Its only brave if they are actually honest and not just shills for AAA and insult gamers. Cause if they are the later, then they will deserve the same failure as IGN, Kotaku and other dying sites.
Just so folks are aware, most of the THC-A based products from Turntup lack easily accessible lab test results. I do not recommend purchasing any THC based product that lack test results, as they can be sprayed with pesticides. None of this CBD based stuff on the internet is real. Support local businesses, and be careful with this crap. I love the inside gaming team but i would recommend supporting them some other way
Yeah thanks for writing this, that's why in Amsterdam we also don't sell that crap. Only real farmed stuff. Those products based on the packaging already should give people a hint.
Yeah no ill will to the inside gaming team. This stuff is in such a grey area it’s almost impossible to tell real from fake. Just support local businesses instead of paying full price for half baked goods.
AAA gaming: "we made this game for 600 million. We need to sell it for $100 each, and we expect to sell 100 billion copies." *Game fails to meet expected sales.* "How could we not have sold 100 billion copies!?! Such a mystery."
minimizing the criticism of Veilguard to just mention the dogwhistle reviews that criticized the diverse inclusions, but not the actual criticisms that mention the writing falling flat compared to prior entries seems disingenuous.
It's so weird to think that video games are the most popular and most grossing media out there and yet the industry has layoffs out the ass and no unions (or just hardly any). Really doesn't seem to match up. Thank you to Bruce, Lawrence and Brian for continuing to keep Inside Games going. I wouldn't want any other group to follow with video game news. Here's hoping the companies finally stop giving us half-completed live service games, we don't want AAAA games ubisoft. Enjoy being bought out. Give us more games like Elden Ring and Astro Bot.
Gaming is only the biggest market because it includes mobile gaming. Imo this gives unfair expectations of revenue for "regular" gaming. All the Concords, Elden rings, Astrobots, everything is small fries compared to a single gacha/gaas game that hits. So Astrobot is in a position where it is competing with Honkai, despite it not REALLY competing with eachother at all. In my eyes its like if the NBA was competing with college football for views, technically true ( both are sports broadcasts), but c'mon.
@@sssenseiii You got a point. Mobile gotta games designed to suck the money from people's accounts are always going to make consistently more money than a game you buy once.
Games trying to look realistic is such a dumb hill for devs to die on. Palworld, Astro Bot, Marvel Rivals, and everything Nintendo pumps out being so popular should prove no one cares about realistic graphics
Compared to real light and shadow, physics, and polygons, games with intricately crafted character scenes and lighting are more suitable for the general public. Outlaws、Hellblade、 and Indiana Jones ranked among the top three in Digital Foundry's selection this year, but they either had low completion rates or did not explore much possiblity in terms of gameplay for visual experience. In the end, their total may be less than 5 million. Even for the highly successful Black Myth, its visual aggressiveness has resulted in poor map guidance, becoming a drawback. People nowadays should rethink where truth, beauty, and fun are more important.
Kitase has gone to say that Rebirth did satisfactory in sales but they just can't make them console exclusive anymore as it cuts them off from wider audiences.
Laughed my ass off hearing Bruce chuckle his way thru that Sea Fantasy peek 😅 13:57 Something tells me Larwrence had to take a break after "sliding puzzles!", too lmao
This is more of an issue with Live Service AAA games than AAA generally, imo. All of the largest flops: Concord, Suicide Squad, X Defiant, the likely last Destiny expansion. They all show a consumer disinterest in another live service game as companies continue to chase that fortnite money. I think we saw the same thing with WOW’s popularity as people didn’t have time for another MMO. We’re just seeing it with more expensive and longer productions
Less 2024 is the year AAA games died. And more 2024 was the year AAA Live Services titles reach saturation. People are done with that model. Helldivers 2 worked because it's not predatory and the actual game is fun to play. With games like SS:KtJL the entire game was built around the MTX first and then they copied every other Live Service game on the planet. People are not stupid and they aren't new to this whole thing. People are tired of Greed. Greed is killing games. Square Enix saying "FF7 Rebirth and FF16 underperformed" is just wrong. Those games are top sellers on the PS5. Square Enix just has awful expectations for sales. Their expectations where wrong. And it fucking kills me that these companies are going to make decisions on game development based off their bad forecasting. By every metric FF7 Rebirth was a success on the PS5. Now you see Square in pursuit of more money is abandoning exclusivity, which is what they should of done to begin with.
