Oh gee! I wonder why is this happening?!
I guess we'll never know!
Anyway, let's release another copy-paste game at 90€/$ with 50€/$ in dlcs and another collector edition with some plastic toy for 300!
Don't forget to delete last year's version from all your customers' hard drives!
Look: we just removed the game from your account so you can purchase the new one without regrets!
A collectors edition that doesn’t include the game either.
But it does have a moldy nylon bag!
It's for your own good. This way you can purchase the game separately and we keep the collector edition at a reasonable price tag.
90€ + 50€ • DLC? Isn't that too little for the poor record-profit industry titans with budgets in the billions and nonsensical brand loyalty all over the world?
Less money to buy games, cost of games go up, quality still crap, riddled with micro transactions. Why buy a game when it comes out when you can wait to buy it on a sale while you play your backlog and by the time you buy the game it will be the best version because they had time to fix it up, almost never to the degree it should be but still the best it's going to get
What stands out most from the article is that the 18-24 demographic has a 25% drop off compared to other groups with a 5% drop off.
Not a great sign for the future if cut backs isn't simply due to deciding to be fiscally responsible, but overall money problems for every day expenses.
Reporter Rachel Wolfe concluded that contributing factors to dropped spending included a difficult job market, student loans, and a particularly high credit card delinquency rate among those aged 18 to 29.
Not just Gen Z lol. People don't have money, games are a luxury, luxuries are the first to go when you need to stretch your cash. Not that complicated.
I have money for games...but NONE of it is going to any company that makes me scream AAAAA..or when they charge 40+ for a game. screw em.
even their 100$ trash at 95% off..hell no. that's even worse cause you know the game is extra shit.
all my money goes directly to Indy devs. games are actually fun, made with passion and they don't try to screw me every chance they get. I stopped with big title garbage like 6-7 years ago. never going back.
this mentality even applies to all my shopping. I don't buy crap anymore and I wish more people would do the same.
But then how can you create an artificial divide and pit one generation against another?
Modern games fucking suck. Start making good shit if you want people to buy them.
Also fuck the useless malware anticheats. Do it server side if you want to be even mildly effective or fuck off.
Playing indie games only until so-called AAA get their shit together, if ever . . .
Do they have money? I don't have money.
Modern games from major devs fucking suck.
From my perspective as a millennial, people are running out of time and energy too.
Like, I know a couple, both working, no kids, avid and techy gamers who know to play stuff like KCDII, yet they mostly plop down for YouTube at the end of the day. A VG or longer form TV is too draining, and too long.
Video games have been my biggest hobbies for basically my entire life, but I barely play them anymore for basically this reason.
They're spending their time scrolling. The GenZ equivalent of television. GenZ is also getting older. The median age is over college graduate age. They're simply working more or doing other things besides video games. Not everyone is a Paradox gamer. I'm sure the GenZ Paradox gamers, PC gamers, and FPS/sports enthusiasts are all still buying the same games. But the people growing out of it might buy 1-2 per year and play ~10 hrs per month. The "youngest GenZ" is about 13 years old now.
Setting aside how unusual it is for overall spend to decrease in this age cohort (I encourage people to read the WSJ report linked in this article), this is the only comment here that hits on the most newsworthy part of this. Video games have been recession-resistant for decades, but now we're seeing it as a leading category for cutbacks. Even though gaming is a low-cost hobby, zoomers have found alternatives, and that surely includes F2P games.
While trends haven't been great for a while now, this is the most alarming data I've seen yet for the traditional gaming market. I feel like I'm gonna blink and there's going to be a generational divide like there is with baseball.
Yeah. People have no money. Ask one of the billionaires to prop up this failing industry.
Edit: /s
I also didn't really buy many games until I had proper salary. 🤷🏻♂️ Some of gen-Z are still pretty young and they are just poor students...
They don’t come out with original work that gets people interested and/or they enshittify the franchise. If GreatGame was good, we’re on GreatGame VI with microtransactions, paid skins, fortnite play, no immersive single player campaign, and ads with no real change to anything else.
Look outside AAA gaming. It‘s never been better.
Judging by the comments, reading the article seems to be a lost art. Here's the image for y'all:
It's very specifically about 18-24 year olds, compared to last year, with video games seeing the steepest decrease.
You can stop complaining about games being soulless, unless you want to claim that wasn't a problem last year. Well, you can, but it's unrelated then. Compared to last year, this age group has felt the need to cut back at everything more so than anyone else.
Almost like they have no money to spend after rent and food.
Like others said, it's not just Gen-Z.
Funny enough, the main reason I'm spending far less is not the shitty economy, but rather the gaming industry's push to kill physical copies.
I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but if I'm forced to go with a digital copy this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until they're massively discounted.
Could it be that the economy fucking sucks?
Nope, clearly it's our fault for not just going out and buying stuff.
there are also almost no new games worth even looking at anymore. There are some, but they are quite rare
Y'all, this market is beyond saturated. And the AI gaming people are flOOOoding the space with more and more stuff.
In terms of a fun way to spend an hour or two, or a few go-to games, there's unlimited options, many free or free enough. Meanwhile, everyone churning out titles expects full attention and wishlist and dropping $50 on them for simply existing.
I don't really follow current games. Is there actually a huge increase of AI games?
There are also some games with active modding communities that can be played basically forever without getting boring.
Why buy a new game when you have no money and your backlog will take years to go through?
Well, gee, I wonder why. Not like their money isn't going more for necessities after all
As a millennial, the games today are mostly shit. I’m currently playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it’s amazing. I had a blast with DK Bananza as well. Deltarune was nice too. But before that? AstroBot. And before that? I don’t know. Usually I play a demo of a game, if that’s not available I pirate it and play for half an hour or so. If I like it, I buy it. If I don’t like it, I won’t buy it and won’t play any further. And on top of that, a lot of games released today are just remakes of games that themselves released on PS3/Xbox360/PC. I mean "The Last of us remastered"??? That game was released on PS4, so I can just pop it in my PS5 and play it. But now the devs want me to pay $70 to have it a tiny bit better looking?
"Lost Soul Aside" will release later this month. I remember years ago when I first heard of this game, made by a single person (who now got a team of developers from Sony). And I will definitely get that. No demo required.
The whole world is cutting back on everything everywhere as no one wants to be left short if this global economic craziness gets even more out of hand.
and indie games are cheaper and better
Yeah, why would anyone buy another copy of Mario Kart with minor changes for €80 when there's much better indie games for a quarter or less of that price?
I think SOME of it has to do with AAA being dogshit, but I think a lot of it is actually that they just play roblox. I have been told "why would I buy peak when roblox has this mountain climbing game for free?"
Did industry try to raise prices even more? Maybe higher prices is what's missing for gaming industry to blossom /s
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