The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?
  • cybervseas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    3 days ago

    It’s nice to see gaming covered in NYT at all. The article generally rings hollow to me. I’m not an industry expert, but:

    • It’s easy to be profitable when you’re just making a sandbox and your players make the games, but at that point are you a game developer? (Roblox)
    • High end graphics cards have become so expensive that people can’t afford gaming with good graphics
    • AAA developers aren’t optimizing games as well as they used to, so only high end hardware would even run them
    • AAA is more focused on loot boxes, microtransactions, season passes, and cinematics all wrapped up in great visuals. That’s at the expense of innovative gameplay and interesting stories. Making the graphics worse won’t get execs to greenlight better games, just uglier ones. And they’ll still be $70.
    • Even when games are huge successes and profitable, studios are getting bought and shut down (EA, Microsoft, Sony?), so it’s hard to say the corps are hurting.