Video: Is Live Service Really the Way Forward for PlayStation?

Tbh I don't mind them as long as they are only supplementary to the single player experiences.

Financially it’s not a mistake, but I still hate it. Singleplayer FOCUSED games are the best games.

The only thing I hope for them is for them to be either
1. Completely isolated from most single player first party studios, while the multiplayer studios can carry the moniker of being Sony’s live service sector (ie: Bungie and Destiny)
2. Being supplemental side projects for already established and great titles and studios (ie: Ghost of Tsushima Legends/LoU Factions)
Either way, just don’t have it impact their single player titles in either quality or frequency and I’m happy. I might even support it if the games are good and money from those projects go to the overall PS ecosystem including bigger and better single player games.

The worst part about live service games is that they want you to keep coming back to it. I like to play a lot of different games, not the same one over and over.

Live services and streaming gaming services... I dislike it all.

They're gonna do whatever they want and the only thing I can do is speak with my wallet, but I'll still say it: don't fix what ain't broke. 20+ years of being a legendary brand off of the backs of incredible single player games. I truly hope they never forget what made them the juggernaut that they are.

Xbox has some good live services like sea of thieves, fallout 76 and forza horizon 5. But most of them are mediocre or badly supported.
And going by GT7 and destruction all stars I doubt sony will handle it much better. Not looking forward to them but I am curious about what bungie will make specifically.

I generally don’t want to get invested in live service games because I simply don’t have the time to make it worth it. Traditional single player games are so much easier to drop in and out of without feeling left behind.

It's all in the details.

A great single-player experience and a great multiplayer experience CAN coexist - but most of the time, one gets more attention and resources than the other. And if the live service game is built that way to facilitate play across devices - like picking up the same game on your phone, on your PC, or on your console - then it can be a powerful tool even for a primarily single-player game. And with Sony saying they want to branch out more into mobile, that approach is feasible.

But we're not all kids with unlimited free time to play online with our friends who also have unlimited free time - some us are adults, with families, who can't guarantee we can sit through an hour-long team event where one person dropping out because a kid is crying dooms the entire effort.

I'll reserve judgement until we see what they actually release. I'm hopeful, but wary.

They can coexist and I'll just ignore them like I've done so far. The rest who have an issue with them can do the same. Crazy idea. I know.

Now, if we get only or mostly live service games, that would be a legitimate reason to complain.

@JSnow2 Perhaps it's worth keeping in mind that Sony has never been anywhere near as profitable as they are now. Had they not "fixed it" cause it "ain't broke", they would only be making a small profit, like during the ps2 days.

Edit: and if you look at end of the year sales charts, you can see that it ain't single player games that sell the most. Things keep changing and as a company they need to keep evolving.

Did they announce that they were going to stop making SP games or am I missing something?

In the past 3 years Sony has released, or had exclusivity arrangements for the likes of:

Persona 5 Royal
Final Fantasy 7 Remake (and Intergrade)
Ghost of Tsushima
Death Stranding
Last of Us 2
Spiderman Miles Morales
Demon Souls
Astrobot
Sackboy - a big adventure
Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart
Returnal
Demons Souls Remake
Uncharted Legacy of Thieves
Kena etc.

All single player, largely narrative driven titles.

Sony have publicly stated they are expanding. Their big studios are making multiple titles at once.

So its not a problem, so long as the experience we have come to love from Playstation isn't impacted. I dont think it will be.

In fact if some of these live service titles perform well then this could potentially increase the amount Sony can reinvest into traditional experiences

Not a problem as long as they balance the dose of both single and multi player

The reason I like playstation is because their single player games, I have no interest in their multiplayer titles. Besides, there's like gajillion multiplayer titles on playstation platform already, sony should focus on single player titles to differentiate their console.

Sony will want to keep their core fans happy but I see Sony will want a slice of profit from live service games.

It's a terrible model and it's based on the larger disgusting economic model of endless growth. Endless growth always results in finding more and more avenues to tax the consumer financially for less and less cost and content by the producer.

Live service enables this by creating mindless grind-based content, and sleezy addiction-focused game structures to hopefully find one that sticks enough with a gullible player base to establish a new revenue stream longer term.

