Old games are BEATING modern games badly

[tongue_of_colicab]

Players are increasingly dedicating their time to older, established games rather than new releases. This observation is supported by data from Newzoo, a market research firm specializing in gaming analytics.

And why would that be? Maybe because people don't want to have all sorts of shit forced down their throats when they just want to relax and play a game? All the big failures are games that are trying to do exactly that while the games that are designed to be you know, fun, do just fine.

Apart from the above I think a lot of the bigger games are just rehashing the same formula which probably makes them less interesting. Where at the point where even a 6 or 7 year old game doesn't really look worse or has outdated gameplay compared to a similar game released recently.

There's also a lot of advantages to being a couple of years behind the curve. Especially on PC. The bugs are (hopefully) worked out, games are significantly cheaper and you can make due with much more affordable hardware if you play games years after release. I'm not going to drop 1000+ bucks on a GPU to play the latest game at good settings. Rather wait 4 years and play it with all bells and whistles enabled on a card half the price.

 

[ZebMacahan]

And why would that be? Maybe because people don't want to have all sorts of shit forced down their throats when they just want to relax and play a game? All the big failures are games that are trying to do exactly that while the games that are designed to be you know, fun, do just fine.

Apart from the above I think a lot of the bigger games are just rehashing the same formula which probably makes them less interesting. Where at the point where even a 6 or 7 year old game doesn't really look worse or has outdated gameplay compared to a similar game released recently.

There's also a lot of advantages to being a couple of years behind the curve. Especially on PC. The bugs are (hopefully) worked out, games are significantly cheaper and you can make due with much more affordable hardware if you play games years after release. I'm not going to drop 1000+ bucks on a GPU to play the latest game at good settings. Rather wait 4 years and play it with all bells and whistles enabled on a card half the price.

Yeah, Space Marine 2, Wukong and Astrobot have been selling really good as far as I know. I play games to have fun.

 

[Feral]

Some new horror games are okay, but Resident Evil has been degraded a lot, particularly because Capcom keeps going back to Raccoon City for to provide a different take on familiar ground. It feels like they're a one trick pony over in Japan, because it's just rehash after rehash about Raccoon City or something else.

I just find horror games now are not that scary. Most of them just consist of you shooting a horde of the same enemies, or walking around and hiding. Which ain't fun. It's boring.

The Last of Us games and Days Gone are awesome, though. They made me believe in gaming again.

 

[Cyan]

PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now​

PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

Feels like Destiny.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm one of those people.

My little guy and I play a ton of Space Engineers together on our private home server. By myself, I've been replaying Skyrim (albeit the SE version with a small handful of mods) and I'm still playing a lot of MS Flight Simulator 2020 wih my Oculus headest and all my pedal, throttles, and yoke gadgetry.

The newest game I play with any frequency is Cyberpunk only because I've been finishing off the DLC.

 

[pcchen]

PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now​

PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

Feels like Destiny.

www.pcgamer.com

The majority of these "old games" in this story are actually live service games. They got updated constantly so I don't think they qualify as "old games" in the traditional sense. I mean, this is like saying World of Warcraft is an old game. It's really not.
With many games now going the live service model, it's actually not surprising that the majority of gamer's time are spending on these "older games." It just shows the power of live service games. This is almost like saying "92% of people drink older beverage brands" or seomthing similar.
People love to criticize game executives' love of live service games and point out many good "traditional" games selling very well, but they don't represent a lot of playing time (which is not necessarily bad, sales number after all is the most important measure), but stories like this do not really paint the full picture, and might actually encourage more developers to make live service games, which is not necessarily a good thing.

 

[Color me Dan]

The gaming market is absurdly large these days. So I think it's difficult to pinpoint reasons that apply everywhere. But a few surface level ones might just be that:

• Gamers gravitate to where their friends are. Leading to entrenchment of titles where you've already spent a lot of time, like Wow, LoL, Minecraft, etc.
• F2P games, especially, have become (or maybe always were) skinner boxes on steroids. Locking in a huge player base.
• Games are expensive, and there are plenty of them. Buying something on a Steam of GoG sale is fiscally prudent, and a great game is still a great game.
• Time is limited. Setting boundaris on how many games a consumer is likely to buy and play at any given time.
• Market oversaturation. It might be increasingly difficult for the right game to connect with the right buyer.

I'm sure there are plenty more reasons, and those reasons combine differently for different people and markets.

Something to keep in mind with the PC gamer data too is that the majority of games that gamers are purportedly playing are all live service games. In my home the TV was on ~50% for sports and maybe ~5-10% for movies. That doesn't mean that "tv-watchers" are eschewing movies for sports. I means that there is a heck of a lot of easily digestible sports content for people to watch aside from the usual evening movie. They require entierly different levels of investment from the consumer and sate different urges.

 

[tuna]

Me and my kid have started to play Fortnite in splitscreen on the PS5. 3 wins in a row now!

 

[techuse]

Modern games have an ever decreasing amount of gameplay agency. It’s a huge problem. I’m not sure why developers think giving us less control over our outcomes is a good thing.