Free games like fortnite

Also, with the speed that games have been coming out the last 20 years, there’s always something on sale to play

Also competition, and I'm not actually talking about indie games, although that's helping. Competition with older games. Why in the world would someone pay $80 for a mediocre new game when they could replay a classic hit that they haven't played in few years? When was the last time you played the witcher 3, or the mass effect trilogy? Would you rather replay one of those, or pay $80 for the new assassin's creed?

Studies conducted at my desk and on my couch have also found a downward trend in video game quality.

I'm a pretty conservative game purchaser. I've never paid over $40 for a game (including games on sale) because there are so, so many amazing indie games on Steam that charge so little for many hours of fun.

When I see a AAA game come out, I know it's going to be profit-driven, uninspired, and rushed because it exists solely for the purpose of making money for a large corp. For that reason (among others), I avoid them altogether because I know my dollar goes way further going toward an independent developer who makes games for passion (and only sometimes for money). The passion always shines through in their work, unlike passionless AAA games.

That and broad, massive economic collapse in basically every other sector, at least in the US.

Can't play vidya gaem if hev no food starve.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/adp-jobs-report-june-2025.html

Oops.

Labor market (# of actual jobs) is now actually net contracting, shrinking.

Expected: +100k jobs

Reality: -33k jobs

Firings / Layoffs > Hiring.

Also the population grows, so uh, it actually has to be something like +200k to +250k to remain steady in terms of working age people vs jobs.

Sure, there are lots of 'job openings', but they're all fake ghost job bullshit that never actually hire anyone.

And they don't pay enough to bother doing them, and they have insane requirements that make no sense.

Great Depression 2.0 Gaming!

(The housing market is also collapsing if any readers haven't been paying attention.

My semi-educated guess is about a 55% drop by 24 months from now, compared to roughly '23-'24 highs.

Hope your boomer parents didn't buy in the last 5 years rofl!)

Yup, no way to figured this one out.

Don't forget all the online requirements with accounts even if you want to play single player, and constant server issues on launch that seem to happen with every game now because none of them allow community servers anymore.

Also, the games market was brought up a lot by the global pandemic and had to come down eventually.

and the microtransactions inside them. and the underwhelming day 1 dlc.

And when so much of gaming is shit.

+1 to literally everything.

Fuck brand recognition or loyalty, fuck development talent, fuck community building, fuck long-term strategy, we can realize a gain right now by sowing half the planet with salt, so that’s what we’re going to do. So what is there for people to buy?

I wish this would fit on a bumpersticker.

That noise you heard last week was Xbox’s death rattle. One out of the three mainstream home console platforms is an outright stupid idea to buy now.

And wasn't Sony the big risk of bowing out before? And then we got the Switch 2... It's remarkable that Microsoft somehow made Xbox the least likely to survive.

the Playstation 2 launched at $299 USD.

Not disagreeing with you, but with inflation that's about $558 as of this comment.

because of our kleptogeriocracy

Because of our what?

Ends meat*

I bet you money right now that the next Xbox will be the best selling Xbox ever.

Related news is the authors of Dave the Diver having to explain that they are in no way an independent studio

To save people from looking it up: The studio that made Dave the Diver is traded on the Tokyo stock exchange, has 7,000 employees, and brings in $2 billion USD per year.

Exactly, picked up RDR2, AC Odyssey and Bloodborne for about $45 recently. This constant pressure to move people toward a subscription model only works if there's trust. Too much bullshit = shrinking sales

I picked up three games for mad cheap that I've pirated for a long time. I'll give you money devs, if the price is right.

I'm a bit younger, though not a lot.

I all but stopped buying games because Epic and Amazon give so many away for free.

I've got like 500 free games that I haven't even installed once.

The only time I'd actually pay for a game is if it's a special one I want, and they've gotten few and far between.

This is why publisher's are trying to derail "Stop Killing Games."

When they are done with a a game the don't WANT you to continue to play and enjoy it....

...they want you to forget about it and buy the next product they have and financially engage with the microtransaction ecosystem

Saw this stupid fucking headline on some magazine a coworker left behind today.

How dare they? They should be starving themselves so they can play great art such as Concord.

its half assed, like a something switch console game of nintendo has been doing since 2020, which turned me away from the console altogether, i stuck to pc , but not high end games. my bro bought a brand new switch when they were selling new variations but he has barely played since.

for barely 40 USD of content

This is completely relative, and different for everyone... But I have a hard time backing up statements like this given that it costs nearly $20 to go to the movie theater and watch a 90 minute movie. If I can get like 40-150 hours from a $70 game... That's really not that bad in terms of value. In my opinion.

I think we have been a little bit spoiled (that isn't to say that video game publishers aren't greedy corporations that over charge to increase their profit margins, of course they do and fuck them for it).