The gaming industry continues to move in this direction despite only a mere handful of console-based live service nonsense actually lasting long term. What's sad is that genuinely talented developers now focus primarily on this and have become a mere name; a moment in history in terms of there once achieved greatness. All attempting to chase the giant profits seen by that small handful of examples in the name of greed at the expense of those that helped made them as popular as they are.

Why cant they do both? I love Sony's single player triple-A experiences, in fact its my favorite type of game experience, which is why ive invested in their consoles since PS2. I dont think theres a risk of them abandoning these trademark games just because they want to invest in live service. Im not into live service games but theres no doubt they can be very successful, and if Sony is succesful with it, then it helps them to prosper and create the type of experiences i prefer to play. They've never said they would abandoned what their championed for...in fact , why on earth would they? Its not a case of one over the other, why are we pretending like it is?

@naruball fair points! I understand the desire for the live service $$$, I'm just saying that I sincerely hope that it never comes at the cost of the incredible single player games that they put out. It's a difficult balance that has already sadly corrupted one of the big three.

I could care less about live service but if it helps get more high quality single player games I’m all ears. I just hope Sony doesn’t veer too much away from what made them so popular in the first place.

Its not as if single player games are going to become extinct..there has to be something for everybody or else things will get pretty tedious..you dont like them then dont buy them its as simple as that..

For me playstation is the king for its single player games and is the console to have for those who love big single player experiences, so yeah sony dabbling in live service games doesn't bode well, unless they still make the same amount of single player experiences (if not more) as well as these additional live service games

@OmegaStriver Well, there are only so many people in the market for a live-service game, so only the very best games will find a market. The problem is that these games are designed to take up a lot of time, so if you have a life, you can only play one at most. There are enough single-player games out there to last me years before I need anything new. If it gets too bad, I can just retire as a gamer.

I’m okay with live service games, but having micro transactions and always online in single player games like GT7 is not cool.

Bungie is directly under Sony so PS and Bungie don't have direct correlation outsides the owner. Once said that Sony is moving from electronics to entertainment (Crunchyrroll, funimation, evo, and series with Destiny ip) also they said to investors they would have live services but at the same time they said to players PLAYSTATION is going to have more single player games. So yeah there is no mistake because those are different parts of Sony business. Sony live services will most likely be on pc, ps, xbox and switch and at the same time PS will have single player exclusives.

Depends on how they tackle it. I don't mind the "live service-lite" approach of series like Splatoon and Monster Hunter that don't overwhelm the player with predatory monetization schemes and feature fairly meaty and satisfying single-player campaigns and free updates.

But games driven by "loot," season passes, and multiplayer-only gameplay? Won't touch those with a ten foot pole.

Unfortunately, much like how paid online began and everyone else followed there is no stopping it now either way. Whether we want it or not, which I don't.

When it becomes the only way to play then I think I'm done. I've got a library of games that I doubt I'll ever get through. My backlog just keeps growing even going back 2 generations ago.

That being said I'm thinking of getting a Series X. I'm growing worried about PlayStation and losing faith. While Microsoft are practically, slowly buying up the industry and Sony have been silent about their future plans for a while, we've heard nothing. I feel like they've become complacent. I know they bought Bungie, but that's not enough reassurance.

If Microsoft are going to keep buying everything, and I doubt it's going to stop then switching will end up being a safe bet. I fear they'll get their hands on Square Enix and Sega, and if they do, not even Sony's first parties would be enough to stay. I was on my Xbox account the other day making some changes in preparation just in case. The direction the industry is going is awful, but might as well be with the platform likely to have everything.

I'm very torn on this one. I couldn't give a flying f* about live service games until GT7. Now I totally see the appeal.
With that said though, people who say "I don't mind as long as it doesn't affect single player games", well... that's simply not how this works. Any first-party funding that goes into live service games is funding that could have gone into single player experiences.

Its 100% a mistake. Their going to piss off the faithful that buy Sonys consoles for the single player experiences because all the time, talent, and money spent on these live service games are going to take away from what could be more great sp experiences. I for one won't support this Sony endeavor at all.

