A newly released game industry report by market researcher Newzoo shows that while the PC and console market grew 2.6 percent in 2023, overall playtime decreased as gamers spent more and more time in a smaller list of old games like Fortnite* *and League of Legends.
New games are very expensive and not that much better than older games.
I would actually say that they tend to be considerably worse.
Games that are just MVPs with a massive, fully featured microtransaction store, often featuring a story by committee, visuals that arent any better than five years ago, shitty ai, filled to the brim with bugs, and all running at less than 60 fps on good hardware.
Fuck new big games.
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While I did put some time into a new game last year, I like my comfort games that I’ve played a million times before.
Was shocked to see how prolific retro gaming has become, then read the article summary lol
My friends and I typically play two or three games in rotation, then we’ll each have a single-player title we play when nobody is online. For the past few months, it’s been a bunch of Helldivers, with some rocket league and fortnite music interspersed. Two of those games are technically over six years old. Before that, it was a bunch of deep rock galactic. I have been playing through sifu on my own time, and that’s pretty new and fun.
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The only recent blockbuster I can think of is Baldur’s Gate III. I (and many others) have certainly sunk a bunch of time into it, but, outside of that game, almost everything else is a good bit older.
recent
In a way BG3 has been out for years tho.
Lots of PC players pre-ordered to get act 1
Starfield, Diablo IV, Cyberpunk, AC games, COD games.
Starfield, Diablo IV, Cyberpunk, AC games, COD games.
None of these spark joy, with the possible exception of Cyberpunk, but that was simply an expansion. I’m more excited about the idea of replaying Subnautica for the fourth time than anything else on that list.
There haven’t really been many ‘blockbuster’ games coming out over the last couple of years either.
The metric isn’t sparking joy, whatever that means.
The only thing really on that list that didn’t come out to mixed reception at best is COD, and even that it’s getting some tired gamers. Scores by metacritic user rating
Starfield (6.9) - generally mixed due to being basically the same as but worse than Skyrim, released ~13 years later
Diablo 4 (2.3) - generally criticised for lack of improvement in 3 as well as shitty MTX. People are generally recommending indie titles instead.
Cyberpunk (7.1) - came out shit 4 years ago, only recently got fixed, still not entirely what was promised.
AC:Mirage (7.2) - is an explicit call back to the earlier games in the franchise and mostly criticised by its new audience built up from origins, odyssey, vslhalla that expect a long grindy experience and labelled it standalone dlc sold at full price. (it also isn’t sold on steam on PC, so I actually didn’t even know this existed. Especially given how the marketing looks like every other origins/odyssey/AC marketing ad)
Diablo 4 (2.3) - generally criticised for lack of improvement in 3 as well as shitty MTX. People are generally recommending indie titles instead.
That got review bombed, the critic reviews are 86/100, just like the other games you’ve mentioned. No way it’s worth 2.3 or 23%.
Regardless of the user reviews, they were all blockbuster/big titles. AC and COD are whatever games for me, but they’re super popular.
That’s fair, but let’s not pretend that sales determines quality, especially considering prevalence of blind preordering.
Final Fantasy XVI and Super Mario Wonder were two that played through last year into this year.
I even bought the latter, oops. Oh yeah, and the new Zelda.
I guess that’s what happens with these addicting F2P games. If you look at the top 10, half are F2P.
I think it’s especially interesting that Switch games trend toward newer games, and only one (I think?) is F2P.
There haven’t really been many ‘blockbuster’ games coming out over the last couple of years either. Gone are the days of people getting hyped up for a new COD or what have you.
What about:
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Armored Core 6
- Lies of P
- Alan Wake 2
Those were all pretty big and well received, and released in the timeframe. But they don’t make the list, probably because they’re single player games and players tend to move on after completing them, whereas F2P games constantly have new content.
The switch is interesting because it probably has the most unique catalog. There are a lot of games you can only get on the switch and there are also a lot of games that are popular elsewhere but just don’t fit right with the switch ecosystem.
Not surprising. We went 6+ years without any good games. It’s looking up though. I haven’t bought helldivers yet but it looks really good. I just need to upgrade my PC
the worst time to play games is on their release. although I think this mainly refers to live service games
Hmm…aside from live service games (released about 6~7 years ago), 100% of my play time has been games over 10 years old.
Oh wait, I played Mario RPG (a remake of a ~30-year old game), and some Super Mario Wonder…
I’m probably well beyond that criteria! Lol
I still play csgo. Well csgo2 is fairly new and it’s good