Has a game ever met the sales expectations of Square Enix's higher-ups? I remember that the same thing was said about the Tomb Raider reboot, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman: Absolution - none of them met the sales expectations.
I've never really understood the fixation over "realistic graphics" most games look bland because of it, and I'd rather have a good art direction than a "Oh look at every single strand of hair moving on its own... what's gameplay?".
People keep talking shit about Star Wars Outlaws....I actually enjoyed the game. They made enough improvements and fixed that deathly stealth mechanic which made the game a hell of a lot more playable.
I love the contrast between criticizing 800 million dollar Skull & Bones, to Bruce barely being able to keep from laughing at Sea Fantasia. The perfect game is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum
FF7 Rebirth is a genuinely amazing game, I gave it a 10/10 it's really the perfect example of what a modern FF game should be. But launching on PS5 exclusively killed its sales, the real question is WHY did Square not see this coming? Not only that but the PS5 version was awful technically, with either choppy 30 FPS performance or the blurriest image quality since the Nintendo 64 days. To their credit it is launching straight to Steam on PC, skipping Epic (FF7 Remake was an Epic exclusive on PC at launch lmao). But yeah highly recommend the game to JRPG fans, can get it at a discount now and there's a pack that comes with the first one too on Steam.
I hadn't realized FF7re released this past year and even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to play, as I still don't have a PS5 yet, nor do I have a gaming PC. Too bad the desire to play it doesn't help pay anybodys bills.
I don't want to speak against my betters, but I am skeptical of putting the whole industry stagnation on the cost of graphics. It also seems like a lot has come from just ABSURD profit projections as games further and further finesse their money-sucking ("customer leveraging") practices. The assumption that they can squeeze out recurrent spending from whales to the tunes of billions and billions just made them throw crazy money at their projects, with the scope creep and feature creep and unfocused development that follows. The AAA-part of the industry just has so much BLOAT because there is this expectation that these gigantic live-service games would make their budget back tenfold.
We as consumers matured. Most my friends late 20's to early 30 , don't even buy games till they are on sale or just play free to play games because we don't have time to play like when we were young , plus it's too expensive
Missed opportunity to mention "Star Citizen" - the shining example of never-ending game budget increase madness (funding reached over 700 million USD!!! this year) with something that not only hasn't released yet, but that in no way, shape or form will ever live up to its expectations.
SC is a great example of the fact that it's not always the "suits" that are the problem. Sometimes you need business oriented folks to keep the auteurs feet on the ground.
Yep. I honestly believe the best bet in the future will be to regularly ship reasonably budgeted games. Trying to make every game into "THE game" was never sustainable.
5:14 Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth didn’t meet profit expectations. Turns out sales were satisfactory but obviously in a company, they want more more and more.
Well they said they were acceptable, but not what they hoped for which is why they announced they n longer can do exclusivity releases for their games anymore. This is the first time Square has made this kind of decision which speaks volumes. And no, when a publishers biggest IP that was selling 0ver 10 million copies with ease just last generation and struggles to hit a few million with a likely large budget, that is not acceptable sales even if they break even. There is a percent of returns a big company is looking for and that's reasonable. 2-3 million sales versus over 10 million is a pretty large difference. This isn't the same Square Enix when they were upset with Tomb Raider selling 7 and 8 million copies in it's first year or whatever where I'd totally agree and say they were having bizarre expectations.
