Is gaming dying?

[CargoRoms]

Yeah, it's dead to me.

Always biting more than chewing, as opposed to making a huge variety of experimental budget titles, like what indie games do.

But hey, same happened to Hollywood, I'm not interested in wasting my time, watching lifeless remakes or new entries, or another forgettable cookie cutter media.

 

[MiwaSata]

Gaming is not dying, but the greediness of companies absolutely has increased.

 

[Ikagura]

We'll need the definition of "dead" for something that isn't biologically living.

But then again, by strict definition, mules aren't living things.

 

[Koreandr]

 

[Ikagura]

Seeing Arcade slowly dying pains me a bit

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Revenue and profitability are two different things. Companies often have profitability margins that they have to hit to be viable.

What I see from that graph is that console revenue has stalled for the past decade and mobile is booming. That's not a good trend for core gamers.

 

[CargoRoms]

Yep, mobile "games" dominated everything.

Post 2012, every video game wants to be a mobile "game", even the AAA ones.
And you don't even need ultra high RTX graphix in these "games" to sell too damn well...

 

[Xeno]

Revenue and profitability are two different things. Companies often have profitability margins that they have to hit to be viable.

What I see from that graph is that console revenue has stalled for the past decade and mobile is booming. That's not a good trend for core gamers.

It also looks like the PC market is growing.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

It also looks like the PC market is growing.

I can buy that. I think digital distribution has been a huge boon for the PC market. Also I think there are more of a variety of gaming experiences on PC (especially for older gamers) than on console. Plus, almost everybody owns a PC that can play some amount of games. Not everybody owns a console.

 

[Ravl]

Seeing Arcade slowly dying pains me a bit
View attachment 43321

Gaming died with the arcades

 

[spectresfrommercury]

nothing of value would be lost honestly if it ended up dead dead one day

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

Nope . Gaming cant die because we got a huge backlog of underrated , forgotten , unknown games at our disposal that we can inspire us and even create our spiritual successors to it . Gaming is becoming more niche again .

And with a huge quantity of cancled games-history archived (Unseen64 * wink wink *) we have brilliant concepts that are waiting to be realised as games that could push boundaries again of every genre that gaming can offer .

 

[Ikagura]

I'd prefer to not fall into the easy trap of doomer thinking.

 

[Raziya The Seeker]

Ok but fr, anyone who unironically says "Gaming is dead" or "Gaming isn't fun anymore" needs to play something else for once. Baroque got fan translated, Ultrakill exists, Mega Man has been porting it's games to modern consoles since 2015, Multiple unknown games are getting localised and remade, Princess Crown (and Vanillaware as a whole) are hidden gems, the most irrelevant and unknown games of all time have at least one hour long video essay dedicated to them and you're STILL telling me you don't think gaming is fun anymore or there's nothing to play?! Though admittedly, 2024 was kinda middle of the road when it came to new releases, even for hidden gems.

Shoutouts to the many videos telling those people to stfu, it annoys me SO much

I know this is wayyy too early in the thread for a quote. But still! If there was a "super based" Like emoji I could use for this post, I would. This is the kind of pure, unadulterated hopium and facts about the gaming industry.

So yeah. Collapse of AAAs and phoenix rebirth, circle of life where indies get huge and sell out too, blah blah blah. We've done this before with Atari, we can survive it again.

 

[Mr. SyS]

Spiritually? Yes. Money-wise? Can't be doing any better. What you want is AA or retro.

 

[GardeniaSky]

If these bloated budgets actually allowed top-tier games, we'd be fine.

Instead it's like every other industry where the biggest contenders are cutting costs and exploiting workers to make number go up.

Hopefully we keep seeing genuinely good games from smaller developers. Vote with our wallets.

 

[Adrastia]

Nope, but the AAA industry is going to have a crash in the upcoming years thanks to the production costs and their anti consumer practices, but thanks to old games and the indie industry interest in gaming is always going to be there. People who says that gaming is dying only plays online shooters and FIFA yearly.

Maybe a big crash and burn will create a phoenix. That might be too much optimism. But it would be great to have a big budget industry that shies away from the bloat and hype and just wants to deliver a great and very playable product.

