We are all saying indie titles are the future but how many indie houses have sold their souls to the almighty dollar.
You know who would be fine with a "dead" industry? Nintendo and PC gamers. As a PC gamer, when you factor in emulators, I will never have enough time to play the games available for PC and every emulator we can run. 😂🥳
Not wrong 😅
Yep gaming is just fine as far as im concerned as a PC player. Not enough time to play all the emulatable classics anyway
I kind of think the big studios buy out smaller studios that do well and shut them down to stop them getting big enough to compete with the big studios like a fermi paradox anyone that gets big enough to be noticed is wiped out
I’ve been doing it for years. Buy a successful company and shut it down. Put my company there to replace and expand. Rinse and repeat.
Fermi Paradox is a very good allegory, unfortunately
I think you mean dark forest. The fermi paradox asks why when there should be so many alien civilizations don't we see them. The dark forest is merely one suggested answer (as in "The Three Body Problem").
Indie and double A are booming
Yeeees sir
nek minute, the cult who destroyed AAA will come after AA, Larry Fink will make sure of that.
No they aren't, the vast majority of indie games never make money. Only like 1% are profitable. Lots of indie companies go out of business daily, you just don't hear about them because they were never successful enough to garner attention to begin with.
Weird my comment is gone
@justwait9822 First, citation needed. Second, if true, I'm not concerned. The barrier of entry for game design is very low indeed these days. Everyone and their grandma can create some low-effort slop with pre-made assets and publish it. This slop outnumbers good games by several orders of magnitude. The good games largely succeed. The slop largely fails, as expected.
Lonely men that needed to be with other people online and play shooters is what really killed the video game industry, because you killed every other genre, so all the companies went out of business
This is why they want everyone on a subscription service, once everyone pays no matter what quality tanks. Just look at the movie industry
I mean the downfall of AAA games is a good thing imo, I want games to go back to being good instead of the trash we keep getting. And that's tbh is what the Indie studios are doing, they are the only people treating games as a passion and as an artform. the AAA scene ruined the video game industry and it deserves to fall, I recently played Saviorless, Crow Country and currently Hades 2 all costs 30$ and all great amazing experiences.
But Indies also just can't compete with AAA games. I've yet to see an indie game that is on the same level as Halo 3, GTA San Andreas, Assassins Creed 2, Dishonored or Devil May Cry. They just can't compete.
@@ninochaosdrache3189 Not to mention far more indie companies fail then succeed.
Never take a company public...
It won't end well.
Investors are the customers..
Gamers are just being farmed for cash to pay investors.
Gamer since 1975...
Only mobile games are left...
Mobile Gamers are being farmed for cash more than any other though?
I agree with everything except the mobile game thing. Indie games, actual indie games made by independent studios and not a game that looks like an indie game made by a aaa studio, are where the future is. Indie studios will rise from the ashes of these massive aaa studios when they burn to the ground and the developers who have been trapped will take their place to reinvent gaming as we knew it in the 70's 80's and 90's.
Yikes... you correctly identified the problem, and then came to the conclusion that "only mobile games are left."
Only mobiles left? what a joke mobile games are p2win, also its only for casual gamers
Mobile games are so horribly bad that I simply installed a PSX emulator in my phone and called it a day.
What Xbox and Microsoft is saying, is basically what someone trying to run a Monopoly would say
Yep, the monopoly game was always the goal of capitalism.
The infinite growth is unsustainable and I am baffled by C-executives not realizing that (or ignoring that). There is only so much you can do to put that arrow upwards, one day it will simply stop being possible. And that day they will realize they have little to no studios, no developers and artists, no trust from customers and the bubble will be fully burst. It´s awful, it´s all just awful.
Ok here is the problem tho, if gamers complain about the lack of originality and space given to new franchises in the modern industry, why do they keep encouraging the same financial models that ultimately lead to those pitfalls, a.k.a gatcha games, p2w games, mobile games and other shitty 4ss products ?
We as old school PC/console gamers should unite against the mobile / gatcha systems and draw a line between that and what we value near and dear to our hearth as gaming.
We should make it clear that we do not appreciate that in our games, and are not willing to support those models in any way shape or form, for what they mean to the future of the landscape.
Imagine if 10 years from now, PC and console games were all monetized like mobile games, that would truely sign the death and the end of it. Hopefully we won't get there.
