One reader worries that the games industry is rapidly changing into something he doesn't recognise and no longer enjoys.
I knew last week's State of Play was going to be awful, so I can't pretend to be surprised that there were no big announcements, but it was still pretty depressing. Concord was way worse than I expected, so blatant and uninteresting, it felt like a joke. But it's not a joke, it's the future of gaming as Sony sees it. But to me it feels more like the end than the future.
Over the past year or so, things have only gotten worse for the games industry, with console sales dropping, publishers laying off thousands of employees, a dwindling number of new announcements, and an ever-increasing lack of communication between companies.
It all happened so quickly. The first few years after the pandemic seemed relatively normal, but then around 2022, it started to become a constant stream of bad news. But I think what's worse is the complete lack of leadership. Sony ignored the problem and refused to talk about it or anything else for that matter.
I doubt Nintendo will say anything, but Japanese publishers don't seem to have the same issues. Microsoft certainly does, and while they've spoken at some length about the issues, I don't believe a word of what they say. Does anyone really believe they don't have more multi-format releases planned, or that hardware isn't less important as a result?
I've been playing video games since the early 90s and I remember many times imagining what gaming would be like 20 or 30 years from now. Back then, there were always amazing advancements in graphics and game design, but it was clear that technology was holding it back and we could only guess at what would be possible if we had consoles as powerful as we have today.
I envisioned what we would recognize today as an open world game, one where you could go anywhere and do anything in any type of vehicle you wanted, and up until the beginning of this generation, everything seemed to be evolving in the way that I (and probably millions of other people) expected.
The graphics were getting better, the games were bigger and more customizable, but the prices were never going to rise dramatically, and everyone seemed happy, until suddenly it seemed like games just weren't profitable anymore and the whole thing had to become live service trash like Concord.
Just like that, the entire progress of video games as we know it came to a halt like a car crash, and we got nothing in its place… only to be replaced by live service games later, when they're ready.
Suddenly it feels like everything I thought about the game was a dream, and now I've been abruptly awakened and it's all melting away. Am I exaggerating? Maybe, but look at the current release schedule, look at the latest gameplay, and tell me I'm wrong.
And before anyone says I shouldn't bother and I should just go back into my backlog or replay my old games, that's just running away from the problem. I don't want to live in the past. I want the exciting future I've always envisioned for games, and that seemed perfectly on schedule until a few years ago. But now it's all fading away so fast, and I fear there's nothing worthwhile left.
Reader Clayton
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