To everyone saying "Sony said their not going to stop making sp games". They might not stop, but the releases will slow to a crawl. Sony doesn't own half the industry like MS does. So, spreading what studios they have to make these 10 live services games will come at the cost of alot of great SP games.

@darkswabber GT7 is doing just fine. And in any case it's only live service to the degree of some added content and online multiplayer options. Most of the always online thing is due to FIA.

Maybe you could call it a game with some live service elements but it would be fine for years if you mostly left it alone now and just rotated around the multiplayer races

The point in a live service is to get your hooks in and squeeze as many pennies as possible, so no, not for me.

There's no mistake here. They've already said the live service games will not impact their single player games. They're not stupid. Push Square being drama queens like usual.

I just dont like always online, free to play, live Service and if it gets to bad ill go retro or switch to Nintendo. I have a Playstation for the singleplayer games. I wont mind Live Service if they stay where they belong in multiplayer and Ubisoft games. Fighting games are good savings now complete editions or ill just leave them. Tekken, Streetfighter, Mortal Kombat where they paywall the classic characters is a big no no. New characters and costumes not a big issue and no seasonpasses announced before the release of a bloody games.

It's a difficult one. While I do think focus should've remained on their strengths (i.e. high quality single player games), the money Sony obtains from 3rd party live service games which is probably funneled into their single player games are being increasingly eliminated by Microsoft's constant acquisitions so Sony needs a 1st party solution.

Sony has publicly said they will continue to commit to single player games, they have also said they have a new commitment to live service games. Ignoring one or the other is not an option in 2022 and beyond. Can't they do both? Why is this positioned as Sony is making a mistake? I have single player games I love, and I have live service games I also love. This is what gaming currently is. Sony makes the industry leading console. The market wants both types of games. Why is this a big issue?

@KundaliniRising333 - admirably put. I couldn't agree more or express that any better.

@JSnow2 yup. I know what you mean. I'm right there with ya.

@Art_Vandelay "that's simply not how this works. Any first-party funding that goes into live service games is funding that could have gone into single player experiences."

Yeah, about that...

Playstation needs more multiplayers , they already have multiplayers that they’re just allowing to lie dormant because they didn’t care .

I guarantee out of all the sales PS4 sold , most consoles were used for multiplayer . what originally sold the ps4 so much was the fact that it was cheaper, could share games , and was more powerful than the xone , it wasn’t single player

@Victor_Meldrew you mean keeping your retention as long as possible so you’ll keep having something to play instead of “one-and-done”-ing ?

@Art_Vandelay live service gives money to single players though ? it’s a stream of revenue

i don’t know though , i’m just assuming

Nope. Most multiplayer experiences are pretty forgettable, more so if you don't have any friends playing with you.
Single-player stories and experiences are so much more memorable!
Also, most online games nowadays are just the same crap over and over, FPS, Battle Royale, Racing, Moba...there's just no interesting variety, at least not with a good playerbase.

Yes it's the way forward. Single player games cost to much to make. There's no other way

Singleplayer campaign is the way forward.some live service is cool.but im old school i l💚ve my single playing games.word up son

Not really into the live service games. If they are alongside the single player games which has made playstation successful then fine I just most likely will not be playing them

Single Player Games were way higher quality compared to multiplayer games during last gen (low bar). I welcome Sony dipping and changing that reality and both being good, without having to sacrifice the already established SP games.

Now for people who hate mp games, make friends online or ask real life friends to play something with you. MP games can be good memorable experiences.

Now where is GowR state of play?

@Milktastrophe There's nothing wrong in playing something over and over. I wish I could get so much out of it from a $60 purchase.

The most profitable thing they could do as a business is stop making single player games and put all their eggs in the GaaS online basket. That's where the money and the market is.

That having been said, I'm a dinosaur that hangs out on Push and can't for the life of me figure out how there's so many players that can support all these life consuming online games. Somebody is playing them...I just can't figure out who, why, or how there's enough of them.

Are live services the go to to be successful? We already have a plethora of dead live service games and gamers time and money are finite, so how many of these can realistically ever be supported? These things almost demand that you play daily for their rewards, so how are you going to do that with 10 of them?