8:30 I think Lawrence's take is spot on. Too many people competing for that pie, and increased FPS or fidelity isn't going to sell more games when everyone else is chasing the same thing. The other sad fact, is when you go AAA you're not really a games company any more. You're a company that makes games. The financial pressures are paramount, games are secondary. Making a good game and a profit isn't enough...sales have to meet expectations!
Everyone of these games have the same issue. Almost all of them are live service games. There’s a couple that were single player but the studios were just expecting way more than they should have. Star Wars and Dragon Age both came out during a time where there’s a ton of people who would have enjoyed both games, but didn’t try it because they got sucked up by grifters on RUclips telling them they should hate it. Final Fantasy didn’t do as well because it was probably compared to the first part of the remake where people went into it expecting the same exact story and now know that’s not what they’re getting so they’re probably not gonna get the exact same audience. With live service games, you only really need one or two games in that market, and you aren’t going to convince them to leave whichever one they chose. People that started playing Destiny when it came out, are never going to leave it because of how much time they’ve put into it. Same with Apex Legends. The only time it’s worked was Marvel Rivals and that’s because it was able to replace Overwatch after they screwed up with Overwatch 2.
They are right, Nintendo literally predicted this around the time Wii came out. Its why their consoles have been so underpowered compared to the competition, and they chose to focus on unique gameplay over realistic graphics.
I am offering a consulting service for video game and movie producers. I charge one million dollars to spend 60 seconds looking at their video game or movie and I tell them if it's a bad idea or not. I would save these companies hundreds of millions.
The AAA space has become very bland to me. The "trend chasing" approach is just so artistically bankrupt. How many Hero Shooters do we need? How many GAAS? Most of the single player games are those kinds of Ubisoft style open-world time sinks that I had my fill of with Far Cry 3. There's just nothing exciting anymore. Even if they announce something that SHOULD excite me, it doesn't because I know the game is gonna be a soulless cash grab. The only games I play and actually enjoy lately are indie or AA games. They innovate and create with passion. And they're affordable.
8:50 I think it is more along the lines of ballooning games that have no audience or have alienated said audience with bad choices. When it comes down to it these are retail products and if they aren’t selling the only people you have to blame is the producers of the product. Instead a large majority of gaming journalists continue with bad faith arguments that point the finger at gamers for their fringe ideals. What we are seeing is the free market in action. You make a bad game, it doesn’t sell, you lose staff/get shut down.
Yet marvel rivals is a great example how to do games as service. The industry isn’t dying. It’s just the higher-ups are expecting too much and giving too little.
This year I decided to completely stop playing any more new live service games. There's only so much time in a day and those require too much investment. I imagine I'm not the only one so I anticipate even more live service failure going forward.
While I agree that AAA games should scale down overall (including budget), I do find it unlikely since the industry has already raised the price to 70$. I think players will have a hard time justifying that price point if games become more reasonable in scope. Although there is the rise of the 20-40$ live service model in the AA markets.
Hopefully game companies also start optimizing their games again and reduce the file size necessary to download your game. I'm tired of downloading 200 GB games that run at a solid 50 FPS on low settings with a beefed out rig.
I think another element beyond graphical fidelity is content overload... I simply can't give the time to some of these AAA games that take 80+ hours to complete. If multiple games that require this much time investment hit the market, I have to start making choices, and I have to imagine development costs also increase as more 'game' is added.
One thing I would really really want to know with Square.....what do they get (if anything) for making the game a exclusive either console or time limited exclusive....cos whenever they say sales did not meet expectations if they got money from Sony I do wonder how much and if on the finances that would be a separate thing
I used to hear lay offs and think that was a bad thing, now I hear it and think 'it's about time they get what they deserve.' Honestly if the industry has a MASSIVE downsizing to flush out the tourists and investors and bring back people who love games and aren't trying to make a 'statement.' Maybe they'll get the message but they probably will keep trying to push THE Message instead.