@@Days_of_the_Righteous That's true and sad at the same time, because it essentially makes you feel powerless against the whole process. No matter how hard our stance might be, we just getting beaten by the sheer numbers behind gatcha/mobile games. Stakeholders will naturally lean towards forcing game studios to implement systems that encourage that type of models and economies, but thankfully we are seeing the opposite also whereas small indies and sometimes even solos capable of shipping full fledged ambitious and original games that do reach big audiences. The growth of AI + democratisation of tech and communication / marketing is an absolute game changer that's already shaking up the balance.
@@Days_of_the_Righteous yeah totally, i like revisiting old classics the same way but the funny part is that the industry noticed that trend and started capitalizing on the nostalgia factor as well, just looking at the recent years and the number of remakes we had.. there is always this stinky smell about those, even if they are technically sound and in every objective game metric superior to their original, there is just this lingering smell of greed and overmarketing that surround the whole thing, makes me sick.
@@Days_of_the_Righteous absolutely this is truth coming out, soulless that's the best word to describe it as you mentionned. I had RE4 and Deadspace in mind when typing, and i have a very complicated relationship still with 7 Rebirth provided 7 R-1 was a pile of bullcrap designed to trap you in a trilogy for again more profit, but how foolish of me to forget about all the absolute dumpsterfire of remakes they made alongside AND still doing in other forms like when they butchered the entire Kratos legacy to made him look like a mortal boomer about to retire, the jedi games and upcoming joke outlaws, the list goes on and on it's endless
@@Days_of_the_Righteous the remake of demon souls was so crappy and egregious that i couldn't physically spend more than an hour on that game before uninstalling it and never looking at it again, just pretending that it never existes to this day
@@snaykerX Christ! I hate that they took that hot model and butchered her face. Same with the model for MJ in Spider-Man 2. She looks like lord Farquade with that giant, ugly chin.
Hard to feel bad for these studios. If they hadn't sold out to corporate interests they could have maintained control over their future.
Yup, they chose political brainwashing instead of making what players want
This, exactly, the moment a studio sells itself, it's pretty much dead.
Correct.
But that isn't Tango's fault they were always a AA Japanese developer who made great games people loved.
Zenimax bought their parent company Bethesda then Microsfot bought Zenimax which is obvious now all they really wanted from the deal was Starfield, Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
Tango already had the innovative title HiFi rush pretty much already made at that time and despite it succeeding in the words of Microsoft in all key measurements. Microsoft canned them anyway probably because they didn't fit what the suits and corpos at Microsoft wanted from the deal in the first place. I even suspect people at Xbox were annoyed HiFi Rush did so well because games like that aren't what they want on their system going forward.
@@JamieJonesanimator that's untrue tango was its own studio that was founded in may 2010. They ran into money issues and bethesda came to their aid and asked zenimax to buy them in oct 2010. They sold out to a corporation in order to pay the bills. Totally understandable but they still sold their ability to determine their own fate and hitched their cart to zenimax.The sad thing is they started a company that couldn't keep the lights on for a whole year before running out of cash and needing to sell out.
They were then included in the deal going to microsoft but that doesn't make them any less responsible for selling out to corpos like zenimax in the first place. They became a commodity to be bought and sold or shut down at the whims of their masters at that point.
As someone who has lived through nearly all videogame eras, I've never felt more infuriated and depressed, the way these corporations are behaving 🤬
They seem hellbent on ruining everything that was once so magical and constantly surprising. It's mortifying to see what they're doing.
You summed it up very well man.
*"I've never felt more infuriated and depressed, the way these corporations are behaving"*
That's interesting. I've never felt more infuriated and depressed over the way my fellow "gamers" have been behaving for the last fifteen years. You know what it takes for garbage business practices to thrive? _Business._ (I.e. lots of customers rushing to throw top dollar.)
@@bricaaron3978 Ok. Can't really disagree with that tbh.
7:41 I loved your explanation of the concept of opportunity cost. It really sheds light on the overlooked times a game "had to be shut down because it wasn't making enough money" when it's actually making plenty.
It's a shame. I studied in videogames (Bachelor) and then i moved to making Collectible statues, but Recently I wanted to go back to Games, but with all those layoff, or terribly designed games it terrifies me. If I do move back, I'll try smaller studios/indie. Anyway atmosphere looks better there too.