Everything now is about money and not what it can bring to gaming and its only making me less interested in where AAA gaming is headed

We don’t know cause they haven’t truly dabbled in it yet.

But as long as it remains secondary to single player experiences and doesn’t detract from their development, then i’m all for it.

If anyone can make quality games, its PlayStation. So why not try a market that is filled with mediocrity and attempt to succeed.

@AFCC that’s hilarious 😂

@NEStalgia life consuming ? have you ever met a diehard sports fan ?

@RevGaming I haven't really had memorable mp gaming sessions since the N64 days. 4 us crammed round a 14 inch t.v. and dishing out dead arms to the mate that did you wrong 😂.

I love dipping in and out of Rocket League, it's a great way to bond with my nephews who live down south. Would be great to find a game I enjoyed playing with folks here on PS though!

@nomither6 no, the opposite

Sony can’t win. They show that they are willing to adapt to the changing landscape - they’re slated. They don’t change enough - they’re slated.

I think it’s because they’ve been the front runners for a while now and some people just want to bring them down.

@nomither6 " have you ever met a diehard sports fan ?"

"I hang out on Push" .....

Does Sammy count? That's as close as I get.

Short answer, NO! a lot of people have families, social life outside of gaming and these Devs do not respect peoples time, they only care about squeezing every single penny out of gamers as much as they can smdh I'm not interested in live services and never will there are many games out there that still provide a good single player experience and I will take advantage of that, apart from the games that are open world and have 1000s of collectibles lol

@RevGaming this is not about replayability, this is about a mechanic that wants to keep you tied to Thier live services as much as possible with no end in sight, spend money and become a whale 🐳🐋🐳 is Thier aim, I feel too old for this behaviour

If great single player experiences are dropped in favor of online only crap than I'll be dropping modern gaming. It was already looking like PS5 could likely be my last generation to be up to date but this would solidify that outlook.

@Victor_Meldrew excalty, no more to be said

@Uncharted2007 I already said in the past that PS4 is my last console, with the way the gaming culture is moving towards heavy grinding and online only live services it's not for me, i have a life and I'm certainly not going to be playing overwatch 3000 or whatever it is for 1000s of hours just to unlock a skin lol

I’m not a very good customer of Sony’s anymore. I play AAA games on PC, handheld/family fun games on Nintendo, and I also subscribe to Microsoft GamePass. I don’t know when, or even if, I’ll get a PS5….

@Wesker IE never, they are still hard to get for fair retail price anyways

I have a love-hate relationship with live service titles.

I think Fortnite, despite that game’s numerous other problems, feels the most fair and balanced out of all the live service games I’ve played. Outside of the Battle Pass, I don’t spend any extra money on it and I feel like the BP offers enough rewards every season (including enough V-Bucks to buy the next battle pass) to satisfy me without being obnoxious.

It’s also a pretty well designed shooter at its core. I never play it alone; I play with three of my friends. One of them has very limited internet bandwidth, and Fortnite’s updates are pretty small and they are announced ahead of time. Plus it runs on less than stellar connections, which is a bonus.

But I will always be primarily a single player gamer. I enjoy strong narratives, compelling characters I can get invested in, and most importantly a build up of lore around the game itself. I like for my game experiences to grab me in a way that it makes me think about how the game’s narratives and character motivations relate to the real world.

You can’t really do that in live service games because there is no definitive end to it or even a beginning. You need both of those things for a strong narrative. And I’m worried that as the industry moves towards more live service games the compelling narratives and wonderful characters (like Tifa Lockhart, who’s personality traits, moral strength, and willingness to confront both her fears and how it relates to Cloud’s is my idea of the ideal woman and I’ve felt that way since I was a pre-teen experiencing FF7 for the first time) I enjoy will fall by the wayside.

I don't mind if the live service games are mmorpgs (e.g. ffxiv) or hybrid (e.g.monster hunter world where we can play it offline/online)

Ideally, I wouldn't want them to do live service games. I'm gonna wait for them to throw what they've got at us and see for our own eyes if they've handled it well or not. On the other hand, as long as they keep spitting out top quality AAA single player games, none of us should be too angry with the whole issue. That's what I think anyway...

