GEN 9 Gaming SUCKS! The UNFORTUNATE State of Modern Gaming

as of the writing of the script we're a few months past the thiry year mark of generation 9 of gaming and it's been an interesting generation to say the least this generation has seen shifts in the gaming industry such as large scale Acquisitions companies leaning more into gaming subscription services along with seeing the slow shift towards digital only media on top of that many developers and parent companies of said developers have seen massive layoffs and departures ranging from a few key people and into the thousands at the beginning of the generation we also saw the first substantial price increase for games since the beginning of Generation 7 taking the price from $60 to $70 furthermore a lot of games that have released this generation have launched in a less than ideal State all in all generation 9 has left much to be desired hello everyone my name is Brent and in this video I'd like to take a look at the past several years of generation 9 and talk about why I believe this generation kind of sucks generation 9 more or less began on November 10th 2020 with the worldwide launch of the Xbox series X and S with the PlayStation 5 launching in North America a couple days later on November 12th and worldwide a week later the Xbox series X launched as the dis version of the Xbox series consoles and would be priced at$ 4.99 us and the series s being its digital only counterpart was launched at a respectable 299 us making it the cheapest way to enter the new generation the PlayStation 5 also had both a disc and digital version price at $4.99 and 3.99 us respectively a suitable number of titles would be available with the launch of these consoles that could be played on either system the PlayStation 5 launched with several new exclusive titles such as Marvel Spider-Man Miles Morales the Dem Souls remake and the pre-loaded onto all consoles Tech demo Astros playroom however even though the Xbox series consoles had plenty of games to be played at launch through purchases and Game Pass there were no notable new first party titles that would coincide with said launch unfortunately the generation would start on a bad note when both consoles would be struck with covid-19 pandemic supply issues along with being constantly bought out by Bots and scalpers when a stock would become available again Gamers trying to buy these consoles would struggle with the aforementioned supply issues for over 12 months with the problem beginning to dissipate substantially after about 18 months it wouldn't be until late 2022 and early 2023 when these consoles would truly be readily available thankfully Playstation Xbox and many thirdparty developers took notice of this and throughout 2021 gaming producers did their best to provide their new games on both gen 8 and gen 9 consoles along with doing their best to provide games on current and previous Hardware Xbox would really begin to push their game pass Subscription Service as a means for players to play a lot of these games day and date at an inexpensive price due to the fact that the ongoing pandemic was affecting a lot of people financially Xbox only saw one major first party release in 2021 in the form of Halo infinite Halo infinite would receive great reviews and would earn a respectable 87 on Metacritic however moving into the first half of 2022 and even into 20123 343 Industries would announce that they would be canceling their split screen mode and would also struggle with keeping up with Halo infinite's multiplayer creating frustration within the Xbox and Halo communities where Xbox truly shined was in securing many high-profile titles for Game Pass games such as Hades octopath traveler and Microsoft flight simulator all of which were well-received games would Grace the service during 2021 PlayStation had a decent year in 2021 they released Ratchet and Clank Griff apart as their first first-party PlayStation 5 exclusive they would also release a couple of third-party exclusives such as the timed exclusive death Loop and returnal later in 2021 PlayStation would release the director's cut for Ghost of tsushima this along with the remaster of Marvel Spider-Man which had released with the launch of the PlayStation 5 would Mark the beginning of a trend that PlayStation and Sony would receive criticism for and that is the releasing of many sequels remasters and remakes rather than working on new IPS 2022 began with two major acquisition announcements with Sony announcing that they would be acquiring Bungie for 3.6 billion and Microsoft would be acquiring Activision Blizzard king or ABK for short for almost $70 billion making it the largest merger in gaming history this would be Microsoft's second major acquisition of a large publisher in less than 5 years having acquired zenax the parent company of Bethesda for $8.4 billion a few years prior in 2020 all these large scale Acquisitions would spark heated discussions and debates within the gaming community over concerns of Industry consolidation buying success what it means to compete and the potential of making certain games exclusive that were once multiplatform I'll talk about these Acquisitions more a little later on Playstation had some solid games come to the platform in 2022 such as the time thirdparty exclusives ghostwire Tokyo and stray they also had several high-profile and controversial first- party releases as well Verizon forbidden West was initially slated to have two separate versions of the game for either PS4 or PS5 without the possibility of upgrading to the PS5 version from the PS4 version at all meaning that those without a PS5 would have to buy the game again to experience the PS5 version when they eventually got a PS5 which were still tricky to get at this time as stated in this VGC article this was immediately met with backlash from players who said that Sony was going back on their promise to provide free upgrades for first-party titles that were released during the PlayStation 5 launch window with forbidden West being among the titles that were promised PlayStation