Helldivers has been successful, but it remains to he seen how profitable it will be if they have to keep pumping money into it.
Fact is, there are signs that consumer demand, especially among older gamers (those of us with jobs who have our own money to spend), is shifting back towards single-release games that don't require perpetual internet connections and never-ending patches and updates.
It's also just a measure of opportunity cost. I personally have only a few hours per week to spend on gaming nowadays, and I'd much rather spend those hours making progress in a campaign, playing something familiar with my friends or trying out one new title than wasting time on constantly having to relearn or readjust to a new meta in a game I've already been playing that already wasn't very good.
On top of that, younger gamers are more and more interested in mobile games, or in a small number of MMOs like Fortnite that they can play with their friends. Saturating the market with new projects that require enormous sunk costs to maintain live service is simply a waste of money given the near-zero likelihood that such a game is going to become the Next Big Thing. And if it doesn't, then nobody will play it, even if it's good.
Helldivers has been successful, but it remains to he seen how profitable it will be if they have to keep pumping money into it.
Fact is, there are signs that consumer demand, especially among older gamers (those of us with jobs who have our own money to spend), is shifting back towards single-release games that don't require perpetual internet connections and never-ending patches and updates.
Probably because we've been burned too many times with live service games.
There will be a few that exist but like MMOs and Warcraft when it was relevant, they'll be the exemption than the rule.
It's also just a measure of opportunity cost. I personally have only a few hours per week to spend on gaming nowadays, and I'd much rather spend those hours making progress in a campaign, playing something familiar with my friends or trying out one new title than wasting time on constantly having to relearn or readjust to a new meta in a game I've already been playing that already wasn't very good.
On top of that, younger gamers are more and more interested in mobile games, or in a small number of MMOs like Fortnite that they can play with their friends. Saturating the market with new projects that require enormous sunk costs to maintain live service is simply a waste of money given the near-zero likelihood that such a game is going to become the Next Big Thing. And if it doesn't, then nobody will play it, even if it's good.
Give with me dedicated servers and mod tools. If you have that a game is basically immortal.