Is modern gaming sustainable? Where is the industry headed?

[zeppelin03 | 314]

10 minutes ago, phart010 said:

I think that once the franchises are established, they start getting franchised out.. I think Nintendo will start doing less game development and instead just start managing license agreements with developers. The developers will make the games, with limited directional guidance from Nintendo and Nintendo will collect royalties for the use of their intellectual properties.

Nintendo has already realized that their real value is in their diverse set of franchises/characters, not necessarily the video games themselves. They are expanding their business to include Super Nintendo World and movies (Pokémon, Super Mario).

We’ve already got a ton of games using Nintendo characters that were not developed by Nintendo.. What I’m hoping for is them opening up to Indie developers using their ip’s (we already have Cadence of Hyrule).. then we can probably finally get some legitimacy and polish on all these Nintendo fan games that people have been making.

I would love to see Nintendo expand the use of other devs.  Is there any reason an indie team couldn't make a 2D Metroid or Pilotwings?  If Nintendo isn't willing to make these games let someone else do it for them and sell them at a budget friendly price.

On Wii U they brought $40 games to console.  Now it's seems they are back to will it sell at $60? No? Don't make it.  Give me a good 2D Mario I can finish in a couple hours for $30. There has to be an audience for this stuff.

[Tanooki | 4,930]

If the quality control and strictness to make sure something doesn't end up sucking that stand now is forced upon whoever they franchise the work out on some IP is upheld I hope for the best they do go that route.  Considering both that they can only do so much at a time that some IP just go to sleep for long times or just die, and the fact their original creative minds are approaching retirement too it seems like a solid direction to shoot for.  So far the track record was spotty early on with some real dumpster fires like Starfox on DS with that atrocious fuel limit and touch only play, but then you have the stunning work with F-Zero GX and Metroid Prime (trilogy) as well.  It would be quite nice to see more Kid Icarus, F-Zero and STarfox to return, and other goodies that go neglected if they can trust another entity to handle it with just 1-2 japanese employees working as an overseer.

[asmikace | 68]

One trend I dont find sustainable is increasing download data required in games included physical copies and update patches. Big AAA are getting 50GB or even 100GB while internet speeds are still stagnant in the world especially parts of the US.

[fox | 1,665]

On 7/11/2020 at 4:20 PM, Andy_Bogomil said:

Story driven single player games I think are gonna really take a hit here moving forward into the next generation. I believe The Last of Us or even BoTW could be a dying breed as the resources to make these games will begin to outweigh the financial gain with this coming generation or they'll be made in a similar formula to GTA where the main story is really a very small fraction of the overall experience.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2020/07/17/the-last-of-us-part-2-sales-npd-june/
The Last of Us Part II Tops NPD as US’ Best-Selling Game in June; 3rd Top-Selling Game This Year

[atlasind | 18]

it does feel like a second crunch is coming. The AAA stuff (along with movies and TV) is getting too stale and repetitive probably because they can't extract anymore blood from the stone by working on the graphics pipeline. From the outside it feels like the big studios ditched a lot of the creative design talent. We don't seem to get Will Wrights or Sid Meiers anymore. The indie scene is blossoming but it's difficult to navigate.

Then again, with ubiquitous cloud infrastructure becoming super cheap, we may see some revolutionary network based games that don't fall into traditional multiplayer genres but still give a rich, full experience. 

[koifish | 555]

On 7/11/2020 at 9:11 PM, zeppelin03 said:

Nintendo seems to be good about telling you about a game when it's far along. The new Paper Mario is a good example. We know BOTW2 is happening but they have set no expectations for release.  I wonder if other companies either waited to announce a game or didn't bother setting release windows would it help.