rectified the situation and made the upgrade free but stated that Horizon forbidden West would be the last first party title to get a free upgrade The Last of Us Part One a complete remake of 2013's critical hit of the same name was also released controversy surrounded this title regarding the fact that it was a remake of a game that was only 9 years old and within that time had already received a remaster for the PlayStation 4 that still holds up pretty well furthermore the game was Under Fire for its $70 price tag many members of The Gaming Community accus the game of being a blatant cash grab due to the fact that the Remake not only didn't bring anything new to the table but also didn't include features that were in the original such as the multiplayer element furthermore when the game launched on PC in 2023 it was practically unplayable due to poor visual quality and performance God of War Ragnarok seemed to be the only first-party PlayStation title that didn't have any substantiated controversy surrounding it in 2022 2022 was in particularly kind to Xbox in the first party Department however they continued to receive several high-profile games for Game Pass including the highly sought after Persona 5 Royal the announcement that Persona 5 Royal would come to Game Pass came as a great surprise to Xbox fans however the bizarre marketing tactics that were used by Xbox created confusion for those on other platforms for several days Xbox had timed marketing rights for the current gen version of personify Royal meaning that Sega and Atlas could not give any indication that the game would arrive on other platforms this left many fans frustrated and wondering if Persona 5 Royal would receive current gen versions for the PS5 switch and steam I wish that there was more to say about Xbox in 2022 but it was kind of a slow year for them okay those first couple of years weren't really that bad per se Xbox PlayStation and several third-party developers did their best to provide solid products and services to their respective consumer base during a challenging time yet despite these companies doing their best during the frustrating couple of years the mistakes that they did along the way seem to compound into a bizarre 2023 now I've gone over some of my issues with 2023 in a previous video that I'll leave in the description of this video however there's plenty of more things that have have happened and other issues that I have failed to address since I put that video out that have made me reflect on the generation as a whole 2023 was a strong year for video game releases a lot of really great games came out in 2023 unfortunately a lot of good came with a lot of bad Microsoft came out the gate Swinging with a stellar showcase that featured high-fi rush high-fi rush was a shadow drop of the Xbox developer Direct on January 25th 20123 and was met with high critical praise from Gamers and gaming media alike I played the game unfortunately it wasn't particularly to my taste although I didn't care for it I have more than a few friends on Xbox who loved playing this game so I'm well aware that this game was a huge win for Xbox despite garnering a large player base and praise from the gaming media true achievements would report in November of 2023 that only 50% of Xbox players who have played HiFi Rush have actually beaten the first boss of the game and digging further into it myself less than 133% of Xbox players have actually completed the game as a whole this is staggering information as Hi-Fi Rush is objectively the best drop that Xbox had in 2023 knowing how much the community seemingly loves the game but seeing the disparity of the achievements especially for such a linear story and railroaded gameplay speaks to there being some issue in retention on the Xbox platform for spoken the time thirdparty PlayStation 5 exclusive from Square Unix also launched in January on the 24th and was met with mixed to negative reviews for spoken was criticized for its poor performance lack of quality and empty open world and received mixed reviews for its gameplay and story Final Fantasy 16 another PlayStation third party exclusive from Square Unix was received rather well and was praised for its Story characters graphics and boss fights according to square Unix sales for Final Fantasy 16 were within expectations however it didn't meet their higher expectations this left Square Enix losing Share value due to not recovering enough from the financial losses of games like fores spoken and the Avengers towards the end of 2022 Phil Spencer announced that the highly anticipated games redfall and Starfield would be Xbox's first games to Dawn the controversial $70 priz tag with Xbox fans and Gamers alike seeming ly coming to terms with this new reality along with the fact that these would be the first true Xbox exclusives since the zenax acquisition that would be landing on Game Pass day and date many gamers were simply too excited to care all that much therefore not too many heads were turned with this announcement unfortunately some of the excitement for these games would wear off when it was announced that redfall would launch without a 60 frames per second performance mode and Starfield would launch without a performance mode in the plan at all these announcements were met with frustration because the Xbox series consoles were advertised as being able to run Run games at 60 frames per second and up to 120 frames per second these claims are further supported in a 2020 tweet by Xbox executive Aaron Greenberg who stated that 60 frames per second will be the standard output but the architecture allows us to support up to 120 frames per second furthermore throughout generation 9 it was reported that the Xbox series s would be a struggle for a lot of Studios to develop for despite having performance issues with some of their games Xbox had a strong PR year in 2023 with many excellent showcases that would announce new titles or show off already established titles that are currently in the pipeline this gave the Xbox Community a confidence boost and showed that Xbox has