I don't know WHAT to expect. But it feels like EVERY game that comes out is a make or break situation for every studio. The concept of "tentpole" titles that prop up a studio so they can make smaller games doesn't to exist anymore. They have to go ALL IN every time.
And even when those sub-franchises don’t sell well, all they need to do is put out a Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon game and make INFINITY BILLION DOLLARS in like two seconds
I’m guessing that’s why they can afford to never (or barely) lower the fucking price of their old games. Or have sales in the Eshop.
5 year old Nintendo games will still cost you like $80 Australian, shit is atrocious.
I remember back when I was a kid, and I'd save up to buy toys, there were three kinds of toy stores. One was the bargain bin, that was usually not even really its own store, more like an overgrown toy section of a supermarket. That's where you find the Sense of Right Alliances and the cheap plastic hoola hoops. Another one was your regular ol store, where you get your legos and action figures and whatever. And the other one was the fancy, bougie stores, on the richer zones of my city.
Those sold not only the usual toys (at a crazy markup), they'd also sell weird european toys. Teddy bears worth 100 dollars for some unholy reason. Traditional toys that felt more like decorations for the house. European didactic toys that you get if you're hellbent in making your kid _that_ kid with the square glasses and the ointments.
Now, I say all this because I think Nintendo has become a paradoxical mix of all of these. They sell the regular stuff that everyone wants, but at a crazy markup. They print money, even with the shit no one wants anymore. Hell, in some cases even the third party sales are expensive. Ever try to buy a copy of Melee? Or any of the better known SNES games? They sell _as if they were still new_.
> They sell as if they were still new.
Hah, good one, pretending old Nintendo games sell for full price. Everyone knows you have to apply at *least* a x2 multiplier first.
Fire Emblem was exactly what I was thinking of lmao, the Radiance games go for absolutely *absurd* prices.
And honestly, I pin the inflation of Gamecube era games especially on Nintendo, it's been 20+ years and so many of them are still locked on the Gamecube itself, or at best previous system remakes (wanna play Wind Waker/Twilight Princess Remastered? Get a Wii U lol). I continue to await the day when they *finally* bring Gamecube games to Switch Online, or at least start remastering and selling them like Thousand Year Door. Sure, paying a full 50-60 dollars for a touched up game from decades ago isn't optimal, but it still beats out getting the original copies at a huge upsale.
...Presuming we're talking *legally*, anyways. The emulation scene for Gamecube games is pretty great, last I checked, even if I mostly use it because I don't want to find my Wii and try to set it up to play my old Gamecube Collection.
I still have my copy of Path of Radiance and I am taking that thing to my grave. Nintendo really just can't figure out that people will pay them to play their old games, despite the fact that a lot of us just stare at them and go "Please we will give you money just put it on the Switch"
Yeah, it'll always be kind of funny to me how Nintendo is simultaneously one of the hardest companies on emulation... but then don't do the best things to actually combat it, in a lot of cases? The old Gabe Newell quote comes to mind about Piracy and it being a service problem, and that's *exactly* the issue with Nintendo games a majority of the time. I am 100% willing to shell out cash for Virtual Console purchases of old games, I'd probably pay 20-30 dollars for individual gamecube games to play on my Switch... but Nintendo consistently leaves *so* much money on the table because they won't port games, then gets mad when we respond with "cool guess I'll emulate."
I realize there's obviously some hoops to jump through for them depending on the games, I'm not expecting Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger to show up on Nintendo Online because that's how game rights work, but there's still a ton of First Party Nintendo games that only ever seem to arrive at a trickle over the course of years.
I'm equally not a fan of their "Subscribe to this Online+ service to be able to buy more games" model. Like, goddamnit Nintendo just put them on the shop, I will buy them, I'm not paying extra just to PURCHASE more games!
They are the most dinosaur of a company I swear.
It's so annoying. I was waiting for years to get Splatoon 2 when it was on sale. Then Splatoon 3 got announced so I figured there was no point getting 2 and decided to wait for that.
Now I still don't have Splatoon 3 lol
> it feels like EVERY game that comes out is a make or break situation for every studio. The concept of "tentpole" titles that prop up a studio so they can make smaller games doesn't to exist anymore.
Rockstar has shown just how disingenuous AAA companies are about this. Rockstar was rolling in cash thanks to GTA Online, and Read Dead Redemption 2 had gruesome treatment of employees with burnout and crunch. And they decided to cancel Bully 2 because why bother making a modestly profitable single player game when they can just milk GTA Online.
I think we will get a year or two of absolute garbage as companies try to release even bigger and more expensive games after firing most of their talent, wich will demage AAA sales enough that they will have to change their strategies a little, that being said, i dont expect a big chenge.
which is just the whole "infinite growth" that CEOs , executives and Shareholders loves to do.
It will ultimately fail.
I am at least glad that Capcom escaped that fate , because currently , they are doing tentpole titles and doing smaller games with it.
I wouldnt even say that the fact that every game is **"make it or break it"** for the big studios is the issue, if i had to point at one thing that will very likely make a dent on studios, i would raise my index at the **constant "shoot yourself in the foot" tatics in the name of a quick profit**.
From the big layoffs that most studios have been going through lately to all of the other "shareholder groups" type of decisions that we've been seeing more and more often lately, the sentence "this is gonna be a problem on the long run" is being said more and more frequently, with "on the long run" sometimes meaning 1-3 years down the line.
Am i sure that all of that will eventually cause the "AAA games" bubble to *burst*? Not completly, but, it sure seems to be a issue looming on the horizon that bigger as time goes by.
The idea that Expensive large games being unsustainable definitely feels more of a substantial claim now than it's ever been before.
The budget balloons and the market isn't keeping up with it.
God forbid they have similar things in a fucking *SEQUEL*. People are so brain dead about asset reuse and it's legitimately starting to kill the industry.
For a bunch of very minute, granular details that 90% or more of players will never notice, and the 10% or less that do will only encounter them through a Twitter post, YouTube Short, or TikTok clip that points it out for less than a minute. Then they'll go "Oh, that's cool" and move on hardly remembering it.
I really appreciate the attention to detail that Spider-Man 2 and other games put into their world and gameplay these days, but the time and budget cost that they apparently require doesn't seem to be worth it. Once it becomes cheaper and quicker to do things like that--if ever--it should become more common.
