What happened with Gen 9 consoles?

[Grindspine]

This video is worth a watch. It is a good commentary on the state of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 nowadays...

Annddd... as a related follow up, what happened with the modern Halo games?

[CreepinDeth]

I've only watched the first video and my reply is only about that one. It's not a bad video. Some good points but I would argue some of his reasoning is a bit subjective. I personally don't think it's the worse gen. I highly prefer it to the 360/PS3 days due to the fact that we don't have consoles with exotic CPUs.

But I think he might not be fully seeing why gaming is the way it is today, even though he kind of touches on it. The reason is capitalism. A lot of game companies have investors. They're not really independent like they used to be. Making games is not just hard, but incredibly expensive these days. If a game fails to make their sales projections, then you see layoffs and project cancellations.

This is why you see a bunch of Fortnite/CoD/R6/Overwatch clones coming out. Actually, it's not just capitalism, it's also gamers who created this themselves. Gamers these days want instant gratification. They want games that are constantly updated with more content.

See, developers/publishers are not just competing for money, they are competing for gamer's time/attention as well. These battle royale/multiplayer games are constantly at the top of the most time played on PC and console. If gamers are only playing one game, then other games are going to fail and that starts a domino effect. And if they're also putting money into these by purchasing battle packs (or whatever you call them) then other games are going to have a tough time competing. Gamers only have so much money to put into their hobby.

It's a tough industry. Many are losing their jobs because of failed sales projections, so you see remake after remake coming out because those will usually bring in a little more money than a brand new IP.

I would argue the consoles themselves aren't the issue. I'm glad the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S exist because they are not held back by crappy Jaguar CPUs like the PS4/XBone. It's just that we are now in an era where the industry has trapped itself into having to produce ridiculous profits to survive.

[BLUEVOODU]

@CreepinDeth - I think that's a pretty good assessment.   Gamers have a hand in this for sure.

I will also say... it's not just gaming... what you see here is now a world-wide phenomena.  What does that mean?? 

The entire world has been stuck since just before 2000.  Salaries have been stuck for many... only until recently were salaries going up a bit.  I would argue it's only in some industries.  Cars... yeah, there's been technological improvements... but they all look the same.   Music ... almost everything is on the table now.  I would argue this is a great thing for many older established musicians though.  For newer musicians, there appears to be a rubber stamp they need to hit.  There are tons and tons of examples.

A rubber stamp has been figured out for many industries.  They don't really deviate from the formula.  Capitalism, we can argue, is the issue.  I would argue it goes beyond that ... it's the way of the world now.

I don't see an easy way out as creativity is not really rewarded outside a select few examples.