Gaming exploded on 2007-2012, it stopped being a nitche thing and reached mainstream on that gen.
Then it reached its biggest popularity on the PS4-Xone gen, only to catch a second breath thanks to the pandemic and social media that now saw gaming as cool. Just to complement this, it is not hard to find people that bought GTA V and either never played or only like 2 hours.
The problem is that corpos already smelled the money. And they where not going to let the goose die. So they are streamlining everything so it appeals to everyone, they are putting psychologist to make the game loop more addicted (you classic 'epic', 'common', etc drops).
But all the waves are not here to stay, normies will move every time and so the time of mainstream gaming is starting to fade. People hobbie is starting to become social media, and not only to watch it but also to be part of it: people are now creating their own content and they found fun making it.
Now, it wouldnt be a problem if corpos realize this, but they havent, and keep working like those 2 billions in returns are guarantee. But thats not the case anymore, and it is beginning to show. If you see the Xbox email from a while ago (preparing the layoffs) you will see that Asha explicit says that they need to return a certain profit, and they are laying off people to meet it.
Sony movement of all digital is a way to secure control and profit by not sharing with anyone and controlling the price. PC has become a digital wasteland, that can explode if the profits gets too affected. We already see how Valve just charge 1k for outdated hardware, without any controllers. Nintendo.. well is just Nintendo, they where the first one to charge more, and also started to rent emulators.
I know this was a long post, but what I wanted to explain here is that we are on the point of the market share of video games starting to shrink, while companies still hasnt accept this so they maintain their target profit so the only way to do this is by doing all this stupid crap we are seeing right now.
So yeah, many will crash and it will be good, since now many money hungry people will move to the next thing and people that actually care about games remains (including gamers)
Honestly I feel like GTA VI won't be a salvation but the first nail in the coffin
I dont really think there was an option of GTA VI not being the one that triggers the start of the collapse. It is incredile popular (like normies n1 game of all time), big production values and many ways to monetize it.
Only digital was probably the first step, I dont even want to know what Rockstar is planning to do with its microtransactions.