a bright future ahead of them furthermore Xbox would continue to announce more highly sought after games that would be coming to the platform such as more Persona titles octopath traveler 2 and Final Fantasy 14 2023 was a slow year for PlayStation who released only one first party title with Marvel Spider-Man 2 although the game was received and sold well about 50% of users reported that the game was incredibly buggy at launch making certain parts unplayable I'll be honest it's hard for me to really expand on this because I didn't encounter this issue however 50% of users is still 50% I'll link my Spider-Man 2 review in the description where I expand on this issue further another criticism that the game was hit with was the game length itself at launch it was reported that you could beat the game in 9 hours and could Platinum it in less than 24 hours the official times reported on how long to beat.com is 17 hours for the main story and roughly 28 hours for the Platinum I personally find this to be an acceptable amount of time for this game but a lot of Gam Gamers criticized the length versus the $70 price tag this wasn't as big of an issue until the recent leak wherein it has been shown that the game took upwards of $300 million to produce which has certainly caused myself and many gamers to re-evaluate what they had gotten for that staggering production cost we'll talk more about the cost of game development later though unfortunately even with this information Spider-Man 2 was the only real positive thing for PlayStation in 2023 they had a terrible large showcase and one okay smaller one most of the titles shown during these showcases were multiplatform games games a couple of third party exclusives with a remaster for The Last of Us Part Two being the only first party exclusive coming in the immediate future this added more fuel to the fire that PlayStation has only been good for sequels remasters and remakes this generation at least there's a $10 upgrade for those who already own the game and it'll only be $50 for those who want to buy the full PS5 version furthermore in December Naughty Dog announced that they would be dropping all production on their anticipated The Last of Us online game stating that to release and support The Last of Us online we'd have to put all of our studio resources behind supporting post-launch content for years to come severely impacting development on future single player games with that said due to poor showcases and the lack of any real updates fans have been left wondering what the first party road map looks like for PlayStation PlayStation players did receive the free balla DLC for God of War Ragnarok though I know I have yet to mention Nintendo and this is simply because they're not technically part of gen 9 yet but they sure as hell are acting like it although tears of the kingdom was one of the highest rated games in 2023 it was met with some criticis for having the Gen 9 price tag of $70 but wasn't a true gen n game tiar of the Kingdom didn't meet some of the criteria that some might want to justify a $70 game such as maintaining 60 frames per second and having an HD resolution the $70 price tag is a topic for another time but I felt like I needed to get this in here everything that I've mentioned thus far has only been first-party stuff thirdparty developers have been just as egregious in their bad practices as well both Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars Jedi Survivor launched with unstable performance modes which cause game crashes during significant frame rate deps furthermore Hogwarts Legacy had many in-game bugs which made completing some side quests and finding certain Collectibles impossible also the physical version of Star Wars Jedi Survivor didn't have the full game on the disc players had to download the rest of the game from a patch making buying the disc version rather pointless even Allen wake 2 a game that launched in a fairly Flawless State wasn't without controversy remedy entertainment decided to launch Allen wake 2 as a digital only title this along with the Jedi Survivor situation would raise concerns over the impending All Digital future and how would impact those who feel like digital purchases aren't truly owning the game furthermore it was reported that Allen wig 2 didn't perform as well financially as some might have expected and even though the game being digital only may not have been the prime reason why it didn't sell well I'm sure it's a contributing factor don't misunderstand me there's definitely been games that have been free of controversy such as balers Gate 3 unless you count it coming to PS5 earlier than Xbox as a controversy then I guess it does but the fact Still Remains a majority of high-profile games that have released in 2023 have been released in precarious States it feels like game developers this generation have started to rely more and more on day one patches and forther subsequent patches to get their games into a solid state since the Inception of patches this is an issue that can be seen with cyberpunk 2077 and most recently redfall what sucks is I'm a huge proponent of patches I grew up in a time where if you bought a game and had a game-breaking problem on the disc then you'd be patches have allowed these potentially gamebreaking bugs to be worked out so that way you can enjoy the game that you purchased nowadays patches feel like a CR and an excuse to rush unfinished games out the door all right let's move on to the industry stuff as of the writing of this paragraph it's late December 20123 and I've been working on this script for a couple of weeks now I've been going back and forth and rereading and rewriting old paragraphs before this particular paragraph simply because I've been putting off writing the stuff about the industry as a whole it's not that I don't want to write the stuff about the industry side of things it's that I've been racking my brain on where to even begin because so much has happened within just this month alone December 2023 so recapping the entire generation feels like this incredibly