The gaming industry constantly evolves and shifts to fit the needs of both the developers who make the gaming titles and those who play them. Look no further than the last few generations for the “serious shifts” in how we’ve played games and how games have evolved visually as proof of that. In this week alone, there were rumors of a “serious shift” in the gaming space, but that seems to have been quelled for the moment. However, as companies like Square Enix have seen, certain “shifts” in the games being sold, how they’re being sold, and the number of units they’re selling are different than one would’ve predicted in recent times.
In fact, the company noted to their investors that they feel that games as a whole will have more potential to “crash and burn” in the future due to how they think gamers are looking at titles:
“As a result of digitization and other technological advances, consumer game content is increasingly sold via downloads rather than physical packages. Monetization methods such as free-to-play, microtransactions, and subscriptions have also given rise to a greater diversity of business models outside the confines of traditional one-off sales. As such, the consumer game market continues to grow. New releases tend to be met with either marked success or marked failure as players throng to a handful of major titles.”
While you can see why Square Enix feels such things, especially given the backlash and “sales reaction” to certain titles that they released in the last few years, you have to wonder if they’re looking at the “right thing” to get their “guidance.” For example, a recent GDC report noted that most game developers are looking into making more live-service titles, yet gamers don’t want that at all.
Second, while it’s true that certain “major titles” get plenty of sales, that doesn’t mean that all of them were “destined” to be that way. The biggest hit in 2023 in the US was a gaming title that many thought “could be fun,” and then it turned into a grand-slam hit.
Furthermore, when you look at companies like Nintendo, they’ve been cranking out titles both big and small and have been getting one hit after another because they took the time to make each game quality and promote them as big games. That’s something Square Enix and others fail to do, as 2023 also proved.
The honest truth is that no one can predict the gaming industry’s future because so many factors lead to the changes and successes it gets.