I've moved more towards indie games and retro. Same with film. Hollywood hasn't held my attention in years. The last big name film I watched ended up being The Substance. Sometimes something unique gets big instead of the usual slop. But it's a rarity. To me it's like a more graphic spiritual sequel to another favorite, Death Becomes Her.

Gaming is more popular than ever.

However i dont like how much contact with game devs the community has. Seems like every dev now has a Twitter, a Discord, etc, being able to give feedback is nice, but its reached a point where its created this culture of harassment, smear campaigns, and death threats. Individual devs getting put in the crosshairs of an unruly mob of angry gamers

I feel bad for devs. It's not the fault of the average overworked dev that a game was rushed or full of poorly implemented concepts. The guy who designed the blades of grass is not your enemy. Blame the suits who don't play games and just want to make money. They like to hire consultant groups who know what those happenin' kids over at TikTube and YouTok think is groovy and radical. But the people in those consultant groups don't care about games either. They care about money.

That's a big problem. Greed over fun.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

I know this is wayyy too early in the thread for a quote. But still! If there was a "super based" Like emoji I could use for this post, I would. This is the kind of pure, unadulterated hopium and facts about the gaming industry.

So yeah. Collapse of AAAs and phoenix rebirth, circle of life where indies get huge and sell out too, blah blah blah. We've done this before with Atari, we can survive it again.

Never too early, I'm always likely to lurk

 

[SyphonFilter12]

I think slowly slowly it is. I had so many friends over the world were so active even at the gaming websites forum now, barely you find them. The best era and time for me was during the PS3 time. I have had the best gaming experience, met friends, and enjoyed playing online.

 

[DanCalibur]

We are coming out of a very weird economic period where interest rates were super low and companies could release crappy products and still turn a profit, and entering a period where interest rates are higher and game companies have to make something of actual value to survive.

 

[Antilocal123]

I hope so I want all of you to go outside for once. /j

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Late Nintendo President Yamauchi predicted the course of the industry and time and time again. He was never wrong.
We are past the point where if a game doesn't sell well the company who produce it is doomed.

"I have been saying this for some time, but customers are not interested in grand games with higher-quality graphics and sound and epic stories. Only people who do not know the video game business would advocate the release of next-generation machines when people are not interested in cutting-edge technologies."

"There are many companies with the technology to create game software. However, truly talented and experienced individuals are extremely rare. The fact that there are few people who can create excellent games means that there are many who can create subpar games. If we leave the market to such people, anything with potential will be destroyed. The more companies compete, the more they will inevitably produce a large number of games, trying to win with the variety of software. This leads to a flood of similar, subpar game software in the market. When there are many subpar games (also known as 駄作), consumers become uncomfortable. Once that happens, the entertainment market will collapse in the blink of an eye. In order to prevent the market from collapsing due to subpar games, we had no choice but to "monopolize."

I can see in the next 10 years that games as a whole will deflate and only the small scale games like indie and AA games will strive. Games cost too much to development and will see game companies like Ubisoft fall and collapse.

 

[LSDMemeEmulator]

Statistically it's never been more popular and successful as an industry so you can't say it's dying in that sense but I think that's caused some serious problems in regards to overall game quality. AAA games have such bloated budgets nowadays that they're too big to fail and companies end up feeling they need to play it safe and monetize it as much as possible to minimize risk. What makes things worse is the AA space has been obliterated, think of all the great games that have come from there in the past and that's effectively been nuked. You have indie games still and certainly some quality ones at that but something many don't want to admit is how stale even that's been getting. I've noticed a lot of homogeny and trend chasing (if I have to see one more pixel art roguelike game istg) from indies which is unfortunate. I also think the sense of community due to all of this has been on the decline as well. But I don't think gaming is dying even with everything I said, there's still good games coming out every year and a massive demand for them at that. I think it's foolish however to think there's not some serious problems right now with the overall state of gaming

 

[fujiwaratokwa]

You could say it's dying because it does look like it. However, it's like this because we simply peaked. Graphics have peaked, gameplay even though we're getting unique ones it's just a mixture of old and new gameplays before, story? I think we've peaked at that as well. Gaming is becoming stale because of that but what's making it worst is making it more woke or forcing free to play features such as gambling. Not to mention the push of big companies to an all digital future.

 

[TheSoulWalker]

The AAA Bubble is finally bursting, AA is looking more and more like actual AAA every day. The Indie scene is thriving.