I will always look to the COVID bubble for the situation we're in right now. Not that it's COVID's fault, but there was a huge boom in gaming to stave off (or hide from) mental health issues caused by being stuck indoors. The fault was the games industry leads who looked at the boom and were like "it will never go down" and upscaled massively. Now we have multi million dollar budgets everywhere and people have maybe 20% of the time they had during COVID. Anyone who couldn't foresee that is a moron, and those morons run the biggest industry in the world right now.
Bruce always says to put our money where our mouth is. I basically only play indie games at this point. I'm finding them more uniquely fun anyway. I can always load up my old copies of triple a games if i need a local cod fix
Who has time to play these 100hr plus or live service games as an adult, too many huge games. Astrobot was a breath of fresh air because it didn't overstay its welcome, you used the power ups just enough to leave you wanting more. Well that and the preponderance of ultra hard souls likes cuts out many people.
I hope GTA 6 doesn’t play like ass. I want my characters to feel responsive like the Resident Evil Remakes. Might be a controversial opinion but after all the enhancements of 3rd person character movement I’ve played over the years, GTA 5 movement really gets under my skin
I think the only new game I played this year was Astro bot and i loved it. Looking forward to Wolf among us 2, Professor Layton and GTA 6 this year, if they aren't delayed.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
What a world we live in where we can watch Lawrence get paid to get high.
Society
What a time to be alive.
wait you tube allows that?
They’ll have to do a spiritual successor to the 420 Labo stream when the Switch 2 drops.
@@ArtflPhenixyea it’s not the real stuff.
Here’s to another year of brave gaming journalism 🎉
Its only brave if they are actually honest and not just shills for AAA and insult gamers. Cause if they are the later, then they will deserve the same failure as IGN, Kotaku and other dying sites.
As long as they got rid of that weird trans thing
Just so folks are aware, most of the THC-A based products from Turntup lack easily accessible lab test results. I do not recommend purchasing any THC based product that lack test results, as they can be sprayed with pesticides. None of this CBD based stuff on the internet is real. Support local businesses, and be careful with this crap. I love the inside gaming team but i would recommend supporting them some other way
All THC-a is garbage
i have sponsor block on so didn't even notice lmao
Responsible comment. Responsible consumer.
Respect.
Yeah thanks for writing this, that's why in Amsterdam we also don't sell that crap. Only real farmed stuff. Those products based on the packaging already should give people a hint.
also in general vaping looks to have pretty significant health side effects as more studies go on.
get that bag but ngl turntup seems like a scam. they at least sell their products with intentionally confusing dosages
Yeah no ill will to the inside gaming team. This stuff is in such a grey area it’s almost impossible to tell real from fake. Just support local businesses instead of paying full price for half baked goods.
@@hendrixtynerlocal businesses aka my dealer
AAA gaming: "we made this game for 600 million. We need to sell it for $100 each, and we expect to sell 100 billion copies."
*Game fails to meet expected sales.*
"How could we not have sold 100 billion copies!?! Such a mystery."
a day is good only if there's an Inside Games video
RIP AAAA gaming, you made it one game and sadly fizzled out we’ll never forget you Skull and Bones
minimizing the criticism of Veilguard to just mention the dogwhistle reviews that criticized the diverse inclusions, but not the actual criticisms that mention the writing falling flat compared to prior entries seems disingenuous.
I didn't have Inside Games as my new weed plug in my 2025 bingo card
It's so weird to think that video games are the most popular and most grossing media out there and yet the industry has layoffs out the ass and no unions (or just hardly any). Really doesn't seem to match up.
Thank you to Bruce, Lawrence and Brian for continuing to keep Inside Games going. I wouldn't want any other group to follow with video game news. Here's hoping the companies finally stop giving us half-completed live service games, we don't want AAAA games ubisoft. Enjoy being bought out. Give us more games like Elden Ring and Astro Bot.
Gaming is only the biggest market because it includes mobile gaming. Imo this gives unfair expectations of revenue for "regular" gaming.