But I will say that I hate how many live service games are predatory about your money.

Destiny 2 is one of the worst. Paid expansions that retail for 30 to 40 bucks plus multiple season passes and microtransactions? That’s downright evil in my opinion.

Just like every type of game… it depends on the game.

There are crappy single player games and crappy service games. Just like other ones in the same categories that are worth both time and money.

Sony Gives me a good Destiny or GOW game and I’ll play it.

The future of multiplayer is live service, but more importantly free to play. If Battlefield 2042, Babylons Fall, and Anthem teach us anything it's that people don't want to pay full price for live service multiplayer focused titles. Fortnite / Warzone changed the game, we can't go back.. Personally i'd love a F2P Killzone or Resistance but only if they don't abandon their singleplayer focus generally

As long as its not a shooting game, I'm happy to try anything.

10 live service games is another 10 games world doesn't want... There still resonates in my ears, when Mark Cerny said "on PS5 you can make a game in less than month" and when I see SONY is putting power into some "dead end" I'm just crying how many great games programers could make... It's like watching chefs to flush food down the toilet.

Multiplayer games are great for a bit of mindless socializing with friends. Very very few, even the best co op games come close to the better single player experiences in my opinion. Going by the sales figures Sony amasses with it's exclusives, there is surely room for both for the foreseeable future. I'd argue the bulk of multiplayer games become a muscle memory situation hence the aforementioned 'mindless' description. I for one still want to be cerebrally challenged and enjoy a good story.

Everyone wants the infamous golden egg. To be honest, I hope at least one of these live service games is profitable. Imagine what PlayStation Studios could come up with (single player games) if they had Microsoft's pockets (which could happen if they had a profitable live service game).

@Royalblues just another rumor by a unreliable source

"Are things always better with friends?"

MP and Live Service are two different things. You can have a MP title without a live service model and you can have a single player title with a live service model.

And while I agree that the live service model overwhelming favours a MP title, don't conflate the two.

@nomither6 Good point. If I get what you're saying, live service revenue could potentially be invested in single player games. A rising tide raises all boats, right? But the more logical path would be to reinvest that money into the cash cow.

I prefer old style games with all contents already inside the disc or cartridge.
How do i miss early 2000's era.

I do not see Sony having an issue doing both. With sufficient funding from them I wouldn't mind a live service infamous or killzone. Fighting to take control of the various planets would be pretty sweet.

@TJ81

I have fond memories of Xbox Live in the 360 era. Halo 3 multiplayer was fantastic and I made a lot of cool friends on there. Had to stop playing it (got out of college and moved back to the boonies with no high speed) but I did get to Brigadier General.

I think what hurts modern online multiplayer titles is two fold. One, Skill Based Match Making. And Two, most modern online games match you with entirely new players instead of allowing the informal teams to continue to play together.

That’s how I made good friends. We would keep playing together as randoms in the same lobby for hours and by the end we had all sent each other friend requests and started playing together. I ended up with a regular four man team and we were all drastically different people.

One was a British guy who had served in the British Army and then immigrated to the United States east coast. Another was a lady from California. Had one black gentleman who was from Chicago. And I was the biracial redneck from the American Deep South.

Four totally different people with totally different live experiences. But we bonded and played Halo 3 like a religion for two years every weekend.

They certainly have properties that would best lend themselves to the model, quite honestly.

Stuff like Twisted Metal, Jet Moto, not to mention the ability to spin multiplayer components of their single player titles off and use them as a way to get players interested? It makes loads of sense. TLOU, Killzone, Socom... all of them (and more) could support dedicated single player releases AND multiplayer spinoffs.

I'm willing to wait and see what they do. It gets me excited at the prospects.

@MightyDemon82 Been missing out

@huyi and what's the problem? I don't want to pay $60 more for the same characters with 10 extra more.

You don't have to be a whale if they do it right.

I think there's a place for them, but single player games will always be king!