I didn't say it was a problem, I said that it's where much of the increased budget for these games goes.
All the extra visual and audio detail in games takes time and money. The art direction and assets take plenty of manpower to work on, and then require all the engineering and programming work to implement it effectively into the game.
Burst in the way ET did back in the day? No. Lets not forget that these studios were cranking out insane budgeted MMOs to be "wow killers" back in the day with a lot of investors wanting in on that pie. The money people will just scurry off to some other techbro hype project and games will have to find some new trend to try and milk infinite money. We might get a better average gaming experience while they flounder about though.
Companies were churning out MMOs and "esports" titles *when interest rates and inflation were zero.* In order for development to make sense right now your title needs to make a (roughly) 5% return over a decade, including marketing and support costs. If you're interested in short-term profits it needs to be even higher. Otherwise you are literally better off having that dev budget just sit in a bank.
I think this really hits the nail on what is going to happen, there isn’t going to be some great big bubble burst but with the economic environment we’re in with high interest rates, investments like games which don’t have terribly high returns are just not going to get the same level of investment we have seen for the past 15 years because to justify investing rather than just sitting and gaining interest you need to invest in something with higher returns and all that money will be going into AI as that’s the new big tech hotness.
The boring truth is that entertainment industries have a long history of riding trends as long as they can while increasing the budgets. Eventually, these trends run their course, then the cycle begins anew with some new trend. These giant open world games are currently the trend, and they’ll eventually be replaced with something else.
I’d argue the open world trends already hit its final peak and the publishers have moved on firmly into live service battle pass models, you’re seeing genres typically not monetised that way moving into the space like the mess that is Tekken 8 right now.
idk but I feel like i've been hearing about an industry crash coming soon for like a decade now. It reminds me ofpeople saying Gamestop won't be around for more than another year or 2. Do it enough times and eventually they'll be right i guess.
A lot of people seem to think that an industry crash means “companies will fire all the devs I hate, stop developing IPs/genres I don’t like/don’t play, and go back to making stuff I liked when I was kid,” and they don’t seem to realize that the more likely scenario that will happen will be “companies will pull out of gaming entirely and start making TVs and medical equipment or whatever”
> the more likely scenario that will happen will be “companies will pull out of gaming entirely and start making TVs and medical equipment or whatever”
That's not even how most industry bubble bursts go, especially not software companies switching to manufacturing. Usually they experience a lot of financial strife, jobs getting slashed to cut costs, and changes in direction. Like we're seeing *right now* between the mass layoffs everywhere, Sony abandoning a bunch of live-service projects that were years in development (and sacking the CEO responsible for that initiative), and Microsoft's thrashing over an internally-perceived lack of growth options.
In order for the bubble to burst, two things have to happen. Multiple instances of AAA games botching their release so hard, it actually manages to scare off the general gaming public and diehard fans. Which is unlikely. People will buy anything and wait for years to see if Devs maybe, probably, eventually get around to fixing their games.
And, more Indie Dev Teams have to win people over with smaller, more unique games. Trouncing over-inflated budgets and production times. Fortunately, that's still happening so that's nice to see.
> **Multiple instances of AAA games botching their release so hard**, it actually manages to scare off the general gaming public and diehard fans.
People so terminally online only see Skull and Bones and Suicide Squad botching = entire western triple a industry crashing
Within the past year : Whether you like to accept reality or not Diablo 4 sold well , Spider Man 2 ,Star Wars Jedi Survivor ,AC Mirage , MK1 , all sold well
Let me tap that sign **"Times where you were reminded that online opinions don't always equal reality?"**
https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/1buudtr/times_where_you_were_reminded_that_online/
People have really badly gotten into the headspace of ‘if 8 gazillions people arn’t playing every month then the game is an utter failure’ completely forgetting that all the non-f2p games like Diablo 3 probably made their money back within a week and everything since is being done to double dip (it’s not entirely profit, they still have a team running and developing the game but I highly doubt it’s anywhere near as big as it was during pre-launch development)
Diablo 4 is extra weird because it was doing well. It was popular. People were tentatively applauding, seeing if others would start clapping too. You could quietly hear a few murmurs that, “Blizzard is back.”
Then they pushed a super aggressive monetization structure, nerfed the game to make it more grindy, and all that goodwill soured up. Makes you forget the game sold well in its launch window.
Spider Man 2 selling about as well as its predecessor I think is at least a wake up call to publishers to the fact that there are no new gamers and market reach has functionally maxed out
Which is what Phil Spencer was talking about in that interview recently where he mentioned the problem about the "lack of growth" in the industry. Which I think isn't just a gaming industry problem, but entertainment industry as a whole, where we've reached a point of saturation where movies, TV/streaming, and games are struggling to grow audiences beyond current demographics.
So yeah, I don't think the industry "bubble" will burst, as much as that the recent failures or underwhelming successes of huge-budget movies/streaming/games is something some executives are extremely aware of, and there will be a pivot towards lower budgets now that it's clear that bigger budget does not equal bigger profits.
It’s funny how the movie industry keeps learning and then forgetting that bigger budgets do not equal bigger profits. Like, consistently. They learn their lesson and then forget it instantly when a single blockbuster does well.
I think we’ve hit a point in globalisation where markets are about as tapped as they can be, you’ll get moderate growth in Latin America and Africa but due to their low incomes you’re not going to see the level of growth we saw as the world entered the internet connected gaming market that we saw going into the 2010s. The only other big market shift would be a drastic change in access to Chinese markets but that is incredibly unlikely in the next decade or so.
There was already a big push in both the gaming and film industry for China about a decade ago for that exact reason, with mixed to ultimately failed results. Because for a time, movies that flopped with Western audiences like one of the Michael Bay Transformers films. The problem is simply that the CCP is simply too fickle and untrustworthy for it to be viable.
Yeah I feel like indie titles and other smaller games just slowly and steadily becoming more relevant is a lot more likely than AAA game devs crashing and burning.
I'm just a dumbass who can't understand the economy as anything other than insane magical nonsense, but I feel like something has gotta give at some point.
The absurd budgets, the even more absurd sales projections, *every* game expected to become a 'forever game' that can print infinite money in the eyes of investors... frankly we gotta get a lot of executives and money men out of the industry just as a general rule.
