Making this mostly because I saw this trailer which is the third game this year I'd actually WANT to play and this video from Arch on how because the games being made are all grey goo (sorry, 'quadruple A') they are losing not just to indies but DECADE old evergreen games like GTA V.
Between the constant woke stories and characters, the piss poor game mechanics and the insistence to be 'live service games' I can't tell if it's deliberate sabotage or they were so reliant on ESG that they forgot how to make a game FOR PROFIT.
And a lot of these games COULD be fixed with mods but thanks to the war on non-narrative modders, a lot of them remain a pile of shit. It's why Fallout 4 still has an active playerbase and Starfield is largely forgotten.
I think 2024, we will see at least ONE major studio fall and a ton of cope articles saying 'gaming isn't as popular' while these guys might make the next hit allowing us to drive a Toyota into medieval knights..
Nintendo is the only one with a good chance at surviving. It still retains its Japanese roots (unlike Playstation), and while it might go a bit too far in protecting its brand at times, it doesn't try to be a monopolous behemoth like Microsoft.
Not many people care that Nintendo platforms have been lower-tech than the competitors, as long as their target audience still views the games as innovative and/or fun.
Crazy that we're on the timeline where Nintendo is the least monopolistic and doing the least censorship of any game console company.
Eh, it's not the 1990s any more.
BMX XXX anybody?
It goes far on the brand thing because it's the only way to fight off the competition. Sony wants an NES emulator for their consoles. Same with Microsoft.
Almost like "higher tech" usually just ends up with 100gig file sizes to being able to see slightly more into the pores of someone's face while forgetting to make an actual fun game.
Nintendo is always hit or miss, but its AAA or First Party content at least usually has a chance of being worth playing while the other companies are offering the same "AAAA experience" that barely qualifies as a game.