This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Whose decision was it to charge 70-80 usd for a game?
Whose ai investments are buying up all the ram, gpus, and ssds?
Not consumers’…
I mean, unless you play the last four decades of games in emulation... or the couple hundred thousand indie games on steam... or the other few hundred thousand mobile games or...
Oh, you mean your company profits are in crisis. Yeah. Good.
Well Asha, maybe you should talk to your boss Slopya about that AI problem that's raising prices on everything.
Gaming studios have the choice to make stylized visuals instead of chasing hyper realism. They just choose not to.
Stylized games always age best
Or, you know, do something else than incrementing the version number on your old games while adding nothing new.
Same old games, at a higher price, this might just not cut it.
In the meantime, the Indie games are flourishing.
That's what the industry has to say, Mr. The CEO... Open your eyes.
-- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
That CEO has no room to talk about gaming being unaffordable and the industry ignoring the signs, when it's that very industry that made it unaffordable to begin with.
You can't claim ignorance of a problem you and your industry directly caused, Asha. You're as complicit in this as the industry you're saying is ignoring warning signs.
That's like if I broke a stick in half in front of a bunch of people, and then tried to say I didn't break that stick, when everyone saw me break that stick. Stupid analogy, I know, but that's basically what Asha is trying to pull here.
Hehe “Gaming has become unaffordable”. Continues to buy ram and other component capacity for AI data centers, while actively enshittifying every single game with microtransactions and forced game as a service bullshit. driving customers to increasingly purchase cheaper indie titles that are actually fun.
“Whatever can we do to fix this problem? “ <lays off veteran team so the shareholders can make 5 more Pennie’s a share, causing talent to look at different industries where they aren’t laid off every 2 years, causing every game to be made by devs fresh out of college>.
“This industry isn’t profitable anymore!”
This is it, on so many aspects. And during that they ruined the fun.
It's like shitting your pants and when everyone calls you out on it, you deny it even though they can all smell it.
Works for the president of the US
I like my 'breaking a stick' analogy better, but yeah, that too.
It's like breaking the stick and then telling the watchers they need more sticks, but they cost too much.
Plenty of good indie or AA games with low system requirements.
If things going like this long enough, people won't be able to play pirated games too.
It's not affordable because of the indie games competition and no market regulations. Where in software there are plenty of regulations and competition is not existent because Office is given for free to schools so children are learning to use Microsoft products.
All the wealth is being concentrated in the hands of too few people. I'm not going to buy a $120 game when my salary is down, or I'm just laid off.
Problem is becoming a platform where you cant just buy the game anymore. You can obtain a digital licence that they can revoke at any time. So it’s more rent the game. And the price is up. And they have interfered with the studio and development. Plus you also have to pay for gamepass to even launch the game you ‘paid’ for.
This feels like a setup so they can present, “cloud gaming” as a solution. That way they can sell cheap hardware and yearly subscriptions for consistent revenue.
Reminds me of the Sim City 4 launch. The game was always online. People couldn't play it because their servers couldn't handle the load. One hiccup in the connection or servers and you're out of the game. It was single player but you couldn't play on laptop on a train, or plane.
It's a not good experience. And if things are like with Stradia you still have to buy the full game and pay the subscription for access. And because you're paying a subscription, people try to get their money's worth. That goes against the profit model that assumes you pay full price but only game a few hours per week. So companies start limiting hours per day, add premium tiers, that kind of thing. That'll cause a lot of resistance, especially with the young crowd with no money but lots of time.
I’m not In that category and don’t begrudge gaming funds…but I still resist as it’s a form of enshittification.
I’ve been expecting this for a whilst. It’s what they did for business users. Most office workers pretty much have a glorified tablet.
That's also a problem, yes. DRM free is best. I'm extremely reluctant to pay for a game I can't play offline as much as I want. (Barring MMOs and the like, I guess. Don't play a lot of those, myself)
I though "accessibility" in video games meant, like, color blind mode and shit.
Maybe if they would stop burning through all the RAM and shoving AI down our throats...
I’m surprised they haven’t come up with a mandatory paid service where AI finishes your game for you. Just pay for the device. Pay for the game. Pay for online access. Pay for the mods. Pay AI to finish the game…Pay extra for a summary of your achievement's.
That’s what Elon does already.
Lmaoooooo
There was an article like a month ago about an AI assistant to play the hard parts for you.
A cross-game AI coop player that doesn't suck would be kind of cool tho.
There have an amazing catalog of affordable games that were launched over the last 25 years (or more). There's a lifetime of fun available. Gamers may chose to play those, instead of the over expensive new games or worse, subscriptions.
Every industry has an accessibility crisis. Lazy MBAs don't want to sell products that appeal to everyone if they can sell products that only appeal to rich people with less effort.
Ultimately AI is an unaffordable industry. It'll crash in time, and there'll hopefully be a whole lot of price drops on ram, graphics, etc. People will not want to stop playing games. The industry has had crashes before and always bounced back bigger than ever.
It will be bad for whoever's economy is most dependent on it though.. And any businesses really heavily invested in it. Won't it, Microsoft.
I’m looking forward to the oversupply of RAM and SSDs in 5 years from now. Painful at the moment though, I’m praying that my PC survives
Life is unaffordable because of them and now they’re crying about a lack of consumers to buy their stuff.
Middle class exists only by virtue of subsidies. It was an artificial creation invoked by FDR. Then Reagan started a destruction of the middle class that never ended with him. And now we are here.
I'm sure the AI agents will buy all their stuff /s
Is it though? I feel like there are a ton of indie games these days that are reasonably priced and run well without using a fuck ton of resources.
I don't really care if GTA 6 is $100+. It's the best of the best, maximum effort, no expense spared tier of video game making. I might eventually get it and I might not.
Keep in mind that Super Nintendo games were $60 or $70 in the mid 90s. Games have come down in relative price recently and are only now starting to creep back up, but that's because gaming has become a massively popular hobby and a lot of people want huge masterpieces like GTA 6 or Elder Scrolls 6.
It's honestly shocking to me looking back that we were able to afford new games back then. I saved up literal pennies to buy SMB3. The lady at Toys R Us was visibly pissed at me, and more pissed at my mom for letting me pay that way. We weren't rich, though we were slightly above the middle of middle class. But even my lower middle class friends could afford to buy video games back then.
It's probably never been a better for indie games.
The arms race inherent in the world of computer gaming is reaching a point of unsustainability. I started thinking that way back when I could donate cpu time on my ps3 to protein folding simulation.
And, like most of our field, it’s a ratchet that only goes up. Efficiency and clever engineering to create an accessible experience is almost always lower down the list of priorities for these big corporate AAA publishers .
They’re more interested in swinging their dick further than the other guy. A lot of the time this doesn’t actually buy something more fun, popular, or playable. But the mind of an exec beholden to shareholders is obligated to invest in bloat. meanwhile I’m having a delightful time running clever little indie games on my steam deck.
Says the company charging a minimum of $10/mo to play online (Game Pass) when you can do it for free (with the same game) on the PC.
They're talking about their own "industry", not the entire gaming industry, right? Riiight?
There's plenty of affordable stuff. But I'm not the target audience for their 50 or 60 € release titles. And my backlog is long enough either way.
Hopefully they sell WoW, Diablo, Halo and any of the few good IPs they own (directly or indirectly) off
They will sell it to another big studio that will milk it dry
PS6 and Xbox whatever aren't going to come out for a very long time.
Emulating is becoming Easier.