Western AAA sadly will "die" in the artistic sense and they will only make live service and MAJOR IP games. And I mean, like MAJOR in the sense like Wolfenstein, Rayman, even the revitalized Dead Space, etc may not get new games. Indie, AA, and Japanese games are where creativity and variety will still thrive.
Stfu about eastern devs... 🙄 they are exactly the same, you think they produce only gems? Mgs survive, Pokémon, ace combat those games have died.
@@mitri5389 I didn't say they only produce gems. I said they allow for creativity and variety to thrive. Regardless of quality, which is the point. They still pump out tons of non-major IP games, taking risks. Paranormasight, Little Goody Two Shoes, new SaGa game, Exoprimal, Pragmata, Kunitsu-Gami, new Atelier games, new Rot3K games, etc. all came out in the past year or will be coming out.
Ray... Man? What's a Rayman?
@@miguelcondadoolivar5149 😥
@@kalega311 It's just a name I haven't read in a long time. I miss him and I despise the rabbids.
Absolutely spot on analysis. Never heard of you or your channel until just now but I'm a fan already. Subscribed.
The problem is not with entertainment itself (thumbnail: "gaming is dying"). The problem is thinking that the area can only exist through the current industrial model. What an American thing.
At least we got great indie subsitutes.
Soon to be not anymore. Big companies are buying them out and then shutting them down.
Then the passionate developers quit and start their own studio.
@@eddieford9373 They can only buy if the indies sell. More and more it's clear than selling your soul to big corps is a massive mistake.
I don’t comment often, but your summary of the current gaming landscape is by far the most poignant and frank, and we all know it’s true. Great video.
And here is the saddest thing... This way of greed driven business is not only killing the games industry ... Its killing everything it touches
The modern gaming industry has been in this spiral for over a decade. We're finally at a point where the economy has driven people to a point that they no longer are willing to lose 50-100 on a bad purchase or in some of these cases, paying for a product they are later told they don't have the rights to play and don't own.
thanks for that ending in particular. Lately it feels like everything I care about is truly over, but this is a good reminder that maybe we'll find a way.
"Gaming is dying so it can reborn. Clean, free and full of innovation to bring the most exciting and funny experience that can have. There always will be games, and there will always be gamers!" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Love this bro! Earned a sub!
Really appreciate this video you've taken a lot of my thoughts and put them into words.. I get upset at the situation and then my thoughts get clouded
As a person whos been gaming since the 80's. I just feel like everything is just some sort of walking simulator, battle Royale or just another first person shooter. 🤷🏾 originality has left the building.
We killed it when we all bought horse armor. Let's not deny it. If nobody had bought it, it would've quickly died out
I like how you are trying to mitigate your responsibility and make yourself feel better by pretending that _everyone_ behaved like you've been behaving for the last fifteen years.
If you've finally seen the light, then I absolutely congratulate you, but there have been many of us who have not in any way supported the ruination of our beloved hobby. Just not near enough of us.
I never owned a 360 sooo no I’m not to blame
@@bricaaron3978I'm being facetious
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan If you were pretending to be part of the problem in order to make your message more palatable, then great. My comment will stand for the 80% of game buyers who have been rushing to throw Top Dollar year after year.
@@bricaaron3978imagine coping so hard that you have to resort to self-righteousness like this to feel more virtuous, instead of just accepting the simple fact that your individual virtue is meaningless and that systemic problems require systemic solutions. Not buying things doesn't magically make the problem go away. Regulating corporations does.
Movie studios claim movies don't make money all the time. Where do you think the gaming companies learned this "one trick"? Look up Hollywood accounting.
The probably is these huge companies are allowed to get bigger and bigger still. The smaller companies get swallowed up and competition suffers.
There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who enjoy playing video games, are we all going to suddenly stop playing/buying games? The gaming industry will keep chugging along, with ups and downs, like it has since the 80s.
This is probably THE BEST breakdown video of the entire situation. Even someone outside from the scene coming and watching the video will understand the corruption of this industry
Black rock, vanguard, esg/dei is killing entertainment. You can't make a property aimed at everyone or you will please no one. Anytime you here "modern audiences" be concerned.
