I wasn’t too invested at the time, as I essentially skipped the sixth generation of consoles when those were the state of the art in gaming. I did know about them, of course, and I did play on them occasionally, over at friends or perhaps borrowing a console. But when the seventh and eighth generation came around, I was intrigued, and eventually got an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 4—to once again join the console community with my own machine.
Now, consoles have been part of me since earlier on too, but I feel those generations are more abstract, even if one knew about the eternal battle between Sega and Nintendo. The seventh and partly eighth generation made it feel more like a real thing, as suddenly keeping the games around even when completed had value in itself. The point I want to make: from being a magical backdrop when I was a kid, to something more tangible, purchased with my own money—consoles have always been there, regardless of where I was in life. But all that is coming to an end…
What happened?
The reason I’m saying this is that everything that was gaming “hype” has been replaced by extreme cynicism, and I’m not just talking about my own experience. It’s impossible to not feel it, even if you don’t read much gaming news, because as it is: the big three are currently in a ritual suicide. So, going from greener pastures to…
…the eighth and ninth generation, when everything changed. From having three global dynasties (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) battling it out for supremacy—who will serve mankind the best entertainment? All three, about the same time, turned on their audience by switching to extreme greed and replacing their grand ideas and staff with corporate homogenization, as creative stagnation is guaranteed with that in place.
Physical games shall be removed, and only endless multiplayer games shall be created that can be monetized ad infinitum. These issues are merely a drop in a much deeper decline, as its main problem is structural. Which means no change is coming for the foreseeable future.
The big three
I’m not going to go into specifics, but those who know know. The happenings are too many to list, but it’s a cascade of bad decisions. Microsoft’s Xbox division has essentially been run into the ground, with Game Pass being an extreme money pit with very little to show for it. Now all those studios that they bought are being dismantled, turning all those millions to dust you want to remove with an air can. I don’t see any kind of recovery for Xbox, at least not for the coming ten to fifteen years—the Xbox dream is dead as RROD.
Then we have Sony, who is hellbent on creating as many live-service games as possible that nobody wants to play—spending several hundreds of millions on each version. But that’s a minor concern compared to suddenly announcing that all games on its systems will be digital only, which I feel is going against the premise of being a console in the first place.
Basically, making any kind of interest in PlayStation 5 (and a future PlayStation 6) of mine, vaporize. Sony is currently speedrunning the worst entertainment company award, as they have turned up the anti-consumer rhetoric to an all-time high. While Sony has the money in contrast to Microsoft, they have embraced corporate dystopia where the buyer must be exploited to the max. Prepare to be a corporate, digital slave. Sign here, here, and here with your soul, please!
Then finally we have Nintendo. Nintendo is not as lost, nor as hostile to its consumer base (from an outside perspective, yet hostile enough)—but they are a bloated, uninspired and money-grubbing company that just keeps re-releasing the same type of games and expects everyone to just gobble it up.
To me, Nintendo is the odd man out. I was always glad for its existence, but the games and hardware never interested me much. And seeing them now, it’s no different. As mentioned: they only release the same old titles every generation, but now made worse somehow, with additional lust for capital on top. This company is not good either, and currently, I can’t help but view them as a shadow of their former self—stuck in an extremely dull and lackluster rut that will only get worse with zero hype in sight. Mamma mia, indeed!
But PC?
The outlier is the PC, but it’s not a console now, is it? And the battle for physical games was lost a long time ago, and its gaming market is essentially relegated to Steam’s low-effort gaming slop releases. While Steam might be doing good now, I foresee this being its own kind of disaster. There are just too many poorly made games being released, if not outright scams with only a handful indie titles among thousands actually deserving money. I have stopped browsing their “new games” selection, as doing so is an exercise in painful suffering.
Other than Steam, and maybe GOG, there is no uniting factor that has any hype here either. PC used to stand out with its massive online shooters and MMOs, but since a few generations back, things have been homogenized over consoles and PC. It’s just boring, to be honest. Watch any gaming show that focuses on PC: it’s endless indie slop that all look the same and are just iterations of the same game.
It might be in a better place, financially, and idea-wise, as games are released in all genres on this system. However, the hype factor here has been stomped into oblivion as well, which means PC in its current format is no savior or replacement for an era now lost. Sir, hype is verboten!
Lamenting the death
I’m trying not to be a total downer here, but I really don’t see this era continuing, not even in its dying phase for long. It’s a sad state of affairs, especially for something that has been with me and many others for the entirety of our lives.
Sure, things were declining earlier too, but we always had the physical games that we could gawk at in a store. But now, with Sony leading the way, the fate of digital-only games seems sealed for consoles too. No more taking a quick peek in the Gamestop store, or the mom-and-pop used-gaming store down the street—sitting around with your eyes glued to the screen is the future while you pay full price for ten-year-old titles (or if all, if they haven’t been discontinued).
The only way out is if this industry had a massive crash, which would force the big three to show some humbleness towards the base that created them. The coming years will be painful, I’m sure, both for the consumers and the producers—hype is dead, all hail the hype!
Thanks for reading.
– Thomas