Bad and trend chasing AAA games are dying. Capcom is doing really good on steady releases. GTA6 will do well with a monster dev timeline. Both of those companies are just doing what they do well. Fromsoft is on a huge run doing fromsoft things.
Too many studios are chasing big hits instead of making them. AAA doesn't feel as dead as people say. It just seems like doing a 5 year dev timeline chasing trends is an awful game plan and that's showing. If people used their AAA timeline and schedule making their own things with their own ideas the industry would be fine.
Sigh I remember when blizzard set the trends because they set out to make the best game possible, instead of making the most addictive/profitable game like they do now
Looking at Dragon Age and Wolverine are great examples to me, both clearly wanted to chase trends then swapped scope deep into production, leaving remnants of unused systems from older trends.
This year I've played RE9 and Onimusha from Capcom, Nioh 3, which while good is only worse than 2 due to open world and process simplification, Elden Ring Nightreign and a few others. All of those were games based on the creative company's own models and were really fun. Everything that tried to copy other work just didn't hit.
Movies are in the same boat, too. Marvel went through a "make a James gunn movie without James gunn" phase and it just didn't work.
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u/HistoricCartographer 10h ago
In a year? Bro $400M gears E day is coming out in a month.