I decided to do a little of backporting from the main website (now at old.extraactivity.com). There I made two posts about the ‘Future of Gaming‘ and ‘The Follow-up of Future Of Gaming‘.
Now it’s time to do a follow-up on that.
Virtual Reality
It appears that VR is once again to the same stump that it has always been: Too expensive and not worthy enough. Hot off the reels from Meta (Facebook) discontinuing the Quest Pro, and Microsoft discontinuing their Mixed Reality, it seems that it’ll continue to be slumped. While some good games did come out like Batman: Arkham Shadow, it’s still not enough to make the industry flourish like some people want it to. Google announced that Android XRwill be a thing but I’ll remain skeptical, mostly because it’s Google. Valve still hasn’t announced a new VR headset, as they are busy with the Steam Deck and maybe another devices that aren’t VR.
I did manage to get a Quest 2 since that last post and it’s been a fun experience, although, I did get sick using it the first few times. It’s rather cool but it’ll only get mass adoption if prices get slashed.
Motion Controls
Like last time, Motion Controls failed to capture a market because it’s still not a better solution than what we already have. For VR? Sure, it kinda needs that, but for regular gaming? Not really.
Games as a Service
Oh boy. GaaS (more like gas lol) still shows that you need a good game that people want to play. I’d like to think that I was little misguided on thinking that first impressions stick. Concord, one of the biggest flops of 2024, died within 2 weeks, and it was because it was just a game that people didn’t want to play, being too similar to Overwatch 2, that people weren’t playing either. Oh and another flop, Ubisoft’s XDefiant is getting canned too this year.
So the issue with GaaS is a basic one: Making an engaging game. Stuff that already exists doesn’t get players to move over because they already play what they want to play. Concord didn’t add anything to the Overwatch-style of game. XDefiant was another CoD clone.
Game Streaming
Okay, looking back, the writing was on the wall. Google Stadia is no more (thankfully). Amazon Luna is essentially dead.
The other options are still viable, like PS Now (part of PS Plus nowadays) and Xbox Game Cloud, as well Steam’s local machine streaming. GeForce Now increased prices and has a limit (which you’ll probably not hit), and that’s pretty much it, I guess. For all the fuzz that game streaming causes, I don’t really see it being the thing moving forward. Sure it’s convenient but it’s also fully driven by publisher greed. The moment they don’t want to play ball anymore, you’ll lose access to the games.
Subscriptions
That last sentence could also be used here. Since then, Microsoft bought Activision-Blizzard-King to put Call of Duty on Xbox GamePass and make themselves feel like the Netflix of gaming, which isn’t what I think that could work. Different industries, different approaches, people.
Overall, nothing has changed other than price increases because MORE GROWTH MORE MONEY, which is dumb.
Epic Games Store
Since the last post, Epic Games sued Apple and Google, and we were able to see how much money they burned since they started EGS. Since then, they gave away free games almost every week, but clearly did a bit of a downscale on the operations, since the guy that was the head of EGS left the company. Additionally, the games that Epic funded (or outright bought) still haven’t paid Epic back, like Alan Wake 2.
In any other reading, I’d call the EGS a flop, because they did the same mistake as trying to get 50% of the market in 5 years (aka honeypot talk for investors), and if they managed to get 10%, it would be a lot. Now, 10% is a lot, yes, but that means that instead of growing 10% per year, they grew 2%. I’d call that underwhelming. But… Since they have Fortnite, which prints a lot of money, they can recover all that money they invested and lost on EGS. Maybe.
Conclusion
It didn’t take long for the rot to start to show itself up. Game subs, Live Services, and Motion Controls are all annoying things that stop gamers from enjoying their games, because companies don’t see gamers, they see their wallets. And clearly some plans didn’t work at all, which is good, because that makes companies see what is the consequences of trying and failing. However this doesn’t stop them from thinking that they’ll succeed, because they have X or Y, or even Z.
Overall, the market had its ups and downs and honestly, it’s pretty okay, for the most part, good games are still on the way, which is fantastic. Companies just need to wise up about their stuff, because some things clearly don’t work.