All the Concords, Elden rings, Astrobots, everything is small fries compared to a single gacha/gaas game that hits.
So Astrobot is in a position where it is competing with Honkai, despite it not REALLY competing with eachother at all. In my eyes its like if the NBA was competing with college football for views, technically true ( both are sports broadcasts), but c'mon.
@@sssenseiii You got a point. Mobile gotta games designed to suck the money from people's accounts are always going to make consistently more money than a game you buy once.
There also just overstated of employees and the fact it be incredibly easy to out source for the lack of unions.
I would honestly love to see rockstar go smaller and make sequels to bully 2. Not every game needs to be as big as GTA 6 or RDR2
Yeah good luck with that no way in hell bully 2 would get made at all bc of today political climate 😂😂
My favorite sponser so far! Hope y'all enjoy the goodies.
Games trying to look realistic is such a dumb hill for devs to die on. Palworld, Astro Bot, Marvel Rivals, and everything Nintendo pumps out being so popular should prove no one cares about realistic graphics
Yeah i don't want ps1 graphics but i also don't need hyper realism.
I mean. There are realistic looking games that are also good.
The problem isn't realism vs stylized. It's how the final product is.
Compared to real light and shadow, physics, and polygons, games with intricately crafted character scenes and lighting are more suitable for the general public. Outlaws、Hellblade、 and Indiana Jones ranked among the top three in Digital Foundry's selection this year, but they either had low completion rates or did not explore much possiblity in terms of gameplay for visual experience. In the end, their total may be less than 5 million. Even for the highly successful Black Myth, its visual aggressiveness has resulted in poor map guidance, becoming a drawback. People nowadays should rethink where truth, beauty, and fun are more important.
Kitase has gone to say that Rebirth did satisfactory in sales but they just can't make them console exclusive anymore as it cuts them off from wider audiences.
five years Inside Games? I feel like I have watched these dudes for at least a decade!
I still can’t believe Skull and Bones actually came out, it got announced when I was in high school and I’m now 2 years removed from college
Laughed my ass off hearing Bruce chuckle his way thru that Sea Fantasy peek 😅 13:57 Something tells me Larwrence had to take a break after "sliding puzzles!", too lmao
This is more of an issue with Live Service AAA games than AAA generally, imo.
All of the largest flops: Concord, Suicide Squad, X Defiant, the likely last Destiny expansion. They all show a consumer disinterest in another live service game as companies continue to chase that fortnite money.
I think we saw the same thing with WOW’s popularity as people didn’t have time for another MMO. We’re just seeing it with more expensive and longer productions
Less 2024 is the year AAA games died. And more 2024 was the year AAA Live Services titles reach saturation. People are done with that model. Helldivers 2 worked because it's not predatory and the actual game is fun to play. With games like SS:KtJL the entire game was built around the MTX first and then they copied every other Live Service game on the planet. People are not stupid and they aren't new to this whole thing. People are tired of Greed. Greed is killing games. Square Enix saying "FF7 Rebirth and FF16 underperformed" is just wrong. Those games are top sellers on the PS5. Square Enix just has awful expectations for sales. Their expectations where wrong. And it fucking kills me that these companies are going to make decisions on game development based off their bad forecasting. By every metric FF7 Rebirth was a success on the PS5. Now you see Square in pursuit of more money is abandoning exclusivity, which is what they should of done to begin with.
Has a game ever met the sales expectations of Square Enix's higher-ups? I remember that the same thing was said about the Tomb Raider reboot, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman: Absolution - none of them met the sales expectations.
Happy New Year guys and gal, keep up the good work!
I've never really understood the fixation over "realistic graphics" most games look bland because of it, and I'd rather have a good art direction than a "Oh look at every single strand of hair moving on its own... what's gameplay?".
Whaaaaat was this sponsor????? Thought it was a joke 😂 (but liking the diveristy in sponsors). I wish it was available here in Aus!