daunting task so many of the different things that have gone down are so intertwined with each other that trying to explain it all would make it feel like a jumbled mess even though that's exactly what has happened over the past few years a jumbled mess I guess the first thing I'd like to touch on are the two major Acquisitions that occurred this generation with Sony's acquisition of Bungie and Microsoft's acquisition of ABK I don't know how long I'm going to talk about these things because frankly it's been talked about to death by everyone Under the Sun so there's tons of videos and art out there on the topic that you can watch and read if you want to know more about it from someone who cares and knows a lot more about it than I do furthermore due to the contentious nature of this topic anything that I say even if it's completely in good faith and as objective as possible could be misconstrued as being biased for one company or another and I don't want any part of that let's take a look at the easy one first Sony's purchase a Bungie as I mentioned earlier in January of 2022 it was announced that Sony would be acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion it was also announced that bu bu would be allowed to keep most of its independence and continue to publish games on other platforms and that it would be a part of PlayStation's broader plan to start a games as a service push for the PlayStation console this ultimately backfired during the second half of 2023 when many of PlayStation's games as a service titles would be canceled such as the AFF mention The Last of Us online or internally delayed due to poor quality this would continue to leave PlayStation's first party future in question furthermore due to sales slipping and quality starting to wne with Destiny 2 Bungie would lay off roughly 100 workers and their continued independent would be put into question we'll be talking more about industry layoffs in a few minutes now on to the really crazy one Microsoft's acquisition of ABK this is a really hard one to talk about because with how massive of an acquisition this was it felt like it took the console war to a whole new level I'm not even here to talk about the console war I've already done that in a different video but this acquisition left the Gaming Community truly divided many members of the gaming community supported the purchase because it would allow Microsoft to compete with Sony and many others didn't support it because they felt like Microsoft was buying up a lot of major Publishers just so that way they could put as many popular franchises onto Game Pass as they could as a means to draw more Gamers to that platform rather than using the studios they already own to develop new games on top of that it almost felt like things grinded to a halt during the whole thing for over a year this is all that people could talk about and most of those people didn't know a thing about what it was that they were actually talking about overnight Gamers seemingly became experts in law the economy the stock market and many other things that required Decades of Hands-On training in experience become experts in anyway to get back on track all these large scale Acquisitions whether you like it or not and For Better or For Worse have and will continue to change the gaming landscape for years to come does this mean that these Acquisitions have been a contributing factor to why this generation sucks that's for you to decide some might think it was good and some might think it was bad but it doesn't change the fact that they will be forever part of generation 99's history for me the reason why these Acquisitions have left a stain on this generation isn't so much about whether or not I agree with them but more along the lines of what it has done within the gaming community and the Precedence that it has set for companies to continue to acquire more and more Publishers and consolidate the industry take a look at what's happening with embracer they've attempted to buy up so much stuff that it has backfired and they're now closing down Studios laying off hundreds of employees and selling off IPS that they've acquired in recent years I believe that success is earned now whether that means using the backing of your successful parent company to buy things or using the talent of your Studios to develop a quality product to earn your success is up for you to decide both Xbox and Playstation do these things in their own way anyway let's move on 2023 a year filled with fantastic games was also a year filled with widespread industry layoffs this article from NPR shows that in 2023 approximately 6,500 workers within the gaming industry lost their jobs and on top of that several key people left major roles at companies that they've held for years and some decades there's been so many layoffs that I don't even know where to begin with going over it all like I'm looking at all of these articles about the industry layoffs and all although I knew that it was this bad looking at it all makes it feel worse I mean we have Microsoft cutting 10,000 jobs including some jobs in their gaming Division and take a look at this chart right here on this article I don't know how accurate this is but articles from other places can corroborate some of these numbers such as epic laying off 800 employees and EA doing the same with another 800 employees there's also evidence from the Insomniac leaks that job Cuts could and probably will happen at that studio along with the complete closure of a studio over at Sony however leaks and especially ransomware leaks should be taken with a grain of salt as already mentioned budget cuts at Bungie have also affected the jobs of roughly 100 people and as I already mentioned embracer let go of 900 employees and closed an entire Studio the last thing I want to do is gloss over this stuff because it's super important I mean this is the livelihoods of thousands of people that have been completely taken away from them but if I went over all of this in complete detail we'd be here all day honestly I met a complete loss of