Looks at:

1. AAA games costing 100€+ between base game and season pass.

2. Online services on consoles constantly raising prices.

3. Consoles that, over the time cost more instead of less.

4. Wages frozen in time for years.

5. Rest of unrelated to videogames stuff but that drain people's wages.

I WONDER WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SPEND LESS IN VIDEOGAMES...

Yup, no way to figured this one out.

Also competition, and I'm not actually talking about indie games, although that's helping. Competition with older games. Why in the world would someone pay $80 for a mediocre new game when they could replay a classic hit that they haven't played in few years? When was the last time you played the witcher 3, or the mass effect trilogy? Would you rather replay one of those, or pay $80 for the new assassin's creed?

There's also lots of (frequently not even that) old games that I never got around to/never heard about that I can now get on sale for 5$ or whatever, so it's not always a matter of replaying.

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.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with shitty half baked $70 games

I’m pushing 40 so I’m not young but I’ve actually been buying more games lately thanks to being patient and not rushing out to buy AAA games along with switching from console to PC, gotta love Steam sales. I just bought two games I’ve been wanting to play for $30.

Don't forget all the online requirements with accounts even if you want to play single player, and constant server issues on launch that seem to happen with every game now because none of them allow community servers anymore.

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.

Exactly, picked up RDR2, AC Odyssey and Bloodborne for about $45 recently. This constant pressure to move people toward a subscription model only works if there's trust. Too much bullshit = shrinking sales

I picked up three games for mad cheap that I've pirated for a long time. I'll give you money devs, if the price is right.

Studies conducted at my desk and on my couch have also found a downward trend in video game quality.

and the microtransactions inside them. and the underwhelming day 1 dlc.

Also, the games market was brought up a lot by the global pandemic and had to come down eventually.

For me, its the long term viability of older games vs new ones. I can play older games on their original console or pc and they don't have always onoine functions that break the game when the server shuts down. Hell, I am having a great time re-playing nfsu2 on my og xbox. I don't find it any less fun than most wanted or some of the newer ones when I only have 30 minutes to play.

Somewhere out there is an article by someone who walked around a games conference and came away from the experience horrified that so much of the content he was seeing was from small indie studios who weren’t in a position to hire wastes of oxygen like himself, and was furiously nail-biting about what this would do to the state of the industry.

Related news is the authors of Dave the Diver having to explain that they are in no way an independent studio, and they do not deserve the award they just received for “best independent blah blah,” because “indie” has at this point simply become completely synonymous with “original and good.”

Because they feel frustrated that they cant keep playing the games they paid with their hard-earned cash due to publishers destroying them.

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how much money do young americans have to blow on video games? people are struggling. is it really surprising that, as disposable income vanishes, so does recreation spending?

I'm a pretty conservative game purchaser. I've never paid over $40 for a game (including games on sale) because there are so, so many amazing indie games on Steam that charge so little for many hours of fun.

When I see a AAA game come out, I know it's going to be profit-driven, uninspired, and rushed because it exists solely for the purpose of making money for a large corp. For that reason (among others), I avoid them altogether because I know my dollar goes way further going toward an independent developer who makes games for passion (and only sometimes for money). The passion always shines through in their work, unlike passionless AAA games.