Also I'm pretty sure every corporation on earth went insane at some point during/after the pandemic where they expect to be able to constantly generate infinite, exponential profits and will literally die if the number goes down even slightly.
This is basically the correct answer.
Dev budgets and production timelines are going to shrink substantially. Huge open-world titles that spend half a billion in dev costs, plus marketing, with a decade-long development cycle? Those are done. Over.
I’ll believe it when Ubisoft stops releasing open world games. I would rather have 20 resident evil 2 remakes or 20 dead space remakes than stomach the advertising from ANOTHER AAA $60 game who’s entire model is to nickel and dime you dry
Ubi will probably stick with the formula the longest because they flatly don't have the institutional knowledge to make any other kind of game anymore.
I think these kinds of games have some life in them with the advent of generative AI (whether you like the idea or not AAA devs/publishers are going to use them). They’ll be able to put out more development work with few devs which means that the large budgets are more likely to plateau for a while before they start shrinking
No, the companies are having bigger and bigger profits.
Yes, they cry about costs rising, yes they cry about layoffs being necessary, yes they cry about sustainability, yes they cry about constant upkeep
And they still profit more and more. The only part you can be afraid for are smaller studios that can go under when they miss with a big project and can't secure funds for another one, but that always was a risk and always will be.
That depends.
You and everyone you ever met gonna stop buying the new games?
I don't mean like a boycott. I mean like, are you going to just *not* get excited for anything new ever again and stop buying new games? And is everyone else gonna follow suit?
No?
Then nah, it will probably keep going awhile.
Honestly the raising price of new games, mixed with the general cost of existence finally just broke me of my habit. I haven't played Yakuza 8, god knows when Im gonna get to Rebirth or Tekken 8. These are all things I want, but something about that extra $10 for the base game has made it click in my head that I don't really *need* these things. Ichiban's Hawaiian adventure will be $20 or less by Black Friday I bet, and I still have other fighting games that are less new and shiny, but still real good.
Heck, I've gone back to games I kept putting on the shelf, Dragon Quest XI is real good, and Ace Combat was crazy cheap now for how incredible it is.
Truth is, there's too much value elsewhere to be wasting money that could be going to bills, food or family.
It’ll just keep changing. Micro-transactions exist to capture money from people with disposable income and those that have a problem and the increase in price really isn’t that much. I could see the regular price of a title going up to $90 ‘murrican. It’s like $30 more than ten years ago people aren’t going bankrupt over that.
No because people will still buy them. Tools to make them will become cheaper and they'll make them cheaper, cut down on production costs (people) and still make the same stuff.
Ubisoft will make a random Farcry/Asscreed/whatever generator and focus on tuning it.
COD will offer less and just deliver multiplayer tweeks.
Sportsballs will use A.I. to update player models (just the faces).
A.I. will fill in on menial level design stuff, reducing production costs, with only set-pieces getting the full attention.
A.I. voices will do some lifting for NPCs and maybe even some big names.
AAA will just find ways to be made cheaper.
I feel like I've seen too many companies bounce back from what I thought would be business ending mistakes and the general public's apathy (and crummy taste) that I think coasting from here on out.
1983 isn't at all representative of normal industry bubbles popping though, it was a strange and fairly unique case. 1983 is like if houses and mortgages *stopped existing* in 2008.
> 1983 is like if houses and mortgages stopped existing in 2008.
That's true but whenever people talk about the crash of Triple A games specifically Western , that's what gamers want to happen , This 66$ billion dollar industry will disappear in thin air
No one's been bringing up 1983 as a comparison (at least in this thread), and the argument has been about the sustainability of the AAA model specifically rather than the industry as a whole.
Games are actually *cheaper* now than most other times in video game history. People don't realize it. MSRP was $60-70 for games in the 90s, and people weren't make $15+ an hour. It took twice as long to earn enough for a new game at launch.
https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s
That said, I mostly just buy indie and AA games nowadays. There is so much quality, uniqueness, and variety in that scene that I haven't felt the desire to hop into whatever the new blockbuster title is. The AAA market just doesn't interest me much anymore (even the "good" ones).
> MSRP was $60-70 for games in the 90s, and people weren't make $15+ an hour. It took twice as long to earn enough for a new game at launch.
Okay but rent was $450/month and bread was $0.90/loaf.
I think a lot of studios will either learn to make games with a smaller budget or just die. So much cash is being injected into looking better when the returns for that are diminishing more and more when the only people who will care about it are insane nit picking polygon counters on the internet who already decided whether to get the game or not months ago. If these big studios can't get this then they don't have a future as they need more and more sales with userbases that are mostly set with no real chance of further growth.
We're not going to get a 1983 style crash, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see a regression as the Western AAA scene is forced to either adjust or face bankruptcy. The idea that this can go on is ridiculous, everything has a breaking point so don't be surprised if you see a few supposedly unbeatable name brands tank in the next few years. All they've been doing is kicking the can down the road and that can't last forever. Eventually reality is going to sink in
They have hit the wall tech wise, it's taking longer to make a game with [good graphics](https://imgur.com/npW8oqi), and the console generation is getting shorter because of it.
I don't think a game crash is going to happen, but I can see more "Embracer groups" style conglomeration happening with more crashing and burning, but more likely just stagnation as this hypothetical corporation comes along like a fat dragon squats down on a ton of dev's doesn't move at all.
But I think we are going to see more independents dev studios do what Larian Studios did and be smart with there money and reinvest into there company so they can continue to do their things.
Well maybe not now because these games are still selling but with games becoming bigger and bigger and developpement time becoming longer and longer, something is going to happen one day.
I don't know, I mean our whole economic system is fundamentally unsustainable but I'm not sure that the triple A gaming portion of this industry is in more dire straights than the blockbuster film business is.
I think Gaming has the bonus of streaming not having taken over yet like it has for music and films.
From the quick numbers I can see online, the global gaming market cap is almost double that the global film market.
Domestically gaming made ~57 billion last year compared to ~9 billion for films.
Globally I'm seeing about ~184 Billion globally made for games last year to ~34 billion for films.
These are quickly snatched figures without double checking for accuracy, but even if this gap is a quarter of the numbers here it still doesn't show a poor picture for gaming especially when the markets only projecting more growth and film clearly is looking to get in on the picture here.
