This will be a whole lot of random stuff. Hopefully it makes a little bit of sense, as I'm going to bed now.
I think it's difficult to do good analysis on the industry. Someone tweeted it would be nice if there were more 10-20 hour linear games, and the NPD guy said something like there are, people just aren't buying them. And it kind of bugged me.
I think analysis is difficult, for a lot of different reasons.
A lot of games are somewhat unique. There aren't that many big games like Dark Souls or Uncharted or Skyrim. Even if someone tried to make two of the exact same game, you would probably find that they did different things better. So if you're trying to compare trends, I think it's difficult to do because you're not really comparing the same games.
Like someone brought up Uncharted TLL as an example that people didn't want smaller budget games. But I would argue that Uncharted TLL isn't just like Uncharted 4 or Uncharted 3 or 2 or 1. It's its own thing and it has its own flaws and high points. I think there's a very good chance that Uncharted TLL could have been better received if it was just handled differently. Maybe even with the same budget, it could have been received better with different design choices. The crux of my point here though is that we don't really know how that would have turned out, because ND doesn't/didn't make that alternative game. Naughty Dog isn't going to try to make Uncharted 2, but in 2025/whatever year, any time soon.
Marketing and trends are another big challenge. No one in their right mind would have said Among Us would be a huge game. And yet the right circumstances made it huge. Same with other games like Minecraft and Helldivers 2.
There was a similar exchange, where someone said if people wanted AA games, they should buy Banishers, but they're not. It was literally the first time I recall hearing the game.
A major challenge I think is that what people buy isn't necessarily their own preference. If the entire industry went exclusively live service, a lot of people that hate live service titles would likely start playing/buying into live service games.
That's kind of how I feel about a lot of AAA stuff. A lot of the developers that I grew up loving are now making bigger and more expensive games, and a lot of them are making more open world games. So of course I'm buying more open world games that are bigger and more expensive.
To me it feels like a lot of the industry has issues with self fulfilling prophecies. Like the entire industry is collectively going "well we need to make bigger games, we need more open world, we need more live service games, the market loves those." Then you have your favorite developers making those kinds of games, so of course you buy them.
I would argue it is a big reason why the Xbox One flopped. The expectations of what the market really wanted were wrong, and Sony was there to give it to them. "People are becoming less interested in gaming on consoles, so Sony is not going to try with their handheld, they're going to push PS4 with mobile support, and we're going to make the Xbox One have a lot of TV integration."