AAA costs too much to produce and rarely makes its money back. Indie is flooded with vibe coded Unity crap. The middle is lost in the sea with all of the above. Wouldn’t be surprised if there is a bit of a reset in the coming years, especially after the rumored $1200-$1800 project helix pricing.
Never underestimate Microsoft’s ability to ruin something good. They won’t shut down but by the time it ends up being sold off it will be a shadow of its former self.
It was thought that the reason Nintendo went after Switch emulators so hard was because the OS/security under the hood of S2 was so similar to S1 that it would make for an easy path toward emulation. Now that we have the first game rips out, looks like there was some truth to that.
A lot of it can also just being having control of the stuff you purchase. If you have a copy of the game that you control, they cannot take it away from you and you have the ability to emulate it to beyond the restrictions of the original hardware.
I think early next year there is going to be a cultural moment in gaming that will be to big to ignore. That being the first team that manages to rip and recompile GTA6 to the PC. It will be the gaming equivalent of before and after the moon landing.
It was dying even before emulation/decomps. The amount of Ps5 exclusives after 6 years (in two weeks) is grim at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_games
As Gaben said “Piracy is a service problem”. Unfortunately for Nintendo, if they won’t the people will. I am not a fan of most AI stuff but the whole LLM powered de/recompilation thing this year has been wild to see. I don’t think it has dawned on Nintendo and Sony yet that their castle walls are being torn down and their hardware exclusivity isn’t going to hold like it has in the past.
I see that Microsoft is trying to please the hoards with Xbox labs but it feels like desperation rather than acceptance.
Credit to Sharma, she seems to be pushing to get stuff out the door quick. For better or worse.