I think that Nintendo is also less pressured by the push to release a big game. There are several factors for this, the first of which is that Nintendo makes their own hardware and software. They can control additional elements that 3rd parties, even ones closely aligned with other companies, cannot match. Likewise, Nintendo also has a very privileged status in the gaming world, in the form of being their own "big fish in a small pond." Nintendo is its own ecosystem; Even though other developers or companies are bigger, Nintendo makes software exclusively Nintendo, and they also use their privileged status as both creator and owner of the platform to make sure that their games stand head and shoulders above the other games on the system. This has been a tradition of Nintendo's operation for decades; They have, with few exceptions, given themselves a privileged status and positioned 3rd parties as second-class citizens in the Nintendo ecosystem, through giving them less information on development methods, less resources for development, pricing out of cartridges, etc. Through this and through careful brand cultivation, they also maintain a strong reputation and a loyal following, which continues to buy their hardware, software, and merchandise. There is also another privilege enjoyed by nintendo, that is, that they control their pricing and distribution. For many stores or digital platforms, the host takes a cut of sales, around 30% usually. This is true for big box retailers as well as for steam and the console platforms (I believe epic games store breaks the mold here and does a dramatically lower percentage, as incentive to developers to release there). Nintendo, assuming they move product digitally, pays no dues to anyone, whereas the same is not true for 3rd parties.

 

Another, bigger element, is time. Many big 3rd party devs these days are publicly traded and depend on making their shareholders happy to continue making things go. Shareholders don't care about the subjective concept of game quality, they only care about hard numbers. Telling your shareholders that your big money project is going to take another year likely means a bad turnout for stocks and an unhappy investor base. Nintendo, in this space, enjoys two advantages. The first is that they have a strong record of good financial returns. Even during the desperation of the Wii U period, they were demonstrating sustainability and had a history to fall back on to mitigate investor distrust. Furthermore, Nintendo enjoys the fortune of being in a more consumer-friendly country. Japan and the United States are both investor-based corporate economies, but the United States investment world has a bigger reputation for being cutthroat, and for being investor-focused, whereas Japanese companies and investors tend to focus more on the consumer value created. I admit this is based more on what I have been told by potentially biased individuals, but the expression I have heard from Japanese is that "We invest in American companies, because they care most about their shareholders. We buy Japanese products, however, because those companies care most about their customers." This to me, taken at face value, seems to indicate that a company like Nintendo would be less pressured than, say, Naughty Dog, to release games on time and before critical market periods (holidays for example). Valve is another company that benefits from time, as they are essentially profiting infinitely off of other people's work, and thus do not have to make anything at all if they don't wish to do so. This is a dream come true, and is all but impossible for other developers. Thus, they must grind to get their gruel and cannot afford to sit in place.

Another aspect of time is in Nintendo's products and their tendency to have legs in the market. Many games come out and sell the majority of their units in the first week, with dramatic dropoffs in the following weeks. Nintendo (and actually, some Indies more recently) games tend to be "slow burners" that come out and continue to sell for long periods. This is aided further by Nintendo's seemingly endless hold on their game's pricing; Surely you too have seen that Nintendo games tend to stay at full price for months or years after they release; By comparison, even games like Death Stranding or Last of Us 2 were being sold at reduced value within weeks or months of release.

 

I will freely admit that this is not based on research but on my own experiences, and that I have no reason to suggest I am an authoritative source for these insights. That said, I feel this is a good set of observations to help explain why so many companies strain and struggle when others can afford an easier pace.

 

[koifish | 555]

On 7/12/2020 at 7:23 PM, CMR said:

This is how I feel.  I also tend to go after games that I can enjoy playing over and over.  That said, my backlog is also huge, and extends back to the PS2.  I'll probably skip the next generation entirely except for Nintendo.  My PS4 is a glorified DVD player at this point.

This, I bought a PS4 and sold it, and my switch is on the chopping block too. My PS3 exists for Netflix. This is funny though, as the target audience really is kids, I think, or at least, people without jobs. I laugh about it, just because no AAA company would ever listen to me, they'd go bankrupt!

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

On 7/18/2020 at 4:15 AM, fox said:

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2020/07/17/the-last-of-us-part-2-sales-npd-june/
The Last of Us Part II Tops NPD as US’ Best-Selling Game in June; 3rd Top-Selling Game This Year

I still wonder how successful the model will be moving forward as we see fewer and fewer of these single player games. The sales of this game will drop to nothing in the coming weeks where as online games can continue to sell dlc for months and years after the fact.  Still a success no doubt but with the popularity of the first not a huge surprise. I think remakes and sequels will continue to dominate the single player scene.

