Everyone is.

I don't buy new releases anymore.

Why?

Cause the prices are getting stupid. Cause its all digital downloads with no physical product. Cause my "ownership" can be revoked at any time by the platforms whims or the platforms shutdown.

What happened to digital downloads being cheaper, anyway? Thats the promise we were sold 10+ years ago. That by sacrificing physical products, Publishers/Devs wouldnt have to pay for printing, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc, so they'd be able to sell AAA new releases for 30 dollars, and Pub/Dev would still make more money.

And now we're supposed to be paying 60, 70, 80 dollars or more, for these digital download games.. that we don't even own? And because they have no product on the shelves, prices never come down either. Sure, you might find a sale like on steam or something.. but those sales pale in comparison to what they were 5, 10 years ago

Fuck that. Amazing how the only promise fulfilled on moving to digital download was that pubs/devs would get more money.. and they get that by skyrocketing the costs, not because of the sacrifices we made to give up boxes, disks, manuals, and ownership

As a old member of Gen Z, i can definitely say the prices aren't helping. A lot of people in my age group just don't work from what i've seen, so with 70$ and sometime 80$ games they aren't going to be buying many. On top of that, and this may just be the people i've exposed myself too, but most of them don't want longer experiences. They'd rather plop down with something like FF14 or Mario Kart and play that over and over and over again. That's not a bad thing, but i definitely think it's not helping. And like i said, this might just be the people i expose myself too.

The economy is terrible with both hardware and software becoming more expensive, theres a good selection of free and long-lifetime games (be it live-service or just very long and replayable), and a lot of the newer paid games have become worse.

I'd be significantly more suprised if this wasn't the case.

I sometimes forget GenZ are now adults. Some now do porn.

The seven seas are way more friendly

Why buy new when I have a backlog, the PS1/2 catalog emulated, and can wait 6+ months for a sale

Aren't we all, fam?

https://lemmy.world/c/foss_gaming

Just to add a contrasting perspective I feel like it's been an absolute golden age of gaming for me lately personally:

No Man's Sky still getting relatively fun updates. Cyberpunk 2077 was great on launch and arguably much better now.

The Last Of Us Part 2 on PC is incredible and I'm happy that the port exists so I could experience it. You haven't really played the game till you replay it with both protagonists wearing their Hotline Miami shirts in all the cutscenes. PS4 Spider-Man on PC was prolly the best superhero game I've played.

MSFS2020 opened a whole new world of flight sims to me, especially when it comes to doing fun VOR2VOR navigation with littlenavmap charts printed to PDFs and attached in VR, and Assetto Corsa did the same for racing sims.

Speaking of VR, H3VR is stronger than ever. I have many fond memories of VRChat just a few years back.

Victoria 3 has a really fun thriving modding scene. Indie games like Sea Power, Flight of Nova, Stray, Ultrakill, World of Horror, Nuclear Option, Descenders and Crisis In The Kremlin: The Cold War have been a big timesink for me lately as well as classics of indie like Suzerain and actual art masterpiece DEFCON.

It's also been great to go back and play old classics and PS3 emulation now that PC hardware is much cheaper after the crypto/scalper crises circa 2018.

Also, with Steam play and the steam deck, PC Gaming is easier than ever and just hassle-free.

I never played the popular junk so ig to me all this gacha mtx horse armor crap just doesn't really relate.

oh they are talking about AAA and AAAA games, so then they are not buying/playing fewer games but moved to the indie scene.

Its not that we cant afford them necessarily, its that we cant justify them. The main reason you needed to get the new game was because all your friends were getting it. Only nerds and dweebs and losers play single player games. CoD is where its at bro. When everyone moves to the new game you can lose social time with friends or you can spend another £50. Now that everyone is poor, enough people aren't migrating to the newest shiniest edition immediately and people are playing games they already have.

Couple that with desperately working every opportunity you can every hour and adults just don't game together any more.

Tl;dr they are not feeling the social pressure to buy any more.

Buy Indies. Fuck AAA

Unsurprisingly. Games have gotten way more expensive and a lot more soulless. Gems like BG3 are a rarity. The recently released "enhanced" edition of Neverwinter Nights 2 is an awful cashgrab and an disappointment after the successful enhanced edition of the first one so I'm just playing through the original release with an unofficial patch again...The only game I'm looking forward to this year is the new Anno and given that Ubisoft has its fingers in it I'm still wary about that one.

Live service on console was obvious on the way for every genre back on the 360/PS3 era with FIFA ultimate team and publishers also having that period of time when they were trying to kill used games with that single account multiplayer access code

Then it became super obvious because of PC from the super success of TF2 hats and eventually CSGO skins by like 2015. Trying to compete with WoW was an ocean of dead video game studios. Fortnite perfected live service on consoles and CoD adapted and went just as wild with it

Single player games, my hot take is Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Assassin's Creed killed AAA single player narrative games by succeeding so well to making future games mediocre. Mass Effect had interesting alien species dynamics but never took them with much of any depth. They were Star Wars movies rather than the wild Star Wars EU. Uncharted was a hyper popular Hollywood blockbuster where the emotional highlight being the beginning of Uncharted 4 with Nate and Elena being a cute couple.

Assassin's Creed stories kept going deeper and deeper into name dropping famous figures/mythology that it became parody. Historical clout chasing wrapped together in a nonsense overarching plot that should have had some satisfying ending back in 2012 but instead is effectively spin-offs the series

So Mass Effect hints at interesting politics but plays things safe and gives you none but Hollywood space opera in video games with solid animations and facial animations were fresh in the 360 era. Uncharted was even more extreme in that regards than Mass Effect where there was still novelty in Hollywood mimicry with even better graphics and even more scripted for explosive set pieces. Assassin's Creed and eventually Far Cry and Watch Dogs are bottom feeders. Chase trends, name drop - shotgun approach for trailer fodder. They are sadly the standards of AAA single player narrative

Also live service single player games are competitive. Stories are just as shallow but frequent in release and graphics at a level good enough now. Talking like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves

I hope they make it abnormal to own a $3000 gaming pc in middleschool again.