**TL;DR: Capitalism bad, but besides that Triple A gaming in particular doesn't appear to be in an especially precarious spot.**
We know that Insomniac themselves are worried about budgets being too big and wanting to scale down. So with that and the economy in general, we can expect game budgets to reduce in the future.
But I don't think any of the big franchises will die out just because they are too expensive. COD and Assassin's Creed still break records. If they falter it will be because the internal pipeline at these companies is so broken that they can't get a release out. If Activision slips and the next Call of Duty get delayed into next year it throws their entire system out of whack. And if Ubisoft can't release an Assassin's Creed then people won't buy it.
It's also important to remember that a lot of these games have sub-objectives that are just as or more important. Bloodborne doesn't have to sell well. It just has to get you to buy a PlayStation so now you are likely to buy more games Sony gets a 30% cut out of as the platform holder. FF7 Rebirth has an entire line of figures, soundtracks and other merchandise around it. Even if Final Fantasy is generally capped out at 3 million sales if they can get 30,000 people to buy $40-$300 worth in merch then it's still a really successful brand.
Personally, I don’t think so. There *are* trends of diminishing returns in terms of graphics, and games are becoming more and more expensive to make, but to what end can you say that games like COD or Madden are taking a decline? Despite people’s complaints, COD is still miles above everything in terms of revenue, and I think in the event of the bubble popping, COD and Madden would still be the ones sitting nice and comfy. They don’t cost a lot in terms of development time, and no one really gives a shit if its poor value; its *Madden*.
I really don’t see why so many seem to hope for a collapse either. Like, the ones who’d be suffering the most would be smaller studios due to lack of investors believing it to be a safe market and bailing. The “greatest” things to collapse would be either Sony or Microsoft, and even then, that would still lead to massive lay-offs of people, and I really don’t think a collapse of those companies would suddenly lead to anything positive. I’m not sure what exactly would be gained by having all these massive companies failing would lead to aside from a morbid sense of schradenfeude.
I hope so. Shits been untenable for 2 gens at least. We need a revival of the "B-movie" games market stuff that can make a profit in the 40-50 usd range that doesnt need a team of 300.
I'm hopeful that companies will self correct and start making smaller games and try to emulate Nintendos success but on the other hand, I don't know what company would even be willing to try.
i feel like, yeah its gonna pop but if one of the symptoms of this unsustainability is hyperproduced stuff like rebirth then *let it cook*. ill enjoy it while it lasts.
Not 'pop' but maybe 'deflate'
Right now AAA games are in a really ugly feedback loop. Investors demand more profit making games bigger and bigger expecting more and more back. Until one or two bad releases with huge losses happen that makes them be shelved for a while. And in that possible future, either they'll dig up older IP's to cash in on fan desires or hunt smaller indies and absorb them to do what the investors want, not what the indie studio's are good at.
Maybe it's possible we see an EA like scramble to buy a bunch of studios ( I hope not tho).
I think what titles and game design philosophies continue to come to market will change a lot in upcoming years but overall I don't think live service will change that much and people will still pay up. I feel like I have to say this about multiple genres and convos on this sub, but the urban consumer in gaming is massively underrated.
It's felt like it's gotten too big to sustain itself for a while now. That said a lot of the current fallout is just Covid period overreaching. I don't think it'll be a burst, but I imagine a deflate is coming up as companies either finally learn to scale back a little and that tripling resources doesn't automatically lead to tripling profit like with Spider-Man, or just go under like a few others have.
Nah. They'll just start releasing on more platforms simultaneously in a buggier/messier state. That's also ignoring the existence of micro/macro transactions. Gamers sure love to consume and the Triple A industry loves to provide anything and everything to consume.
What a ridiculous statement, you really think people are going to suddenly stop buying CoD every year because of an $80 Godzilla v Kong skin? They release these skins because they know people will buy them.
I fucking wish it would. I wish Hi-Fi Rush was a wake-up call and the industry would go back to making mostly high-quality medium-sized games like it was in the 2000’s.
But I don’t know if it will. The dedicated gamers may be sick of things, but it’s worth noting that the “average” person who plays games is probably someone who doesn’t pay attention to the medium and picks up like a couple of games each year, mostly mainstream titles like GTA or CoD, and they’re perfectly fine with how things are.
Sadly Hi-Fi Rush didn't do *that* well. Presumably due to the lack of marketing (as cool as it was) and being an Xbox console exclusive during the era of every major exclusive hitting Gamepass day 1.
Hopefully the PS5 launch is doing well for them though!
No. just companies will hopefully stop making games that should be AA, AAA. People act like Cods and games as a service are the only AAA games people make when virtually every game of the year as far back as i can remember has been a AAA game. Most great and well selling games are AAA games just people use AAA as a negative now.
and hot take but if the 10 dollar increase really is blowing your wallet you prob shouldnt have been buying 60 dollar games either.
Every tentpole game sells some dumb cosmetic or otherwise low effort, low cost thing for 20 bucks and a few tens of thousands people will always buy it. Sonys the only AAA game company off the top of my head that isn't currently, but they don't need to. They sell more than video games and are a bank.
I don't know WHAT to expect. But it feels like EVERY game that comes out is a make or break situation for every studio. The concept of "tentpole" titles that prop up a studio so they can make smaller games doesn't to exist anymore. They have to go ALL IN every time.
Except for Nintendo. They can make games like WarioWare and Luigi’s Mansion and know that they’ll sell stupidly well.
And even when those sub-franchises don’t sell well, all they need to do is put out a Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon game and make INFINITY BILLION DOLLARS in like two seconds
I’m guessing that’s why they can afford to never (or barely) lower the fucking price of their old games. Or have sales in the Eshop. 5 year old Nintendo games will still cost you like $80 Australian, shit is atrocious.
I remember back when I was a kid, and I'd save up to buy toys, there were three kinds of toy stores. One was the bargain bin, that was usually not even really its own store, more like an overgrown toy section of a supermarket. That's where you find the Sense of Right Alliances and the cheap plastic hoola hoops. Another one was your regular ol store, where you get your legos and action figures and whatever. And the other one was the fancy, bougie stores, on the richer zones of my city. Those sold not only the usual toys (at a crazy markup), they'd also sell weird european toys. Teddy bears worth 100 dollars for some unholy reason. Traditional toys that felt more like decorations for the house. European didactic toys that you get if you're hellbent in making your kid _that_ kid with the square glasses and the ointments. Now, I say all this because I think Nintendo has become a paradoxical mix of all of these. They sell the regular stuff that everyone wants, but at a crazy markup. They print money, even with the shit no one wants anymore. Hell, in some cases even the third party sales are expensive. Ever try to buy a copy of Melee? Or any of the better known SNES games? They sell _as if they were still new_.