I also bet BoTW2 will be the best selling Switch game when released but my initial thoughts still stand. Think of the difference in release between OoT and Majora's mask (18 months) compared to BOTW and BoTW2 and BOTW was significantly delayed for the Switch. 

[koifish | 555]

4 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

I still wonder how successful the model will be moving forward as we see fewer and fewer of these single player games. The sales of this game will drop to nothing in the coming weeks where as online games can continue to sell dlc for months and years after the fact.  Still a success no doubt but with the popularity of the first not a huge surprise. I think remakes and sequels will continue to dominate the single player scene.

I also bet BoTW2 will be the best selling Switch game when released but my initial thoughts still stand. Think of the difference in release between OoT and Majora's mask (18 months) compared to BOTW and BoTW2 and BOTW was significantly delayed for the Switch. 

Not to mention they will likely involve the similar process of heavily recycled assets. The biggest change I would say from those two examples has to be complexity, and it can't be understated. There is a lot more going on in breath of the wild than in the 64 Zelda games. This is almost universal across the board for these games, the laundry lists get longer and the games get harder to finish. Even the infamous horse shrinkage in red dead 2 was likely a non-trivial task; Add another thousand things like that and any game will take that much effort.

[Gary Hobbesworth | 20]

I hope single player games don't become seen as obsolete by publishers, multiplayer games feel more like rentals to me, eventually their communities die and there's no one to play them with anymore.

[koifish | 555]

2 hours ago, Gary Hobbesworth said:

I hope single player games don't become seen as obsolete by publishers, multiplayer games feel more like rentals to me, eventually their communities die and there's no one to play them with anymore.

Or worse, they turn into steam library tombstones. This is a problem for more and more games going forward; the final fantasy crystal chronicles remake being online-only multiplayer is another example coming up. The gamecube original is still just as playable as it was in 2003, but the same won't be said of its remake once the playerbase dries up and the online services close down.

[Gary Hobbesworth | 20]

Yeah, there have already been some games I really enjoyed but have no interest in since they basically have a finite lifespan. Of course publishers don't care, since they'd rather have no one play their old games they never port than let people emulate them.

[koifish | 555]

3 hours ago, Gary Hobbesworth said:

Yeah, there have already been some games I really enjoyed but have no interest in since they basically have a finite lifespan. Of course publishers don't care, since they'd rather have no one play their old games they never port than let people emulate them.

Or better yet, be able to sell the remakes on new systems without any competition from the perfectly functional old game, as was seen already in the halo master chief collection.

[fox | 1,665]

13 hours ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

 The sales of this game will drop to nothing in the coming weeks where as online games can continue to sell dlc for months and years after the fact.

Weeks? You still have games from last year in the top 20: AC Oddessy, Jedi Fallen Order, and Ring Fit Adventure.  BotW and Persona 4 are still selling and those games came out years ago.  
 

We just had Paper Mario and Ghost of Tsushima, expect those to be big sellers too.  What are the biggest games people are looking forward to? Cyberpunk, Spider-man, BotW2, AC Ragnarok.

Single player games have legs.

[Gary Hobbesworth | 20]

17 hours ago, koifish said:

Or better yet, be able to sell the remakes on new systems without any competition from the perfectly functional old game, as was seen already in the halo master chief collection.

That makes sense. I've heard about a lot of popular Xbox 360 games that aren't playable on the Xbox One because the publishers released a port of it that's exactly the same, so you have to buy it again and start a new file all over again. Modern gaming seems to rely a lot on planned obsolescence.

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

16 hours ago, fox said:

Weeks? You still have games from last year in the top 20: AC Oddessy, Jedi Fallen Order, and Ring Fit Adventure.  BotW and Persona 4 are still selling and those games came out years ago.  
 

Their sales drop drastically within 2 to 4 weeks after release. I'm kinda surprised to see some of those games still on the top selling list but in a way that's what I'm saying. I feel like single player stuff is getting drawn out because the lack of selection or releases. I am also not sure how online games play into those list as a lot are free. The topic is ambiguous so I am a little all over the place here. I don't think single player games are gonna completely disappear just begin to be dominated by online games or games like Minecraft which are always evolving and being added to from a base game. 

