Video games are dying and it’s so depressing to see

A reader is concerned that the games industry is quickly turning into something he doesn’t recognize and no longer looks forward to.

I knew the state of play last week would be bad, so I can’t pretend I was surprised by the lack of big announcements, but I still found it incredibly depressing. Concord was so much worse than I thought and so terribly generic and uninteresting that it almost seemed like a joke. But it’s not, it’s the future of gaming as Sony sees it. But instead of the future, it feels like the end to me.

Over the past year, things have gone from bad to worse in gaming: console sales have fallen, publishers have laid off thousands of people, the number of new announcements has dwindled, and the lack of communication from companies has continued to worsen.

It all happened so quickly. Even the first few years after the pandemic seemed relatively normal, but since about 2022 it’s just been a relentless stream of bad news. What I find even worse is the complete lack of leadership. Sony has simply ignored the issues and never talked about them – or anything else if they can help it.

You wouldn’t expect Nintendo to say anything, but Japanese publishers don’t seem to have the same problems. Microsoft certainly is, but even though they talk about the problems, I can’t believe a word they say. Does anyone actually believe that they have no plans for more multi-format releases, or that that doesn’t make hardware any less important to them?

I’ve been playing video games since the early 1990s and I remember often imagining what gaming would be like in twenty or thirty years. Back then there were always great breakthroughs in graphics and game design, but you could tell it was being held back by technology and you could only guess what would be possible if you had consoles as powerful as those of today .

I always imagined what today would be recognized as open world games, where you could go anywhere and do anything, with any type of vehicle you wanted. Until the beginning of this generation, it seemed as if everything was developing exactly as I – and I think millions of others – had hoped.

Graphics got better, games got bigger and more customizable, and yet prices didn’t really go up significantly. Everyone was happy, I thought. Then apparently, out of nowhere, games stop being profitable and everything has to be live service garbage like Concord.

At some point, the entire progression of video games as we know them came to a halt in a car crash and instead we got nothing at all… only to be replaced later by live service games, when they were ready.

Suddenly it feels like everything I thought about gaming was just a dream, and now that I’ve had a rude awakening, it’s all melting away. Am I being overdramatic? Maybe, but take a look at the current release schedules, or the latest state of play, and tell me I’m wrong.

And before people say they don’t care and can just retreat to their backlog or replay older games, that’s just avoiding the problem. I don’t want to live in the past. I want the exciting future I always imagined for gaming and which until a few years ago seemed completely on track. But now it’s all disappearing fast, until I fear there will be nothing of value left.

By reader Clayton

Reader characteristics do not necessarily represent the opinions of GameCentral or Metro.

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