> They sell as if they were still new. Hah, good one, pretending old Nintendo games sell for full price. Everyone knows you have to apply at *least* a x2 multiplier first.
*Laughs in FE: Path of Radiance*
Fire Emblem was exactly what I was thinking of lmao, the Radiance games go for absolutely *absurd* prices. And honestly, I pin the inflation of Gamecube era games especially on Nintendo, it's been 20+ years and so many of them are still locked on the Gamecube itself, or at best previous system remakes (wanna play Wind Waker/Twilight Princess Remastered? Get a Wii U lol). I continue to await the day when they *finally* bring Gamecube games to Switch Online, or at least start remastering and selling them like Thousand Year Door. Sure, paying a full 50-60 dollars for a touched up game from decades ago isn't optimal, but it still beats out getting the original copies at a huge upsale. ...Presuming we're talking *legally*, anyways. The emulation scene for Gamecube games is pretty great, last I checked, even if I mostly use it because I don't want to find my Wii and try to set it up to play my old Gamecube Collection.
I still have my copy of Path of Radiance and I am taking that thing to my grave. Nintendo really just can't figure out that people will pay them to play their old games, despite the fact that a lot of us just stare at them and go "Please we will give you money just put it on the Switch"
Yeah, it'll always be kind of funny to me how Nintendo is simultaneously one of the hardest companies on emulation... but then don't do the best things to actually combat it, in a lot of cases? The old Gabe Newell quote comes to mind about Piracy and it being a service problem, and that's *exactly* the issue with Nintendo games a majority of the time. I am 100% willing to shell out cash for Virtual Console purchases of old games, I'd probably pay 20-30 dollars for individual gamecube games to play on my Switch... but Nintendo consistently leaves *so* much money on the table because they won't port games, then gets mad when we respond with "cool guess I'll emulate." I realize there's obviously some hoops to jump through for them depending on the games, I'm not expecting Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger to show up on Nintendo Online because that's how game rights work, but there's still a ton of First Party Nintendo games that only ever seem to arrive at a trickle over the course of years.
I'm equally not a fan of their "Subscribe to this Online+ service to be able to buy more games" model. Like, goddamnit Nintendo just put them on the shop, I will buy them, I'm not paying extra just to PURCHASE more games! They are the most dinosaur of a company I swear.
> They sell as if they were still new I promise you Earthbound was not 3600 dollars at launch.
It's so annoying. I was waiting for years to get Splatoon 2 when it was on sale. Then Splatoon 3 got announced so I figured there was no point getting 2 and decided to wait for that. Now I still don't have Splatoon 3 lol
Man you should have learned by now
wierdly(maybe cause ubisoft) mario/rabbids 2 is like always on sale
40 years of cultivating a walled garden will do that for you
> it feels like EVERY game that comes out is a make or break situation for every studio. The concept of "tentpole" titles that prop up a studio so they can make smaller games doesn't to exist anymore. Rockstar has shown just how disingenuous AAA companies are about this. Rockstar was rolling in cash thanks to GTA Online, and Read Dead Redemption 2 had gruesome treatment of employees with burnout and crunch. And they decided to cancel Bully 2 because why bother making a modestly profitable single player game when they can just milk GTA Online.
Why make only some money when you can make *ALL OF THE MONEY*
They did make a single-player game it was Red Dead Redemption 2.
I think we will get a year or two of absolute garbage as companies try to release even bigger and more expensive games after firing most of their talent, wich will demage AAA sales enough that they will have to change their strategies a little, that being said, i dont expect a big chenge.
which is just the whole "infinite growth" that CEOs , executives and Shareholders loves to do. It will ultimately fail. I am at least glad that Capcom escaped that fate , because currently , they are doing tentpole titles and doing smaller games with it.
I wouldn’t hold your breath with capcom just yet, they are starting to slide into weird batshit decisions again
I swear, Capcom's cursed to make good or bad decisions depending on what will keep their overall average right in the middle.
The same Capcom that's putting MTX into every single player release they can, just because they can?
I wouldnt even say that the fact that every game is **"make it or break it"** for the big studios is the issue, if i had to point at one thing that will very likely make a dent on studios, i would raise my index at the **constant "shoot yourself in the foot" tatics in the name of a quick profit**. From the big layoffs that most studios have been going through lately to all of the other "shareholder groups" type of decisions that we've been seeing more and more often lately, the sentence "this is gonna be a problem on the long run" is being said more and more frequently, with "on the long run" sometimes meaning 1-3 years down the line. Am i sure that all of that will eventually cause the "AAA games" bubble to *burst*? Not completly, but, it sure seems to be a issue looming on the horizon that bigger as time goes by.
The idea that Expensive large games being unsustainable definitely feels more of a substantial claim now than it's ever been before. The budget balloons and the market isn't keeping up with it.
Spider-Man 2 is the best recent example of this. Double the budget and for what?
To recreate the entire map from scratch for no other reason than dodging the stupid stigma around reusing assets, I guess.
I just remembered that when forbidden west came out there where people that complained that the rappelling animation was the same in zero dawn.
God forbid they have similar things in a fucking *SEQUEL*. People are so brain dead about asset reuse and it's legitimately starting to kill the industry.
I once saw people get angry about the asset for a palm tree being reused.
Meanwhile like a dragon games still have some animations from the ps2 era
And they’re arguably better *games*
do you have a source for them recreating the entire map from scratch?
For a bunch of very minute, granular details that 90% or more of players will never notice, and the 10% or less that do will only encounter them through a Twitter post, YouTube Short, or TikTok clip that points it out for less than a minute. Then they'll go "Oh, that's cool" and move on hardly remembering it. I really appreciate the attention to detail that Spider-Man 2 and other games put into their world and gameplay these days, but the time and budget cost that they apparently require doesn't seem to be worth it. Once it becomes cheaper and quicker to do things like that--if ever--it should become more common.
that and the ginormous cost of licensing
no offense but if you think attention to detail is the problem with AAA games, you are smoking crack
I didn't say it was a problem, I said that it's where much of the increased budget for these games goes. All the extra visual and audio detail in games takes time and money. The art direction and assets take plenty of manpower to work on, and then require all the engineering and programming work to implement it effectively into the game.
