Video games spending by young Americans is dropping sharply, report suggests
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I love the constant onslaught of articles that are like “people aren’t spending money anymore!!!” Open your damn eyes. We all got smart and refuse to pay $80 (which is now the new forced norm for “AAA” garbage) and are replaying oldies and indies. Hell, I revamped my 3DS and have dumped a ton of games onto it. I can even play some of them online with people again via Pretendo.
Like all of the reasons are so obvious why people aren’t dumping money into this industry anymore. Capitalists fucked it all up and put profit over fun. We’re not all dipshits that fall for the constant micro transactions and grifts.
I legit don’t give a single shit about any of the new “AAA” games coming out. Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
People are dumping money still, revenue isn’t shrinking
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It's funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like "why don't they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?"
Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.
They were thinking about that back then, various people have said it, but I think they were constrained by costs and technical limitations. Bill Gates certainly wanted Xbox and windows gaming to be a unified platform. I mean look at Valve, they had the Steam Machine ages ago and they flopped, but you can be sure that they will be much popular this time around.
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This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn't ever call myself "well-off" but I don't have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit. It's kind of awesome.
I get paid less than I could be, but I don't care about that since it means I don't need to work 70 hours a week and spend the rest of my time sleeping.
wrote last edited by [email protected]This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn’t ever call myself “well-off” but I don’t have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit.
Neither do they! They aren't workaholics, they're home bodies that work the least they can!
It's just that the workplaces are shit. One went back to mandated RTO for no reason even though much of the work is overseas at odd hours. The company's literally trying to make employees miserable so they quit without severence. The other is work-from-home, but with enough pointless meetings and complete workplace dysfunction to eat energy.
And these seem like well above average jobs.
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This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn’t ever call myself “well-off” but I don’t have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit.
Neither do they! They aren't workaholics, they're home bodies that work the least they can!
It's just that the workplaces are shit. One went back to mandated RTO for no reason even though much of the work is overseas at odd hours. The company's literally trying to make employees miserable so they quit without severence. The other is work-from-home, but with enough pointless meetings and complete workplace dysfunction to eat energy.
And these seem like well above average jobs.
wrote last edited by [email protected]All I can say is: unionize. My position is union (and has been for a very long time so its ingrained into the culture there), and it's difficult to even comprehend the number of ways it has improved working conditions. Literally invaluable. I couldn't work there more than 35 hours a week if I wanted to.
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They were thinking about that back then, various people have said it, but I think they were constrained by costs and technical limitations. Bill Gates certainly wanted Xbox and windows gaming to be a unified platform. I mean look at Valve, they had the Steam Machine ages ago and they flopped, but you can be sure that they will be much popular this time around.
True, I'm definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn't have entered the console market at all. I'd probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up "Games For Windows! Live" or whatever it was called.
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True, I'm definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn't have entered the console market at all. I'd probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up "Games For Windows! Live" or whatever it was called.
Yep they definitely missed the boat on that one. Which is why I think they are so keen on turning Xbox into a platform. With how PC hardware is going, they have a chance to take back some market from Valve and maybe convert people from Playstation as well. The risk here is that they can’t sell the “consoles” at a loss, so they will be undercut by Sony by a significant amount of money. But their answer to that is probably “it doesn’t matter, everything is an Xbox now, the console is for the enthusiast market”.
Bold strategy, we’ll see if they can pull it off.
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I am playing a new character in Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind right now.
The modding community for that game is so good, with OpenMW (a open source engine rebuild) and the tool "umo" it was so easy to install a curated mod list that not only upscaled the graphics but also extended the game with not only a huge part of the Morrowind mainland but also parts of cyrodiil and Skyrim.
So much new content and places to explore now!You wouldnt happen to be on linux would you?
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The single player is pretty good in that. It's definitely worth trying out.
Being in the giant mech doesn't feel any different than not being in it though. That's my only complaint.
I remember at the time titanfall came out, the mechs moving like a human was a selling point. I do agree though it is odd to experience when its not a novelty.
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- overpriced games
- fully-priced games with microtransactions and day 1 DLCs.
- overpriced hardware
- games released broken, fixed later
- Invasive DRM
- Always-online requirements
- annoying ads/microtransactions
- invasive telemetry
- third party launchers
- third party accounts
- Publishers intentionally misleading reviewers
- False/misleading marketing from GPU OEMs
What else am I missing?
Not fixed later, fixed maybe.
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Can’t wait till the indie wave wakes up the realization that there is a goldmine of 90s games that were incredible. Star control 2 for one could probably be mistaken for a new indie hit nowadays.
