It really isn’t that bad,just seems that way because of how much mid 30s man baby’s like the act man want to cry about it.

It was the horse armor. The older gaming generation laughed about it then but I saw it differently. When Capcom decided to charge for the multiplayer add-on for RE5 I started to step away from console gaming.

Yeah, as far as big AAA titles go, we're seeing very little innovation, and stuff is usually as good or worse than what came before. The upside, is that instead of competing through creative ideas, devs are trying to out-muscle each other, making their games larger and larger to satisfy player expectation. In this enironment, the name of the game is waiting. Companies know that most of the revenue is going to come from day 1 releases, so they try to put their games oyt as fast as possible, in order to drain wallets before competitors get to them. This sucks because games constantly release broken, but all those brainlets who buy games on day 1 are going to pressure the devs to fix the game they paid for. So, wait a few years, (the price will probably drop as the market will become saturated with more games), and the devs will eventually fix the game and probably add DLC. Today, the choices are buy a $60 unfinished broken game on release or buy a $40 functional game with dlc much later. Imo, not a tough decision. I think that if players start waiting, companies are going to notice day 1 revenue drop, and start making functional games again with full content on release. I will also say that ganes are now more accessible than ever. They're cheaper due to inflation, and a lot of the big boy mutliplayer shooters: Splitgate, Halo, Fortnite, Apex, Density are going f2p. In the past, if you wanted to play all these games, it'd come with a $300 price tag, but today, it's free. Sure, the quality isn't as great for most, but come on, you really can't beat free, and one of these is bound to be decent at least. If you want more innovation, just migrate to indie titles. I'm not sure how the ganes industry is the worst it's ever been when Holow Knight, Celeste, Sundred, Dead Cells, Cuphead, and Ori Will o the Wisps all release within 3 years of each other not that long ago. These are big boi platformers; quality titles with wildly different structures and ideas that they alnost can't be compared.

Yeah, it feels like a long time since a game was released at full capacity. It's like they are all premature, and like the rest is coming as DLC

I don’t know, I can’t agree with this sentiment. Because, sure, there are a lot of terrible games, and the biggest titles tend to be rubbish, but we’re also at a point where smaller devs can enter the market with relative ease, and we’ve gotten a ton of really great games that would’ve never gotten greenlit by anyone aiming for mass appeal. And sure, many devs use updates as an excuse to release a buggy mess, but many devs also use it to legitimately add loads of great new content. Almost all of my favorite games are relatively newer, and I can’t really say the market is at an all time low. So, I don’t think the games industry is at its worst; I think it’s at a point where the consumer just has to be smart about what they buy. It’s not as easy to look at a game and assume it’ll be good, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t amazing games around. Admittedly, this forum consists of mostly shooty shooty pew pew players, and the shooty shooty pew pew market in particular [i]does[/i] seem rather rubbish at the moment. I can think of Remnant, and Risk of Rain 2, but other than that, no other recent shooty shooty pre pew games come to mind that are good. Not until Splatoon 3 comes out, anyway.

Disagree. Light is simply the world's best disinfectant. NONE of what is going on right now is new. We're just more aware of it because there is greater transparency because of media...and we're at a societal tipping point. People are frustrated and angry at institutions of business and government because they are seeing...increasingly...that they don't serve the needs of the average person. People are also less and less willing to tolerate the abuses that unaccountable power used to take as its RIGHT. Was having this conversation with a colleague a couple of weeks ago. I work in a profession where----just a generation ago----department heads would ROUTINELY get away with throwing on-the-job tantrums that would make a toddler red-faced with embarrassment. Shouting. Swearing. Objects being thrown.... ...and nothing was done about. it. Acting out like that was just seen as one of the perks of their power....and underlings just needed to shut up and deal with it....or go work somewhere else. The culture has changed....because the society has changed....but OH BOY, did they NOT give up that power willingly...easily...or QUIETLY. But that pendulum also swings both ways. Gamers have become entitled....as society has become entitled. Gamers want all the BENEFITS of fast internet. Cheap mass storage...and the ability to continuously update games. But they don't want any of the problems that go with it....and they don't want PAY for it. Which is just an unreasonable expectation....and when unreasonable expectations (predictably) fail to get met....people get mad. The irony is that this is the Golden Age of Gaming. I played through the remastered-for-PS5 version of Uncharted 4 this weekend. If you had told me 20 years ago that I'd be playing something like this IN MY HOME? I'd have looked at you like you had lost your mind. But when you're always focusing on what is not there, and what expectations are NOT being met.....you blind yourself to what is...and how good it all really is right now.

Honestly, at this point, I feel like we are entering a "new stage of the console war". And I feel like I am more and more interested in just letting the ships sail, sell all my consoles and start reading/writing books only.

I’m hoping the kotor remake is good!

For real this. The fact indie games/devs have been having better releases than these multi million dollar companies is beyond discouraging.

Too many in on the act these days but it's only the big boys that are delivering what the masses want.. I guess that's why they are the big boys at the end of the day.

Btw cyberpunk is still broken

I 1000000% agree. So many games that I was excited to get and play with my friends turned out crappy. Hopefully elden ring is good

[i]I also worry about Gaming heading in a direction that I have no desire to follow. I worried about this back when the Wii came out, and became so mainstream that Microsoft and Sony started putting mediocre shovel-wear crap on their consoles to capitalise on the Wii’s mainstream popularity. I worried about it when ‘they’ declared that single player games were dead. I worry about it when ‘Games as a Service’ became the holy grail that everyone started chasing. I worry about it every time there’s a E3, or a Game Awards show, and a bunch of new games are announced, and they all look the same. And I especially worry about it now that every time I see the words NFT, or blockchain, or crypto.[/i]

This is why I don't waste my time and money on new games. Seriously, stop paying up expecting things to be good because they never are If you actually spend time and money on any of the new games like vanguard, bf 2042, halo infinite, D2, I'm sorry but that just means you don't care about your time and money

I remember when games would be in a complete package and no DLC's. $50 and we get so much fun out of it. Now, I've got to set aside a good $150 for a triple a game.

Yep and it’s getting more expensive every year for less fun

Honestly I really wish Games took time to release and studios actually cared about their projects. I mean have you heard the story of Halo 2, where Bungie only had 10 months to create the game! That’s dedication

This whole trend of releasing unfinished and/or broken games seemed to have started with the release of Destiny.

I tend to agree. Why is this? a few hypotheses: 1. The best ideas are already taken/there’s less room for ingenuity 2. Limitations of technology 3. Going with “what works” = guaranteed sales I’m thinking it’s mostly 3. Edit: also, *its