There are still winners in this market, definitely, but the conditions make it increasingly difficult to win.

Even if all leadership/shareholders made perfect decisions, not every studio would thrive.

Blaming everything on "greed" doesn't help to discuss and address the real matter at hand.

The cake *is* smaller for new games because players' attention is increasingly going towards famous brands, remakes and existing games that keep going.

Meanwhile, the bar for creativity, technical excellence and scope is getting raised, so yes, games are more expensive to make.

It wasn’t really hard tbh, the thing we realized was that some UI elements had to be moved from the bottom corners of the screen cause that’s where you typically have your hand

Thanks for sharing, really cool! Did you do anything special to get this many people on discord ? Not that many people on mine 😅

C'est pas parce que les revenus globaux sont élévés que ça se casse pas la gueule sur des tranches spécifiques, coulant des acteurs historiques au passage. La croissance est en Chine et sur le mobile, tandis que le PC/console traditionnel premium ne grandit plus (et est de plus en plus concurrencé)

Vu l'ampleur de leur déficit annoncé (+ les dettes passées), il s'agit pas d'un cas à l'américaine où on vire parce que la marge est insuffisante.

En restant dans leur niche, ils n'ont pas d'autres choix que de produire plus ou des équipes plus petites et ça c'est un virage difficile

Je connais rien de Don't Nod, mais factuellement le marché dans lequel ils sont est effectivement bien plus difficile qu'il y a quelques années. Plus aucun acteur ne finance des prods à 10M+ pour des jeux narratifs/aventure, et pour cause, le public s'en détourne

If the game is going to be « only » about combat, you need to show incredible boss fighting mechanics.

Or, you give the game a different goal where other pillars make up for the lost ones: survival? Make it like Palworld? Like Elden Ring?

Probably too late for them now though, that’s sad (5/5)

Look at previous Horizon announcements: there are stakes, wonder, awe. Machines at the forefront, majestic and scary. Gameplay decisions feel deliberate. Mysterious story.

HG: spamming super attacks on machines, no explo/stealth, no cinematic. Just play to upgrade your gear, and repeat. (4/5)

But all of these games have an awesome core fantasy and strongly appeal to players.

HG’s announcement was a disaster because it didn’t showcase anything exciting.

Remove the live service from it, you still have a sort of cartoon-coop stripped-down spin off nobody would care about (3/5)

Players actively oppose « live service elements » when they fear it’s going to make the game more grindy, with predatory monetization and prevent them from enjoying the experience fully.

Think of Suicide Squad, Skull & Bones, Gotham Knights, Assassin’s Creed, Shadow of War, etc. (2/5)

(currently in a -very- optimistic mood, but yeah, sometimes I feel like talking about the hardships of "directors" is a massive taboo in the gaming industry*)

Ok then what about the IPs that are owned by these companies and deemed too small to be profitable ???

License them. Recognize that you no longer know how to make a small game (not efficiently), so let others create the sequels.

Olden Era is a good example that comes to mind

The reason why subscription services thrive is because they've got exclusive content regularly, and people stay subbed.

You want to watch Stranger Things? Netflix.
You want to play Indiana Jones? Might as well get it on Steam or PS5, it's on sales regularly (it has 12k reviews on both platforms)

The service was always positionned as a cheaper way to grab more games, either older titles (when they're 50% off on Steam) or short games ("why pay 70$ when I can pay a month of game pass and finish it instead")

But when the price rises or when players play less, they end their subscription

Ils ont un sens, leur succès indique quelque chose mais je pense pas qu'il faille leur faire dire plus que ce qu'ils disent.

Il n'y a pas une "déconnexion totale" quand Crimson Desert, Resident Evil, Forza Horizon, etc sont les plus gros jeux de l'année en revenus. Publics variés, offre variée.

Avant le succès de Meccha Chameleon, ce developpeur a sorti des jeux pendant 2 ans et gagné dans les 500€/mois.

C'est une moins jolie histoire, alors personne n'en parle. Pardon mais je pense qu'un jeu indé a de la valeur y compris quand il ne génère pas des millions "comme les grands"