People keep talking shit about Star Wars Outlaws....I actually enjoyed the game. They made enough improvements and fixed that deathly stealth mechanic which made the game a hell of a lot more playable.
Thank you guys for your videos, i hope you have a pretty good year
Seeing Brian made me sub. Glad you are all together again!
I love the contrast between criticizing 800 million dollar Skull & Bones, to Bruce barely being able to keep from laughing at Sea Fantasia. The perfect game is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum
Happy New Year ❤
FF7 Rebirth is a genuinely amazing game, I gave it a 10/10 it's really the perfect example of what a modern FF game should be. But launching on PS5 exclusively killed its sales, the real question is WHY did Square not see this coming? Not only that but the PS5 version was awful technically, with either choppy 30 FPS performance or the blurriest image quality since the Nintendo 64 days.
To their credit it is launching straight to Steam on PC, skipping Epic (FF7 Remake was an Epic exclusive on PC at launch lmao). But yeah highly recommend the game to JRPG fans, can get it at a discount now and there's a pack that comes with the first one too on Steam.
I hadn't realized FF7re released this past year and even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to play, as I still don't have a PS5 yet, nor do I have a gaming PC. Too bad the desire to play it doesn't help pay anybodys bills.
you guys are awesome keep it up! cant wait for all the games news from you guys this new year
I'm so happy you got this sponsorship
Lets be fair, if Square said a game met expectations they'd never have to make a video game ever again.
I don't want to speak against my betters, but I am skeptical of putting the whole industry stagnation on the cost of graphics. It also seems like a lot has come from just ABSURD profit projections as games further and further finesse their money-sucking ("customer leveraging") practices. The assumption that they can squeeze out recurrent spending from whales to the tunes of billions and billions just made them throw crazy money at their projects, with the scope creep and feature creep and unfocused development that follows. The AAA-part of the industry just has so much BLOAT because there is this expectation that these gigantic live-service games would make their budget back tenfold.
We as consumers matured. Most my friends late 20's to early 30 , don't even buy games till they are on sale or just play free to play games because we don't have time to play like when we were young , plus it's too expensive
Missed opportunity to mention "Star Citizen" - the shining example of never-ending game budget increase madness (funding reached over 700 million USD!!! this year) with something that not only hasn't released yet, but that in no way, shape or form will ever live up to its expectations.
SC is a great example of the fact that it's not always the "suits" that are the problem. Sometimes you need business oriented folks to keep the auteurs feet on the ground.
Been watching y'all for almost 10 years now. It's been fun growing gray with y'all. lol
I wouldn’t call it a maturation. It’s a correction. You see it in all markets.
Yep. I honestly believe the best bet in the future will be to regularly ship reasonably budgeted games. Trying to make every game into "THE game" was never sustainable.
Great show, but you guys missed Freedom Wars Remastered on the coming soon list.
I think the bubble has burst but it’s more of a slow burn vs a giant crash.
GAMER WEED OH MY GOD. y'all have made it. that's the best sponsorship ive ever seen.
Starfield expansion was so underwhelming that everyone forgot about it
Lmao the jazz cabbage sponsor rocks hell yeah
I'm here for this sponsor, thats a damn win!
5:14 Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth didn’t meet profit expectations. Turns out sales were satisfactory but obviously in a company, they want more more and more.
Well they said they were acceptable, but not what they hoped for which is why they announced they n longer can do exclusivity releases for their games anymore. This is the first time Square has made this kind of decision which speaks volumes. And no, when a publishers biggest IP that was selling 0ver 10 million copies with ease just last generation and struggles to hit a few million with a likely large budget, that is not acceptable sales even if they break even. There is a percent of returns a big company is looking for and that's reasonable. 2-3 million sales versus over 10 million is a pretty large difference. This isn't the same Square Enix when they were upset with Tomb Raider selling 7 and 8 million copies in it's first year or whatever where I'd totally agree and say they were having bizarre expectations.
even if astro bot didn't win goty, wukong didn't have a chance
OMG I love those gummies and vapes! The gummies come with an extra one in a little package that says its to share the love for a friend. Love it!