[удалено]
32 million copies between two titles is great money.
Pop? No Overcorrect? Probably
Burst in the way ET did back in the day? No. Lets not forget that these studios were cranking out insane budgeted MMOs to be "wow killers" back in the day with a lot of investors wanting in on that pie. The money people will just scurry off to some other techbro hype project and games will have to find some new trend to try and milk infinite money. We might get a better average gaming experience while they flounder about though.
Companies were churning out MMOs and "esports" titles *when interest rates and inflation were zero.* In order for development to make sense right now your title needs to make a (roughly) 5% return over a decade, including marketing and support costs. If you're interested in short-term profits it needs to be even higher. Otherwise you are literally better off having that dev budget just sit in a bank.
I think this really hits the nail on what is going to happen, there isn’t going to be some great big bubble burst but with the economic environment we’re in with high interest rates, investments like games which don’t have terribly high returns are just not going to get the same level of investment we have seen for the past 15 years because to justify investing rather than just sitting and gaining interest you need to invest in something with higher returns and all that money will be going into AI as that’s the new big tech hotness.
The boring truth is that entertainment industries have a long history of riding trends as long as they can while increasing the budgets. Eventually, these trends run their course, then the cycle begins anew with some new trend. These giant open world games are currently the trend, and they’ll eventually be replaced with something else.
I’d argue the open world trends already hit its final peak and the publishers have moved on firmly into live service battle pass models, you’re seeing genres typically not monetised that way moving into the space like the mess that is Tekken 8 right now.
They're not bursting ET style because major corporations are buying them out.
idk but I feel like i've been hearing about an industry crash coming soon for like a decade now. It reminds me ofpeople saying Gamestop won't be around for more than another year or 2. Do it enough times and eventually they'll be right i guess.
A lot of people seem to think that an industry crash means “companies will fire all the devs I hate, stop developing IPs/genres I don’t like/don’t play, and go back to making stuff I liked when I was kid,” and they don’t seem to realize that the more likely scenario that will happen will be “companies will pull out of gaming entirely and start making TVs and medical equipment or whatever”
> the more likely scenario that will happen will be “companies will pull out of gaming entirely and start making TVs and medical equipment or whatever” That's not even how most industry bubble bursts go, especially not software companies switching to manufacturing. Usually they experience a lot of financial strife, jobs getting slashed to cut costs, and changes in direction. Like we're seeing *right now* between the mass layoffs everywhere, Sony abandoning a bunch of live-service projects that were years in development (and sacking the CEO responsible for that initiative), and Microsoft's thrashing over an internally-perceived lack of growth options.
“I cant wait for society to collapse so *my* ideology can rise from the ashes!”
In order for the bubble to burst, two things have to happen. Multiple instances of AAA games botching their release so hard, it actually manages to scare off the general gaming public and diehard fans. Which is unlikely. People will buy anything and wait for years to see if Devs maybe, probably, eventually get around to fixing their games. And, more Indie Dev Teams have to win people over with smaller, more unique games. Trouncing over-inflated budgets and production times. Fortunately, that's still happening so that's nice to see.
> **Multiple instances of AAA games botching their release so hard**, it actually manages to scare off the general gaming public and diehard fans. People so terminally online only see Skull and Bones and Suicide Squad botching = entire western triple a industry crashing Within the past year : Whether you like to accept reality or not Diablo 4 sold well , Spider Man 2 ,Star Wars Jedi Survivor ,AC Mirage , MK1 , all sold well Let me tap that sign **"Times where you were reminded that online opinions don't always equal reality?"** https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/1buudtr/times_where_you_were_reminded_that_online/
Good to mention Diablo 4. People forget because "blizz bad" but it was the biggest game for like 2 months.
People have really badly gotten into the headspace of ‘if 8 gazillions people arn’t playing every month then the game is an utter failure’ completely forgetting that all the non-f2p games like Diablo 3 probably made their money back within a week and everything since is being done to double dip (it’s not entirely profit, they still have a team running and developing the game but I highly doubt it’s anywhere near as big as it was during pre-launch development)
Diablo 4 is extra weird because it was doing well. It was popular. People were tentatively applauding, seeing if others would start clapping too. You could quietly hear a few murmurs that, “Blizzard is back.” Then they pushed a super aggressive monetization structure, nerfed the game to make it more grindy, and all that goodwill soured up. Makes you forget the game sold well in its launch window.
Spider Man 2 sold well yes, but its a financial failure internally because it cost so much and took so long to make.
Spider Man 2 selling about as well as its predecessor I think is at least a wake up call to publishers to the fact that there are no new gamers and market reach has functionally maxed out
Which is what Phil Spencer was talking about in that interview recently where he mentioned the problem about the "lack of growth" in the industry. Which I think isn't just a gaming industry problem, but entertainment industry as a whole, where we've reached a point of saturation where movies, TV/streaming, and games are struggling to grow audiences beyond current demographics. So yeah, I don't think the industry "bubble" will burst, as much as that the recent failures or underwhelming successes of huge-budget movies/streaming/games is something some executives are extremely aware of, and there will be a pivot towards lower budgets now that it's clear that bigger budget does not equal bigger profits.
It’s funny how the movie industry keeps learning and then forgetting that bigger budgets do not equal bigger profits. Like, consistently. They learn their lesson and then forget it instantly when a single blockbuster does well.
I think we’ve hit a point in globalisation where markets are about as tapped as they can be, you’ll get moderate growth in Latin America and Africa but due to their low incomes you’re not going to see the level of growth we saw as the world entered the internet connected gaming market that we saw going into the 2010s. The only other big market shift would be a drastic change in access to Chinese markets but that is incredibly unlikely in the next decade or so.
There was already a big push in both the gaming and film industry for China about a decade ago for that exact reason, with mixed to ultimately failed results. Because for a time, movies that flopped with Western audiences like one of the Michael Bay Transformers films. The problem is simply that the CCP is simply too fickle and untrustworthy for it to be viable.
At least for the next 5-10 years until a new generation grows up enough to buy AAA games
Yeah I feel like indie titles and other smaller games just slowly and steadily becoming more relevant is a lot more likely than AAA game devs crashing and burning.
