Gamer79
Predicts the worst decade for Sony starting 2022
*A few things I am excluding here:
PC: Pc is it's own platform so tied to no developers/pubishers
Nintendo: They are an enigma that plays in a different ball field. They have a very loyal fanbase that buys just about anything Nintendo. They have done a good job of capturing the casual market as well.
Indies: They are independent so they are disqualified. The issues is that they almost all suffer from shoe string budgets and small development teams. With that said there is the occasional Indie Hit like Ballatro that regardless of budget can compete with the best of games.
Games use to be made by passionate people who loved to play video games. I remember as a kid reading about Nintendo's Miyamoto and he seemed to always have a big grin on his face. The games and magic he created reflected that. It seems we have reached 2 different eras in video game history.
From the Atari to say the 360/PS3 era, developer seemed to have creative freedom. It was common to see a wide variety and genre's of games to play. Just take a look at the Xbox 360 or PS3 era for a second. We got 3 fucking Gears of War games and 3 Fucking Uncharted games in 1 generation. The Mass Effect Trilogy is massive and guess what? It was all one generation. The N64 gave us both Zelda Oot and Majora's mask with the processing power equivalent today of a 2007 smartphone. Video games became a multi billion dollar businesses and the suits took notice.
The "new" generation from say the PS4/X1 and now the PS5/Series X generation: Development Cost skyrocketed combined with a pandemic. Big Developer houses started swallowing up little ones. Then the really Large Corporations like Microsoft and EA started to swallow up even the medium development houses. Once purchased, these development houses often get dsimantled or heavily mismanaged. You saw that with Blue Point working on a shitty GaaS God of War game. A traditional great first party developer gets thrust into the role of developing some shitty Live Service game to please the shareholders. Quality Control plays a distance second to reaching a target launch date. Come hell or high water those shareholders want to see that profit so developers are often forced to release a game and knowing it's not finished. You saw that with CD Project Red forced to Apoligize for the Cyberpunk disastrous launch due to they were forced to meet a target release date. These are only a few more public ones but his happens all the time. Creative freedom is gone because now developers are following trends of what is selling and just copying each other. We use to get 3 great games from one franchise a generation and now you are lucky to get one. GTA 5 is fucking 12 years old, Sony has been disastrous (I predicted this look under my thread name) with wasting money on shitty live service games. Reports are their big studios are already shifting resources to the Playstation 6. I barely felt the PS5 generation has barely arived. Microsoft bought up a shit load of studios and where are the fucking games? Development time has shifted from 2 years development time to now 5+. One disastrous launch is likely to sink a whole studio,. So naturally these developers are forced to accept the buyouts or work with corporations to fund the massive increase in cost. Unfortunately some of my favorite genre's like Racers aren't made anymore because some asshole in an office who never plays games is looking at a chart and figuring it would not make profit. As I said, it's like all creative freedom is lost.
I tried to google it but it is unclear. Are there any independent Studios left?
PC: Pc is it's own platform so tied to no developers/pubishers
Nintendo: They are an enigma that plays in a different ball field. They have a very loyal fanbase that buys just about anything Nintendo. They have done a good job of capturing the casual market as well.
Indies: They are independent so they are disqualified. The issues is that they almost all suffer from shoe string budgets and small development teams. With that said there is the occasional Indie Hit like Ballatro that regardless of budget can compete with the best of games.
Games use to be made by passionate people who loved to play video games. I remember as a kid reading about Nintendo's Miyamoto and he seemed to always have a big grin on his face. The games and magic he created reflected that. It seems we have reached 2 different eras in video game history.
From the Atari to say the 360/PS3 era, developer seemed to have creative freedom. It was common to see a wide variety and genre's of games to play. Just take a look at the Xbox 360 or PS3 era for a second. We got 3 fucking Gears of War games and 3 Fucking Uncharted games in 1 generation. The Mass Effect Trilogy is massive and guess what? It was all one generation. The N64 gave us both Zelda Oot and Majora's mask with the processing power equivalent today of a 2007 smartphone. Video games became a multi billion dollar businesses and the suits took notice.
The "new" generation from say the PS4/X1 and now the PS5/Series X generation: Development Cost skyrocketed combined with a pandemic. Big Developer houses started swallowing up little ones. Then the really Large Corporations like Microsoft and EA started to swallow up even the medium development houses. Once purchased, these development houses often get dsimantled or heavily mismanaged. You saw that with Blue Point working on a shitty GaaS God of War game. A traditional great first party developer gets thrust into the role of developing some shitty Live Service game to please the shareholders. Quality Control plays a distance second to reaching a target launch date. Come hell or high water those shareholders want to see that profit so developers are often forced to release a game and knowing it's not finished. You saw that with CD Project Red forced to Apoligize for the Cyberpunk disastrous launch due to they were forced to meet a target release date. These are only a few more public ones but his happens all the time. Creative freedom is gone because now developers are following trends of what is selling and just copying each other. We use to get 3 great games from one franchise a generation and now you are lucky to get one. GTA 5 is fucking 12 years old, Sony has been disastrous (I predicted this look under my thread name) with wasting money on shitty live service games. Reports are their big studios are already shifting resources to the Playstation 6. I barely felt the PS5 generation has barely arived. Microsoft bought up a shit load of studios and where are the fucking games? Development time has shifted from 2 years development time to now 5+. One disastrous launch is likely to sink a whole studio,. So naturally these developers are forced to accept the buyouts or work with corporations to fund the massive increase in cost. Unfortunately some of my favorite genre's like Racers aren't made anymore because some asshole in an office who never plays games is looking at a chart and figuring it would not make profit. As I said, it's like all creative freedom is lost.
I tried to google it but it is unclear. Are there any independent Studios left?
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