Then who is? Millions of people are gonna buy the new Call of Duty on release. Who are they?

As a old member of Gen Z, i can definitely say the prices aren't helping. A lot of people in my age group just don't work from what i've seen, so with 70$ and sometime 80$ games they aren't going to be buying many. On top of that, and this may just be the people i've exposed myself too, but most of them don't want longer experiences. They'd rather plop down with something like FF14 or Mario Kart and play that over and over and over again. That's not a bad thing, but i definitely think it's not helping. And like i said, this might just be the people i expose myself too.

I keep buying games on sale but I'm just not playing much of my backlog.

I keep going back to a few strategy games and putting even more hours in. The vast majority of my gaming in the past 2 years has been between 3 games.

Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought - Janky, and I have problems with how HE shells are handled in the main mod I play, keep booting it up. 850 hours played.

Star Wars Empire At War. So many amazing mods.

Wartales - game gets stale after a while but it's good enough that after a bit I go back to it to put even more hours in.

I have so many amazing games that when I do play them I love them, but I keep going back to these strategy games. Oh, and a bunch of time on Need For Speed Heat.

I've been spending a bunch on other games, but I'm just not playing them.

even milleneals arnt paying it, like myself. not paying for things like switch, or swsh, because they decided to enshittify the console or games, and gouge prices.

The economy is terrible with both hardware and software becoming more expensive, theres a good selection of free and long-lifetime games (be it live-service or just very long and replayable), and a lot of the newer paid games have become worse.

I'd be significantly more suprised if this wasn't the case.

The seven seas are way more friendly

oh they are talking about AAA and AAAA games, so then they are not buying/playing fewer games but moved to the indie scene.

Buy Indies. Fuck AAA

https://lemmy.world/c/foss_gaming

Aren't we all, fam?

I hope they make it abnormal to own a $3000 gaming pc in middleschool again.

Unsurprisingly. Games have gotten way more expensive and a lot more soulless. Gems like BG3 are a rarity. The recently released "enhanced" edition of Neverwinter Nights 2 is an awful cashgrab and an disappointment after the successful enhanced edition of the first one so I'm just playing through the original release with an unofficial patch again...The only game I'm looking forward to this year is the new Anno and given that Ubisoft has its fingers in it I'm still wary about that one.

Live service on console was obvious on the way for every genre back on the 360/PS3 era with FIFA ultimate team and publishers also having that period of time when they were trying to kill used games with that single account multiplayer access code

Then it became super obvious because of PC from the super success of TF2 hats and eventually CSGO skins by like 2015. Trying to compete with WoW was an ocean of dead video game studios. Fortnite perfected live service on consoles and CoD adapted and went just as wild with it

Single player games, my hot take is Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Assassin's Creed killed AAA single player narrative games by succeeding so well to making future games mediocre. Mass Effect had interesting alien species dynamics but never took them with much of any depth. They were Star Wars movies rather than the wild Star Wars EU. Uncharted was a hyper popular Hollywood blockbuster where the emotional highlight being the beginning of Uncharted 4 with Nate and Elena being a cute couple.

Assassin's Creed stories kept going deeper and deeper into name dropping famous figures/mythology that it became parody. Historical clout chasing wrapped together in a nonsense overarching plot that should have had some satisfying ending back in 2012 but instead is effectively spin-offs the series

So Mass Effect hints at interesting politics but plays things safe and gives you none but Hollywood space opera in video games with solid animations and facial animations were fresh in the 360 era. Uncharted was even more extreme in that regards than Mass Effect where there was still novelty in Hollywood mimicry with even better graphics and even more scripted for explosive set pieces. Assassin's Creed and eventually Far Cry and Watch Dogs are bottom feeders. Chase trends, name drop - shotgun approach for trailer fodder. They are sadly the standards of AAA single player narrative

Also live service single player games are competitive. Stories are just as shallow but frequent in release and graphics at a level good enough now. Talking like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves

What did James Gunn say about superhero movies? It’s not that the trend is over and people hate these games. It’s that they hate BAD games.

Plus, I’ve been buying plenty of indies that likely don’t feed into these statistics. It’s not even a hipster thing now - a lot of streamers just like playing the newest indie coop like REPO, Peak, Phasmophobia or Lethal Company.