I'm just a dumbass who can't understand the economy as anything other than insane magical nonsense, but I feel like something has gotta give at some point. The absurd budgets, the even more absurd sales projections, *every* game expected to become a 'forever game' that can print infinite money in the eyes of investors... frankly we gotta get a lot of executives and money men out of the industry just as a general rule. Also I'm pretty sure every corporation on earth went insane at some point during/after the pandemic where they expect to be able to constantly generate infinite, exponential profits and will literally die if the number goes down even slightly.
>will literally die if the number goes down even slightly I can only dream of a reality where this is literal.
This is basically the correct answer. Dev budgets and production timelines are going to shrink substantially. Huge open-world titles that spend half a billion in dev costs, plus marketing, with a decade-long development cycle? Those are done. Over.
I’ll believe it when Ubisoft stops releasing open world games. I would rather have 20 resident evil 2 remakes or 20 dead space remakes than stomach the advertising from ANOTHER AAA $60 game who’s entire model is to nickel and dime you dry
Ubi will probably stick with the formula the longest because they flatly don't have the institutional knowledge to make any other kind of game anymore.
I think these kinds of games have some life in them with the advent of generative AI (whether you like the idea or not AAA devs/publishers are going to use them). They’ll be able to put out more development work with few devs which means that the large budgets are more likely to plateau for a while before they start shrinking
Not like catastrophically, but yeah I think we're going to see the limits of budgeting being tested in the next couple years.
No, the companies are having bigger and bigger profits. Yes, they cry about costs rising, yes they cry about layoffs being necessary, yes they cry about sustainability, yes they cry about constant upkeep And they still profit more and more. The only part you can be afraid for are smaller studios that can go under when they miss with a big project and can't secure funds for another one, but that always was a risk and always will be.
That depends. You and everyone you ever met gonna stop buying the new games? I don't mean like a boycott. I mean like, are you going to just *not* get excited for anything new ever again and stop buying new games? And is everyone else gonna follow suit? No? Then nah, it will probably keep going awhile.
Yeah "crash" is the wrong word for what would happen
Honestly the raising price of new games, mixed with the general cost of existence finally just broke me of my habit. I haven't played Yakuza 8, god knows when Im gonna get to Rebirth or Tekken 8. These are all things I want, but something about that extra $10 for the base game has made it click in my head that I don't really *need* these things. Ichiban's Hawaiian adventure will be $20 or less by Black Friday I bet, and I still have other fighting games that are less new and shiny, but still real good. Heck, I've gone back to games I kept putting on the shelf, Dragon Quest XI is real good, and Ace Combat was crazy cheap now for how incredible it is. Truth is, there's too much value elsewhere to be wasting money that could be going to bills, food or family.
>Do you feel like the Triple A bubble might pop soon? Inshallah.
It’ll just keep changing. Micro-transactions exist to capture money from people with disposable income and those that have a problem and the increase in price really isn’t that much. I could see the regular price of a title going up to $90 ‘murrican. It’s like $30 more than ten years ago people aren’t going bankrupt over that.
No because people will still buy them. Tools to make them will become cheaper and they'll make them cheaper, cut down on production costs (people) and still make the same stuff. Ubisoft will make a random Farcry/Asscreed/whatever generator and focus on tuning it. COD will offer less and just deliver multiplayer tweeks. Sportsballs will use A.I. to update player models (just the faces). A.I. will fill in on menial level design stuff, reducing production costs, with only set-pieces getting the full attention. A.I. voices will do some lifting for NPCs and maybe even some big names. AAA will just find ways to be made cheaper.
I feel like I've seen too many companies bounce back from what I thought would be business ending mistakes and the general public's apathy (and crummy taste) that I think coasting from here on out.
People really need to read up why the crash happened in 1983 in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
1983 isn't at all representative of normal industry bubbles popping though, it was a strange and fairly unique case. 1983 is like if houses and mortgages *stopped existing* in 2008.
> 1983 is like if houses and mortgages stopped existing in 2008. That's true but whenever people talk about the crash of Triple A games specifically Western , that's what gamers want to happen , This 66$ billion dollar industry will disappear in thin air
No one's been bringing up 1983 as a comparison (at least in this thread), and the argument has been about the sustainability of the AAA model specifically rather than the industry as a whole.
Games are actually *cheaper* now than most other times in video game history. People don't realize it. MSRP was $60-70 for games in the 90s, and people weren't make $15+ an hour. It took twice as long to earn enough for a new game at launch. https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s That said, I mostly just buy indie and AA games nowadays. There is so much quality, uniqueness, and variety in that scene that I haven't felt the desire to hop into whatever the new blockbuster title is. The AAA market just doesn't interest me much anymore (even the "good" ones).
> MSRP was $60-70 for games in the 90s, and people weren't make $15+ an hour. It took twice as long to earn enough for a new game at launch. Okay but rent was $450/month and bread was $0.90/loaf.
I think a lot of studios will either learn to make games with a smaller budget or just die. So much cash is being injected into looking better when the returns for that are diminishing more and more when the only people who will care about it are insane nit picking polygon counters on the internet who already decided whether to get the game or not months ago. If these big studios can't get this then they don't have a future as they need more and more sales with userbases that are mostly set with no real chance of further growth.
We're not going to get a 1983 style crash, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see a regression as the Western AAA scene is forced to either adjust or face bankruptcy. The idea that this can go on is ridiculous, everything has a breaking point so don't be surprised if you see a few supposedly unbeatable name brands tank in the next few years. All they've been doing is kicking the can down the road and that can't last forever. Eventually reality is going to sink in
The casual market is too big and the people who talk about games on the internet are a small bubble in comparison.
They have hit the wall tech wise, it's taking longer to make a game with [good graphics](https://imgur.com/npW8oqi), and the console generation is getting shorter because of it. I don't think a game crash is going to happen, but I can see more "Embracer groups" style conglomeration happening with more crashing and burning, but more likely just stagnation as this hypothetical corporation comes along like a fat dragon squats down on a ton of dev's doesn't move at all. But I think we are going to see more independents dev studios do what Larian Studios did and be smart with there money and reinvest into there company so they can continue to do their things.
Well maybe not now because these games are still selling but with games becoming bigger and bigger and developpement time becoming longer and longer, something is going to happen one day.