@OrtadragoonX I can really relate to all that. For me it started with Halo 2 at University and the Lan parties where I'd meet friends of friends, sometimes in different countries when travelling and living abroad. You're spot on about staying in the same lobbies with the same people too. It's a shame they no longer work that way. The closest I've come to that was playing Warzone maybe 5 times a week during the height of the pandemic and then keeping in touch with friends of friends to this day. I'll still dip into Warzone here and there but with many friends having busy lives as parents now, it's becoming more of a seldom nostalgic treat for most of us hence my preference for good single player games. Finally and randomly, I'm a Brit living in the deep south!

Looks at square Enix failuers
NO

Terrible idea that pushes me away from the PlayStation brand.

If even half of the live service games, of their planned 10, manage to be half as successful as Fortenite it will radically change the image and direction of the PlayStation brand.

I can absolutely envision a future where Sony does what Activision did and just have more and more of their first party go into supporting Live Service XYZ game.

I love the single player games that they make, and I want them to keep it that way, but just doing the math doesn’t look good for us.

It is hard to make an inordinate amount of money without recurring revenue. Games are taking now 5-8 years to get made now.

Sony PlayStation did not start out as a first party single player powerhouse. That started with the PS2.

Whatever currently in the pipe being developed is still coming, the problem (if you dislike live service games like I do) will be evident in 3-4 years from now, when we see what the future of PlayStation, at that point in time, looks like.

The one saving grace is that there are only so many hours in the day, let alone leisure time, and console market seems to have an arbitrary top of 200 million. Just as with MMO’s and how every 360/PS3 game HAD to have a multiplayer because of COD, remember even God of War had multiplayer for pete sake.
The same will hold true for Live Service, make the Big LS is Fortnite, and that’s the market for a good long while, just as COD and WOW/FF14 and League of Legends dominate in their genres. The power of ‘well all my friends and the YouTubers I watch play xyz game’ cannot be underestimated.

People here need to play good GaaS lol.

They think all of them are bad lol.

Not all of them are super greedy.

For me personally, live service games are an innately inferior genre as I like to play as many varied gaming experiences as possible. Playing the same game continuously for months and years on end is a young persons game; as in I probably would have enjoyed it when my available game time and budget restricted me to playing only a few games a year anyway, but not now.

It’s also the case that, admittedly not exclusively by any means, but most such games are multiplayer. Again, this would have been fine when I was younger and had friends who gamed, but you lose touch over the years and your friend ring shrinks, plus those remaining will have their gaming time similarly restricted.

I do think it’s a bad thing for the videogames market in general too. Not financially, as player engagement being high for years means more Microtransaction sales, plus adding to an already existing game is cheaper than making new IPs and even sequels, but in terms of game diversity and locking talented devs into less interesting projects.

Then, of course, there is the fact that peoples play time is zero sum, so long engagement games can only have a limited number of really big successes at a time. Then they are shuttered and of no value to future players (unlike games of old, which can be enjoyed forever with the correct BC work or on native devices).

I have nothing against Sony releasing a few of these games to keep the money rolling in, but to have 10 simultaneously in development speaks to a level of focus I do not appreciate.

Still, Sony are doing VR, so I stuck with them throughout all their recent terrible policy changes, and I’ll be staying with them a little longer.

Never underestimate a steady stream of cash. I don’t believe live service games will become the majority of PlayStation games. It just completes their portfolio. So I don’t mind them making live service games. They need to create more revenue to be able to compete with xBox and other game developers.

That’s nothing new. No need to push negativity narratives because PlayStation does more of everything and that includes single players games TOO. 🙄

@NEStalgia "can't for the life of me figure out how there's so many players that can support all these life consuming online games. Somebody is playing them...I just can't figure out who, why, or how there's enough of them."

Every time I talk to my niece and godson who are 11 and 9 respectively all they talk about is Fortnite, Minecraft and Among Us. To me it's not surprising at all.

The games are forcing multiplayer, but no corporation provides for real-life friends in my life...one cannot work without the other, right?

As someone who has only ever enjoyed one or two live service games ever - no. EA claimed years ago single player was dead, and they were wrong. Why are Sony suddenly acting like EA?

Sony said that they will still make Single Player video games the author of this article is asking our opinion about Sony’s live service plan that is why there’ a question mark at the end of the title.