words in regards to this I knew that it was bad and I even knew that it was this bad but seeing it all laid out in front of me here on Google and opening up some of these articles to read them it's really overwhelming perhaps I should have led this video with this issue because it's an issue that deserves to be discussed I wish that I was the one who could discuss it too but there's so many finer intricacies and nuances to the situation that I would probably mess it up and not do it the Justice it deserves this is why generation 9 sucks right here if none of this other weird stuff that has occurred since November of 2020 all of these layoffs would still be an astronomical will stay on this generation to add to this most of this script was written in December of 2023 and I'm currently finalizing it in 2024 and even more industry layoffs have been announced more and more developments keep happening that make me think Yep this generation sucks some of the most recent developments have been the ransomware attack on Insomniac where the road map was leaked to the entire world along with the build of the upcoming Wolverine game Ubisoft was also hit with a ransom attack sure these issues aren't the fault of anyone in the industry but nevertheless they are event that are part of this generation's history now let's talk about production costs as mentioned earlier it has been recently shown that video games are becoming more and more expensive to make or at the very least developers are dumping tons of money into these games when perhaps they may not need to Spider-Man 2 cost over $300 million to make I love Spider-Man 2 but if that budget is accurate then I'm disappointed with what I got sadly it isn't the only game that hits staggering numbers for development a Starfield also ranged between 200 million and 400 million depending on who you talk to for its production which is almost criminal given that most Gamers today find that the game is lacking in some aspect Allen wake 2 my personal game of the year for 2023 between its development and marketing costs at a budget of €70 million EUR which is close to $80 million us I find that incredible it's a brilliant game and very well made I love Spider-Man 2 and I know that there are those who love Starfield as well but if production costs are going to span into the several hundred million dollar range I kind of expect more especially with the amount of money that I and many other gamers are spending on these games the point that I'm trying to make is that some of these development costs aren't sustainable and at the rate these studios are going all I can see in the future is more employee layoffs and Studio closures I'm not a financial expert and I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I am but these kinds of numbers are impractical and it's all simple math to recoup a $300 million budget a game would need to sell between 4 and 5 million units now most AAA games can do that in a couple of days and even go on to make a substantial profit but not all Studios can pull that off don't get me wrong the studios that can't pull off those kind of numbers will always stay within a modest budget that they can profit from but the point is that Studios that have that kind of money to spend better make a stellar product and one that sells or else we as Gamers and those who make them will inevitably feel the repercussions of it such as price increases for games and more layoffs a good example of this is fores spoken the game was developed at around $100 million which in some respects is a rather reasonable development cost however it failed to to meet the expectations of the gaming media and Gamers alike so nobody bought it and those who did buy it were left unsatisfied this would ultimately lead to luminous Productions the studio behind Force spoken development being dissolved a few months after the release of the game fortunately from what I can tell this didn't result in any layoffs the employees were simply repositioned into other areas within Square Enix but nevertheless the studio was closed let's wrap this up shall we everything that I've mentioned in this video so far including the budget stuff has raised so many red flags regarding this generation and frankly the future of gaming itself personally I think that things are going to continue to get worse before everything settles into a Groove again and when the industry does get back into that Groove it's going to be completely different I've seen quite a few technological shifts happen in my lifetime such as the transition between VHS to DVD DVD to Blu-ray music being mostly digital and several other things for all intents and purposes those shifts went over rather smoothly except for maybe the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD don't get me wrong change is good and it's necessary as technology evolves however whatever the hell is happening right now in gaming sure as hell ain't going smoothly and it's definitely affecting me as a consumer and I think it's safe to say that I'm not the only one that feels that way Allen wake 2 is the first game this generation that actually blew me away it shouldn't take 3 years into a generation to start putting out games that actually feel like they belong there anyways I'm frustrated and I feel like I'm rambling now so I'm out if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more like it please hit that subscribe button I'll see you all on the next video in the meantime take care

Channel: Work In Progress

Views: 183,467

Keywords: generation 9 gaming, current state of gaming, modern gaming, gen 9 gaming, generation 9 consoles, playstation 5, xbox series s, xbox series x, digital only games, xbox game pass, video game layoffs, embracer layoffs, insomniac leaks, spider man 2, spider man 2 ps5, video game production cost, hifi rush, video games, 2023 gaming, gaming layoffs, playstation first party games, gen 9 consoles, gaming is dead, xbox layoffs, microsoft layoffs, xbox, xbox podcast phil spencer

Id: ojH0U7-cJwg

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024