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I love the constant onslaught of articles that are like “people aren’t spending money anymore!!!” Open your damn eyes. We all got smart and refuse to pay $80 (which is now the new forced norm for “AAA” garbage) and are replaying oldies and indies. Hell, I revamped my 3DS and have dumped a ton of games onto it. I can even play some of them online with people again via Pretendo.
Like all of the reasons are so obvious why people aren’t dumping money into this industry anymore. Capitalists fucked it all up and put profit over fun. We’re not all dipshits that fall for the constant micro transactions and grifts.
I legit don’t give a single shit about any of the new “AAA” games coming out. Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
If they're still functional, thankfully there's the Stop Killing Games movement.
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Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
If they're still functional, thankfully there's the Stop Killing Games movement.
I love the movement that has gotten. I’m cheering for it.
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People are dumping money still, revenue isn’t shrinking
Yeah, I think the decline is a drop in a bucket considering. I know plenty of people still buying the Switch 2 etc. on launch day.
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The hobby is getting more expensive while income left over after cost of living is going down. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
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Can’t wait till the indie wave wakes up the realization that there is a goldmine of 90s games that were incredible. Star control 2 for one could probably be mistaken for a new indie hit nowadays.
I've been playing X-Wing. The mad lads who built XWVM have essentially modernized the game and got it working on and with modern hardware, while strictly preserving its feel. It's amazing.
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Yep, I know a lot of people who would balk at buying games but have no qualms dropping more than 100$ per month on gacha games.
We desperately need to ban all forms of real money gambling in games, or at least prevent kids from accessing it.
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Or even better, play an old game that you still haven't played. I can get titanfall 2 for the price of a coffee and play it for the first time if I'm craving for a good AAA fps.
Oh shiiiit, do that and come back and talk to us when you get to the time travel level.
Are we just in the phase of the medium where technology isn't the defining quality. It would be slightly weird to try to stay at the forefront of, say, novels without any regard for reading classics. Why shouldn't games be the same?
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That and broad, massive economic collapse in basically every other sector, at least in the US.
Can't play vidya gaem if hev no food starve.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/adp-jobs-report-june-2025.html
Oops.
Labor market (# of actual jobs) is now actually net contracting, shrinking.
Expected: +100k jobs
Reality: -33k jobs
Firings / Layoffs > Hiring.
Also the population grows, so uh, it actually has to be something like +200k to +250k to remain steady in terms of working age people vs jobs.
Sure, there are lots of 'job openings', but they're all fake ghost job bullshit that never actually hire anyone.
And they don't pay enough to bother doing them, and they have insane requirements that make no sense.
Great Depression 2.0 Gaming!
(The housing market is also collapsing if any readers haven't been paying attention.
My semi-educated guess is about a 55% drop by 24 months from now, compared to roughly '23-'24 highs.
Hope your boomer parents didn't buy in the last 5 years rofl!)
wrote last edited by [email protected]BLS jobs report was a beat, +140k jobs and unemployment down a shade. I agree with you on the themes but it doesn't help to cherry pick data.
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because of our kleptogeriocracy
Because of our what?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Old people be stealing
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I love the constant onslaught of articles that are like “people aren’t spending money anymore!!!” Open your damn eyes. We all got smart and refuse to pay $80 (which is now the new forced norm for “AAA” garbage) and are replaying oldies and indies. Hell, I revamped my 3DS and have dumped a ton of games onto it. I can even play some of them online with people again via Pretendo.
Like all of the reasons are so obvious why people aren’t dumping money into this industry anymore. Capitalists fucked it all up and put profit over fun. We’re not all dipshits that fall for the constant micro transactions and grifts.
I legit don’t give a single shit about any of the new “AAA” games coming out. Give me a call when they’re in the bargain bin years from now.
Exactly this. The new game cycle these days is:
- Game is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff.
- Release date is announced.
- Game is delayed.
- Reviewers/early access people get it, turns out it has none of the cool stuff form the announcement video.
- Game is delayed again.
- Game finally comes out, with 3 different tiers that are like $80, $100 and $120 CAD depending on if you want the version of the game that's 30%, 40% or 50% complete.
- Game doesn't work.
- After about two years and 10 DLC packs you have about 80% of the functional game, the other 20% being stuff they were supposed to add but just never bothered, what are you gonna do about it? By this point you no longer care about the game anyway.
- Sequel is announced with shiny video showing all sorts of cool stuff, devs promise they've fixed all the broken stuff this time for real.
- Company gets bought by EA or Epic, all devs are replaced.
- Game is delayed.
Like genuinely who wants to bother with that nonsense anymore TBH.