Excellent video. I'm always happy to find new channels with intelligent analysis of gaming and movies. You got +1 subscriber
What is that Middle Ages game you were showing in the background starting at around 14:04? It looks interesting.
no, games are fine. Mega Publishers are dying.
The title does say Triple A in the brackets.
This got nothing to do with gaming. Every business around the world is doing this. Dig in and research it, and you will be surprised. And the only reason that it works, is because of people buying their products. Gaming is fine. There have been lots of great games last 2 years. More than any "normal person" with a real life values and priorities outside gaming, have time to play. Just stop buying the bad games, made for milking money and enjoy life 👌
It's not that there weren't good games, it's that the big companies did massive layoffs. So yes, it is failing, if you think you can't keep your employees in you company.
They're extracting western wealth so that when the globocommunist shift hits, the corporations will be in position to remain in power in perpetuity.
And the socialists are eating it up.
This is like an abusive relationship where if you do not surpass the absolute best that currently exist by huge margin, you are worthless. And if against all odds that you do, now you need to do it again with your prior work now being your own opponent.
At this point, let it crash.
We have an everything bubble of epic proportion. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Yep, game industry issues is just a larger reflection of the entire financial/economic system becoming unsustainable.
And this is partly the reason why people are turning to retro gaming and emulation, along with downloading ROMs; people want to go back to the simpler days when gaming was about fun instead of trying to milk the customer for all their worth like with live service games.
Just discovered this channel and man the quality of this content made me insta sub. I'm glad I'm not the only one who took it hard regarding the decline of the AAA gaming, most of my old fav studios are either dead or a shell of their former selves. And there will come a day where Fallout (and my other old franchises) one of my most loved franchise will feel empty and a relic of the past, if Fallout 76 is the weakest/worst entry well then I hate to break it for you but in 10 years from people will look at Fallout 76 and considers it a great game.
This comment is already long but there is so many things wrong with this industry the DEI, Sweet baby inc, 130$ editions, MTX, Unfinished games, broken promises, same game that released in 2015 but with a different name, and the list goes on.
People need to look into how profit gets split after the sale of a game, movie, etc. Too many people think that, "Oh, it cost 100mil dollars to make and made 200mil so it was successful". This couldn't be further from the truth. Even without the marketing budget those numbers are still not good.
To be fair, are publishers greedy? Yes, they are but people most often don't have all details and are misled by statistics.
Not our problem. That's a game company/investor/publisher problem.
@@anorouch I'm not defending the gaming industry in any way. I was trying to nudge people into educating themselves, especially youtube pundits who are suppossed to inform people of what's happening in the enternainment industry and not spread misinformation and look like fools.
Triple A is collapsing, which is long overdue. Bloated budgets, bloated teams, no agility, bottle necks everywhere. Gaming is fine.
Big publishers need to experience a humbling.
You know the industry is in a bad place when AA games/studios can’t avoid closure and wasn’t the whole point of game pass meant to support the creation of AA games on the service
Triple A games are dying because they have to spend 200 million dollars in advertising.
It's the same for big budget films. I don't know when advertising costs went insane but if they find a way to advertise for 1/3 of the cost they'll make tons of money again.
Between hiring extra bloat in the form of DIE employees, paying for consultants to alienate your customers, marketing and store cuts... AAA Games have to sell tens of millions of copies at above full price to start breaking even.
Its not stupidity its intentionally malicious.
This is the same issue across tons of industries. They don't seem to understand that constantly increasing profit is unsustainable. They're not happy maintaining 10% profit, that percentage needs to be constantly increasing, or it's a failure. It's awful.
Excellently said. Unfettered executive compensation and investor greed is completely unsustainable and killing not just gaming but every industry we love or depend on.
Public companies are there to be mined for their value. It is not sustainable.
Rush 2112. Greed ruins everything.
What a masterpiece! 🎸
What matters most to publishers and many developers is not only the almighty dollar but is also the almighty religion of ESG&DEI. You should not ignore that latter. Stockholders AND Stakeholders (look it up) are killing games.
Who's actually acknowledging a huge part of your audience going to ruin the industry?
ESG and DEI are actually good principles that encourage environmental responsibility and acceptance and fairness. Of course right wingers hate those things and want to pollute and discriminate.
