It's weird to say "yes" to this because honestly I think indie gaming has never been better, and there are a staggering number of great things to play on any console. But yeah, definitely, I think things have floundered at least for Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft has no really reliable, viable franchises to rely on. Even Forza is stumbling (though a new Forza Horizon could certainly course-correct that). Leadership at MS seems aimless. Sony is building some momentum but they can only produce a limited number of sure-fire hits a year. Third-parties seem to be struggling with AAAs that aren't just continued iterations of long-running franchises.
Obviously COVID played a huge part in upsetting the direction of a lot of major games and I think we're still feeling that - after all, games development for AAA things isn't just a year or two's time. So I'm curious what the latter half of the 2020s will bring, as well as a new crop of consoles. Do they pivot away from AAA games to make less remarkable but potentially less costly A or AA games? Does leadership change? I don't honestly know. You can feel some kind of seismic shift in game development and what that will be is intriguing.
@finaldasa: Or at the very least, becoming intensely splintered. I'm starting to think the Nextlander boys might have figured out the best modern-day formula for keeping a group of games insiders together, but man, do I hate to see the death of the traditional games sites.
I wanted to come in and make a joke about the OP wanting us to exclude the two biggest glaring bouncing reasons why DOA isn't taken seriously, but honestly, thinking about it, I'm kinda bummed about this whole series' direction. The fighting mechanics are so damn good but it refuses to evolve beyond a frat boy mentality, and throwing unchecked greed behind that in its DLC situation soured me compleely on the games.
I don't know that I ever got the vibe Microsoft was pushing this as the "killer app to be waiting for," and it's weird that an aggregrate score of 80 would be considered mixed, but okay.
This one was never going to be for me. Never did play the first one. I should check out a Let's Play of it or something. It looked interesting.
@thepanzini: I'd say whatever can best shorten the length of development time while making the most minimal cuts to visual quality. That's a statement that's obviously up for interpretation but as games get more and more complex, I think the engines behind them need to get more simplified. Or maybe not simplified, but... manageable? I'm not in tech, which is probably readily apparent, so I'm talking out of my ass here. I should also note that this may sound like I'm advocating for AI, which isn't the case, or at least not AI that replaces people. Never going to be a fan of that.
I think whoever is best poised for long-term gains isn't going to be the company that has the best games or the best studios, but who has the best and easiest engines and tech with which to develop games. I honestly don't know who that is at this point - that's not something I'm familiar with - but it seems obvious thatthere has to be some kind of great technical shift in getting AAA games to market, or at least a prioritization of marketing smaller-scale games to an audience that has generally been fed the idea that the biggest and shiniest games are the best ones.
Again, I'm not sure if that's Micorsoft or not. But it is a lot more complex than "who has the best studios."
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