Don't have time to read all the comments, as there are so many, but it all depends on what the games are.

For example, I'm currently playing GT7, which is most definitely a live service game. However, I'm note sure people are thinking of that and are expecting 10 Fortnites.

On a personal level, not at all — I just don't really jive with online/multiplayer games, and very rarely play them, but I can understand that there's a huge portion of players that do. I also would much rather make the conscious choice to purchase my games individually rather than paying a flat monthly fee to rent them - I don't even have PS+ both these reasons.

As for Cloud gaming, I think it's a noble idea, and it can be good for demos/time trials, but as the default setting for playing games? Absolutely not - the technology is nowhere near capable yet, and even if it was, I think it's a fundamentally flawed notion and is trying to fix a problem that doesn't really exist.

It's fine if the live service titles don't impact on the single player narrative development.

By that, I mean that if Sony start pulling people/teams from other parts of their 1st party studios, leaving a decent single player experience stuck in development, due to more people/teams/studios having to rescue some dreary Fortnite clone because they can see the dollar/pound/euro signs.

As with everything that they are doing this "generation" i disagree/dislike what they are doing.
But I'm not the target audience and I'm not in charge of a billion dollar company so wtf do i know.

@naruball IDK, I think today's kids must be wired differently due to internet/phone use. I can't imagine kids being addicted to a handful of things like that over and over. I mean, heck, our parents would have loved it, we'd be cheap to please if all we liked were the same 3 free/practically free games forever and ever. But we had expensive and varied tastes, burned through games at a steady clip and wanted something new always...

Seems unnatural to be stuck to those consuming titles like that. And that's coming from someone who loves sticking with what works forever.

I can maybe give a tip of the hat to Minecraft, I've never been able t get into it, but since it's "digital legos" and mostly a creativity toolkit more than a game, that one's a little bit of an exception to the rule.

@NEStalgia "I can't imagine kids being addicted to a handful of things like that over and over".

I think you should talk to a few parents about their disdain for the song "Let it Go", for movies like "Moana", etc. Kids can listen to them and watch them a million times and still ask to watch and listen to them again. It's not just kids these days. It's been like this for quite a while, if I'm not mistaken.

@nookie_egg "As with everything that they are doing this "generation" i disagree/dislike what they are doing"

You mean like releasing award-winning games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Horizon Forbidden West, Returnal?

@naruball That's alarming, tbh. I mean nobody can enjoy getting stuck in a routine/rut endlessly as well as me, and the whole concept seems alarming even to me...

Pff. People who primarily play these games would have been at the mall or playing football or whatever 15-20 years ago. Gaming isn't becoming more accessible, it is being usurped. A space for people who weren't welcome in mainstream spaces has been invaded and claimed by people who already had their own disproportionately large space but couldn't stand not having everything. Studios have catered to this because of course they have, those people are privileged as hell, meaning higher earning potential, meaning the ability to fling money at trends like chimps flinging turds.

It was bound to happen sooner or later really. I'm bitter as hell though. Oh well. At least there are still indie studios, and it's not as if old single player games aren't replayable. They can never take that.

@MRaajDar I can see and agree with a lot of that. Though with the exception about money. When I think of Fortnite and Apex addicts, "high earning potential" isn't the first thought that comes to mind... There's just a lot of them, somehow, I don't think it's that they're the cream of the social pecking order, it's just that lowest common denominator always accounts for the most people and therefore always pulls the most money. Look at television.....

Plus the rich kids....but the rich kids always got all the games...

@nomither6 why's that? It's true 😅

@NEStalgia i grew up in the gamecube/ps2 era and i’d play the same 2/3 single-player games over and over and over again . the amount of times i beat Sly 3 on PS2 and sonic adventure 2 on gamecube is ridiculous . i had memory block after memory block of the same saved games . maybe a child’s mind is easy to please if they don’t know much . had i known about online multiplayer gaming back then it would’ve been an entirely different story . i definitely can’t do what i did as a kid nowadays ; once i beat a game that’s it , until maybe a few years later . multiplayer on the other hand is competition , infinite replayability , and playing with more people so it’s never boring for me ever