Genuine question, have Square Enix ever been happy with sales of a game? Because I can't think of any.
Happy new yeaaaar🎉
I keep forgetting that Lawdawg and Bruce are in their 40s. They look pretty damn good for their age. 😘
"If you have a gamer's tolerance of THC" made me snort
Great beard trim Bruce. Top marks.
Love the sponsor!!!
Mr. Garr your audio/microphone goes bump quite often!
8:30 I think Lawrence's take is spot on. Too many people competing for that pie, and increased FPS or fidelity isn't going to sell more games when everyone else is chasing the same thing.
The other sad fact, is when you go AAA you're not really a games company any more. You're a company that makes games. The financial pressures are paramount, games are secondary. Making a good game and a profit isn't enough...sales have to meet expectations!
It's the same as the movie budgets. Not every release should be top budget, nor can it be.
Best sponsorship ever! 🥖☁
Everyone of these games have the same issue. Almost all of them are live service games. There’s a couple that were single player but the studios were just expecting way more than they should have. Star Wars and Dragon Age both came out during a time where there’s a ton of people who would have enjoyed both games, but didn’t try it because they got sucked up by grifters on RUclips telling them they should hate it. Final Fantasy didn’t do as well because it was probably compared to the first part of the remake where people went into it expecting the same exact story and now know that’s not what they’re getting so they’re probably not gonna get the exact same audience. With live service games, you only really need one or two games in that market, and you aren’t going to convince them to leave whichever one they chose. People that started playing Destiny when it came out, are never going to leave it because of how much time they’ve put into it. Same with Apex Legends. The only time it’s worked was Marvel Rivals and that’s because it was able to replace Overwatch after they screwed up with Overwatch 2.
They are right, Nintendo literally predicted this around the time Wii came out. Its why their consoles have been so underpowered compared to the competition, and they chose to focus on unique gameplay over realistic graphics.
I am offering a consulting service for video game and movie producers. I charge one million dollars to spend 60 seconds looking at their video game or movie and I tell them if it's a bad idea or not. I would save these companies hundreds of millions.
Pretty crazy that FF7 Rebirth was in the running for game of the year and"didn't meet expectations" sales wise.
The AAA space has become very bland to me. The "trend chasing" approach is just so artistically bankrupt. How many Hero Shooters do we need? How many GAAS? Most of the single player games are those kinds of Ubisoft style open-world time sinks that I had my fill of with Far Cry 3. There's just nothing exciting anymore. Even if they announce something that SHOULD excite me, it doesn't because I know the game is gonna be a soulless cash grab.
The only games I play and actually enjoy lately are indie or AA games. They innovate and create with passion. And they're affordable.
Is it the death of AAA or the death of studios shoving games that gamers don’t want ..finally.
Here’s hoping 2025 gives us an amazing rpg that we can sink our teeth in and play multiple times.
8:50 I think it is more along the lines of ballooning games that have no audience or have alienated said audience with bad choices. When it comes down to it these are retail products and if they aren’t selling the only people you have to blame is the producers of the product. Instead a large majority of gaming journalists continue with bad faith arguments that point the finger at gamers for their fringe ideals. What we are seeing is the free market in action. You make a bad game, it doesn’t sell, you lose staff/get shut down.
is nintendo keeping their hardware moderately/middlingly powerful in order to keep software production budgets manageable?
Yet marvel rivals is a great example how to do games as service. The industry isn’t dying. It’s just the higher-ups are expecting too much and giving too little.
This year I decided to completely stop playing any more new live service games. There's only so much time in a day and those require too much investment. I imagine I'm not the only one so I anticipate even more live service failure going forward.