@@anna-flora999If it's such a massive part of their audience that wants this how come it's failed at every turn
@@shadowwolf8434 maybe because the games in general just suck, and would have sucked just as much with an all white cishet male cast
@@nick8243 The ideas can be nice, the implementation, not so much.
im going to link this video to everyone who ask the same old question why do gaming suck you video is on point 👌
Totally sickening, nicely explained Mugthief...time for a change in the industry. Greed has perverted innovation in gaming and sucks all the fun out of it.
Definitely a topic I feel like I've been harping on so long that I feel like a person walking around with "The end is nigh!" sign around my neck... but not in the Rorschach kinda way... As much as I want to see AAA collapse under its own greed and see a restructure of the industry that uplifts AA and Indie development to new heights, I don't want that to be at the cost of the human devs that are getting screwed over and destabilized in this greed machine.
I hope all of the developers that suffered under their capitalist money factories are able to find footing and take their talent into companies and games that will appreciate and support them, but that doesn't take away from the hundreds and thousands of blows this industry has received over its lifetime.
Unlike other media entertainment industries, video games are so unregulated, unrepresented in unions, and unstable, and it's time that changes. It's way past that time, really. If we want to have a healthy industry with fresh IPs, happy and innovative developers, and great support, we have to bury the current industry with regulation and votes with our own wallets. Support only those games and companies that deserve it; it's the least we can do.
This is probably the best explanation yet to date.
Thanks for a good video, I think you're on point, and this potential explanation does has helped me to actually understand current internal logic of big gaming companies doing seemingly obviously bad moves - because they're on different line of thinking, which isn't good
I have just told myself no more AAA I will pick up the true indie games and that's it
They’ve priced themselves out. $70, even $60 is too much to risk paying for a game that might suck.
I remember when $40 was only for the top tier AAAA games. And that was considered pricy. AND you got a hardcopy you could install from. Now you pay $60+ to download something that could be taken away for no cause and no recompenses a short while later and with to high a chance it's buggy crap.
Or a game you’re sure that you’ll have to buy at least two DLCs later….. no way I’m burning 100 bucks on a mess full of bugs and worst gameplay than the previous titles of the same franchise.
I'm 37, the apex of gaming was in the early 2000's and the very early 2010's. I pretty much stopped gaming by the mid 2010's. I didn't like where the industry was going. When Activision released the original COD: Modern Warfare back in 2009 that's when everything started going downhill. It was the first game to break into the mainstream and catch the attention of Wall St. investors. Every studio, developer, publisher desperately wanted to replicate COD's success.
A very serious and relevant assessment. Also: after all the grave news, astronomical numbers in cash, brutal critique, I laughed my ass off at how you said so seriously: “If you like this video hit the like button”. The request for this minuscule gesture after all that massiveness was so so funny!!
I wanna say "im so depressed" but recently indie games have been kicking major ass and keeping me afloat.
Negative. Western AAA gaming is collapsing and they deserve it.
Most of the better games today are from Europe.
Game studios are failing because of too much micro management and they are deviding their audiences with politics that most gamers dont agree with.
People playing gamers don’t give a shit about politics, agenda, wokeness, whatever. Just a loud minority goes around crying about it, if a title is satisfying to play and offer an unique experience, that’s all that matters.
They forget the most important part: if the consumers don't like your product you fail. The failure of Goliath will ultimately result in new companies that understand this concept.
GREAT VIDEO NEW SUB BRO
Zenimax was bloated when MS bought them. That is how they ended up trying to manage 9 studios worldwide and getting nothing done right. There are a lot of us that wanted TES6 and Todd Howard was like, we gave you an Elder Scrolls with ESO. That is not a TES game it is a online microtransaction cash grab.
Starfield: That is what BGS made instead of TES6 that we asked for. 1000 planets of nothing and do you know why it is empty? It is a huge blank canvas for Creation Club (Paid Mods) so it can be milked long term. Patches for the game come to Steam as a beta and is tested before official release. The Creation Kit (mod tools) beta was only given to paid mod creators for testing, to give them a head start. So come 11/11/24 it will be 13 years since the last TES game launched and it will be another 2 or 3 before a game is delivered. But it is not about shareholders. Todd Howard bragged that when he bought his Tesla he told them to give him the most expensive model they had. He thought that was amusing.