 

I am still looking forward to a lot of single player stuff like BoTW2 and Prime 4 if that ever sees the light of day. New GoT looks good for PS too. 

 

[Gary Hobbesworth | 20]

I'm guessing those outliers are because of lots of hype online (people still won't shut up about The Last of Us 2) or streamers playing them.

[fox | 1,665]

On 7/21/2020 at 6:06 PM, Andy_Bogomil said:

Their sales drop drastically within 2 to 4 weeks after release. I'm kinda surprised to see some of those games still on the top selling list but in a way that's what I'm saying. I feel like single player stuff is getting drawn out because the lack of selection or releases. I am also not sure how online games play into those list as a lot are free. The topic is ambiguous so I am a little all over the place here. I don't think single player games are gonna completely disappear just begin to be dominated by online games or games like Minecraft which are always evolving and being added to from a base game. 

 

I am still looking forward to a lot of single player stuff like BoTW2 and Prime 4 if that ever sees the light of day. New GoT looks good for PS too.

https://www.ign.com/articles/ghost-of-tsushima-is-july-2020s-best-selling-game-sucker-punchs-fastest-selling-game-ever

Ghost and Paper Mario are killing it.  Last of Us 2 standing strong.  Ring Fit Adventure surges now that it is back in stock.  Zelda, Spiderman, AC, and Jedi still selling.  Minecraft and stuff in the mix so online games are there but not totally dominating.

[Estil | 1,261]

On 7/17/2020 at 4:23 PM, asmikace said:

One trend I dont find sustainable is increasing download data required in games included physical copies and update patches. Big AAA are getting 50GB or even 100GB while internet speeds are still stagnant in the world especially parts of the US.

Can anything be done about that?  Realistically I mean

[Jicsan | 588]

4 hours ago, Estil said:

Can anything be done about that?  Realistically I mean

Supposedly the solid state drives for next gen will make it so that there is less duplicated data on installs (done to reduce seek times).  However, now all games will have 4k assets so maybe they won't actually get smaller.

[BlackVega | 583]

I think it is headed towards virtual reality

 

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

On 8/15/2020 at 2:39 AM, fox said:

https://www.ign.com/articles/ghost-of-tsushima-is-july-2020s-best-selling-game-sucker-punchs-fastest-selling-game-ever

Ghost and Paper Mario are killing it.  Last of Us 2 standing strong.  Ring Fit Adventure surges now that it is back in stock.  Zelda, Spiderman, AC, and Jedi still selling.  Minecraft and stuff in the mix so online games are there but not totally dominating.

Yeah... PS5 not looking good for my theory lol. Final Fantasy XVI and Demon's Souls looking pretty insane with the gameplay footage out now. They'll both do well no doubt. Looking crisp!

[fox | 1,665]

8 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

Yeah... PS5 not looking good for my theory lol. Final Fantasy XVI and Demon's Souls looking pretty insane with the gameplay footage out now. They'll both do well no doubt. Looking crisp!

Sony put out lots of strong single player story driven games on PS4, PS5 looks to continue that.

I think "games as a service" is flopping in non-free2play games.  Even Destiny went F2P.

[Redmond | 152]

On 7/17/2020 at 5:23 PM, asmikace said:

One trend I dont find sustainable is increasing download data required in games included physical copies and update patches. Big AAA are getting 50GB or even 100GB while internet speeds are still stagnant in the world especially parts of the US.

I want to say the latest COD was up to something like 150GB, maybe even 175+, but it looks like it's down to 103.5 now.  Another thing too is data caps, my previous ISP had one and I want to say it was 1 TB or something, and then they would charge X amount for every 10 or 100GB past that.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Redmond

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

Sustainable? Apparently not at current prices. Sony signed up for the price hike we've been hearing about lately and is charging $70 for first party PS5 games. Even crazier, they are charging 80 euros in the EU which comes out to about $95!

I thought the appropriate thing to do was charge $10 less for first party games and just let the third party developers look like bad guys. Didn't Nintendo do that for the Wii?

I guess we'll see Microsoft prices pretty soon with preorders opening on Sep 22nd, but presumably they will also jump on the bandwagon. Gaming is expensive now!