While I agree that AAA games should scale down overall (including budget), I do find it unlikely since the industry has already raised the price to 70$. I think players will have a hard time justifying that price point if games become more reasonable in scope. Although there is the rise of the 20-40$ live service model in the AA markets.
Stalker 2 has had all of my attention. I have almost 60 hours and I can't wait for Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
Hopefully game companies also start optimizing their games again and reduce the file size necessary to download your game. I'm tired of downloading 200 GB games that run at a solid 50 FPS on low settings with a beefed out rig.
I think another element beyond graphical fidelity is content overload... I simply can't give the time to some of these AAA games that take 80+ hours to complete. If multiple games that require this much time investment hit the market, I have to start making choices, and I have to imagine development costs also increase as more 'game' is added.
Nobody is getting interesting ideas by watching "Megalopolis" Mr. Lawrence😏
Love the adds
The bravest gamers
No Space Marine 2 mentioned?
i dont feel like graphics anything to do with it
Surprised to see ff7 didn’t meet expectations. I thought it was great.
Congrats on another year. Took me a bit to find u since u left roosters teeth keep it up
Can't satisfy the rich. That's what this all about.
Do you think we will get through January without another L for Ubisoft?
Graphics will never able to push - great games will fun first
Sick ass sponsor, I def had to check out and ordered some
Tugg Nuggets will be happy about that sponsor. Wonder where he is now?
Holy hell, its been 5 years??? I cannot believe that
@J-Vasa maybe I misheard him then but I swear Bruce said it's been nearly 5 years
One thing I would really really want to know with Square.....what do they get (if anything) for making the game a exclusive either console or time limited exclusive....cos whenever they say sales did not meet expectations if they got money from Sony I do wonder how much and if on the finances that would be a separate thing
I used to hear lay offs and think that was a bad thing, now I hear it and think 'it's about time they get what they deserve.' Honestly if the industry has a MASSIVE downsizing to flush out the tourists and investors and bring back people who love games and aren't trying to make a 'statement.' Maybe they'll get the message but they probably will keep trying to push THE Message instead.
That’s not who usually gets laid off. It’s the game devs on the floor that are just trying to do something they love and support their families.
2025 is the year of advertising marijuanas
Lawrence is in his 40's!? Bro looks the same from his Machinima days
I will always look to the COVID bubble for the situation we're in right now. Not that it's COVID's fault, but there was a huge boom in gaming to stave off (or hide from) mental health issues caused by being stuck indoors.
The fault was the games industry leads who looked at the boom and were like "it will never go down" and upscaled massively. Now we have multi million dollar budgets everywhere and people have maybe 20% of the time they had during COVID.
Anyone who couldn't foresee that is a moron, and those morons run the biggest industry in the world right now.
Bruce always says to put our money where our mouth is. I basically only play indie games at this point. I'm finding them more uniquely fun anyway. I can always load up my old copies of triple a games if i need a local cod fix
AAA....., i mean I'm still playing Street Fighter 2.
Who has time to play these 100hr plus or live service games as an adult, too many huge games. Astrobot was a breath of fresh air because it didn't overstay its welcome, you used the power ups just enough to leave you wanting more. Well that and the preponderance of ultra hard souls likes cuts out many people.
I hope GTA 6 doesn’t play like ass. I want my characters to feel responsive like the Resident Evil Remakes. Might be a controversial opinion but after all the enhancements of 3rd person character movement I’ve played over the years, GTA 5 movement really gets under my skin
I think the only new game I played this year was Astro bot and i loved it. Looking forward to Wolf among us 2, Professor Layton and GTA 6 this year, if they aren't delayed.
I just want another weird Yoko Taro Nier game.
Bring back AA games damnit
Launching a new AAA game these days is like creating a new sport and expecting to compete with football.
AAA peaked in 2007 and it's been downhill ever since.
i cant wait till AAAA Games like GTA 6 and Squadron 42
No call out of the success of Indiana Jones!!??
Runescape got 1000 of my hours in 2024.