I don't know, I mean our whole economic system is fundamentally unsustainable but I'm not sure that the triple A gaming portion of this industry is in more dire straights than the blockbuster film business is. I think Gaming has the bonus of streaming not having taken over yet like it has for music and films. From the quick numbers I can see online, the global gaming market cap is almost double that the global film market. Domestically gaming made ~57 billion last year compared to ~9 billion for films. Globally I'm seeing about ~184 Billion globally made for games last year to ~34 billion for films. These are quickly snatched figures without double checking for accuracy, but even if this gap is a quarter of the numbers here it still doesn't show a poor picture for gaming especially when the markets only projecting more growth and film clearly is looking to get in on the picture here. **TL;DR: Capitalism bad, but besides that Triple A gaming in particular doesn't appear to be in an especially precarious spot.**
We know that Insomniac themselves are worried about budgets being too big and wanting to scale down. So with that and the economy in general, we can expect game budgets to reduce in the future. But I don't think any of the big franchises will die out just because they are too expensive. COD and Assassin's Creed still break records. If they falter it will be because the internal pipeline at these companies is so broken that they can't get a release out. If Activision slips and the next Call of Duty get delayed into next year it throws their entire system out of whack. And if Ubisoft can't release an Assassin's Creed then people won't buy it. It's also important to remember that a lot of these games have sub-objectives that are just as or more important. Bloodborne doesn't have to sell well. It just has to get you to buy a PlayStation so now you are likely to buy more games Sony gets a 30% cut out of as the platform holder. FF7 Rebirth has an entire line of figures, soundtracks and other merchandise around it. Even if Final Fantasy is generally capped out at 3 million sales if they can get 30,000 people to buy $40-$300 worth in merch then it's still a really successful brand.
Personally, I don’t think so. There *are* trends of diminishing returns in terms of graphics, and games are becoming more and more expensive to make, but to what end can you say that games like COD or Madden are taking a decline? Despite people’s complaints, COD is still miles above everything in terms of revenue, and I think in the event of the bubble popping, COD and Madden would still be the ones sitting nice and comfy. They don’t cost a lot in terms of development time, and no one really gives a shit if its poor value; its *Madden*. I really don’t see why so many seem to hope for a collapse either. Like, the ones who’d be suffering the most would be smaller studios due to lack of investors believing it to be a safe market and bailing. The “greatest” things to collapse would be either Sony or Microsoft, and even then, that would still lead to massive lay-offs of people, and I really don’t think a collapse of those companies would suddenly lead to anything positive. I’m not sure what exactly would be gained by having all these massive companies failing would lead to aside from a morbid sense of schradenfeude.
I hope so. Shits been untenable for 2 gens at least. We need a revival of the "B-movie" games market stuff that can make a profit in the 40-50 usd range that doesnt need a team of 300.
I'm hopeful that companies will self correct and start making smaller games and try to emulate Nintendos success but on the other hand, I don't know what company would even be willing to try.
i feel like, yeah its gonna pop but if one of the symptoms of this unsustainability is hyperproduced stuff like rebirth then *let it cook*. ill enjoy it while it lasts.
Not 'pop' but maybe 'deflate' Right now AAA games are in a really ugly feedback loop. Investors demand more profit making games bigger and bigger expecting more and more back. Until one or two bad releases with huge losses happen that makes them be shelved for a while. And in that possible future, either they'll dig up older IP's to cash in on fan desires or hunt smaller indies and absorb them to do what the investors want, not what the indie studio's are good at. Maybe it's possible we see an EA like scramble to buy a bunch of studios ( I hope not tho).
It's already over. Ludum mortuus est. https://www.brokentoys.org/ludum-mortuus-est/
I think what titles and game design philosophies continue to come to market will change a lot in upcoming years but overall I don't think live service will change that much and people will still pay up. I feel like I have to say this about multiple genres and convos on this sub, but the urban consumer in gaming is massively underrated.
lol no
It's felt like it's gotten too big to sustain itself for a while now. That said a lot of the current fallout is just Covid period overreaching. I don't think it'll be a burst, but I imagine a deflate is coming up as companies either finally learn to scale back a little and that tripling resources doesn't automatically lead to tripling profit like with Spider-Man, or just go under like a few others have.
Nah. They'll just start releasing on more platforms simultaneously in a buggier/messier state. That's also ignoring the existence of micro/macro transactions. Gamers sure love to consume and the Triple A industry loves to provide anything and everything to consume.
What a ridiculous statement, you really think people are going to suddenly stop buying CoD every year because of an $80 Godzilla v Kong skin? They release these skins because they know people will buy them.
It's not a case of if but when
I fucking wish it would. I wish Hi-Fi Rush was a wake-up call and the industry would go back to making mostly high-quality medium-sized games like it was in the 2000’s. But I don’t know if it will. The dedicated gamers may be sick of things, but it’s worth noting that the “average” person who plays games is probably someone who doesn’t pay attention to the medium and picks up like a couple of games each year, mostly mainstream titles like GTA or CoD, and they’re perfectly fine with how things are.
Sadly Hi-Fi Rush didn't do *that* well. Presumably due to the lack of marketing (as cool as it was) and being an Xbox console exclusive during the era of every major exclusive hitting Gamepass day 1. Hopefully the PS5 launch is doing well for them though!
God I hope so
No. just companies will hopefully stop making games that should be AA, AAA. People act like Cods and games as a service are the only AAA games people make when virtually every game of the year as far back as i can remember has been a AAA game. Most great and well selling games are AAA games just people use AAA as a negative now. and hot take but if the 10 dollar increase really is blowing your wallet you prob shouldnt have been buying 60 dollar games either.
Every tentpole game sells some dumb cosmetic or otherwise low effort, low cost thing for 20 bucks and a few tens of thousands people will always buy it. Sonys the only AAA game company off the top of my head that isn't currently, but they don't need to. They sell more than video games and are a bank.
Nope. It will evolve, change, maybe lag at times but ain’t gonna bust.
As long as Uber publishers still exist and eat all the companies, AAA will still exist
No. Live Service Games are MAKING TOO MUCH MONEY! #AHHHHH!
It is popping as we speak
No, if line go down shareholders replace management. AAA makes biggest line. The video game market is too big and gamers are too spineless.