I can’t remember Skyrim or Fallout 4 releasing in that bad of a state and I’ve owned those games since release. Fallout 76 on the other hand… Yikes. I might also be completely wrong as years of playing with unofficial community patches may have clouded my memories. CP2077 had way more issues than just bugs at launch. Witcher 3 was buggy as well, but at least somewhat feature complete. I can kinda forgive jank in games if the product itself is compelling to me and I’m just a sucker for Bethesda-style RPGs. Will still be waiting for Starfield’s launch on GamePass before I buy it, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 had awful writing and that’s nothing that a patch can fix.

Playing on original hardware has its charms but emulation is often a better experience anyway. I have an N64 sitting in the closet collecting dust because a) it’s a PAL console (sigh), b) the analog stick is shot and c) my TV doesn’t support SCART. I know I could get an NTSC console, buy replacement gears for the stick, buy a RetroTink to get HDMI support, etc. At some point it’s just too much of a hassle for nostalgia’s sake.

Arena Shooters also had extremely high skill ceilings and steep learning curves. Good aim was only a small part of the game. Knowing the map, i.e. where and when power weapons and power ups spawn, controlling both item spawns as well as enemy spawn points; that’s what distinguished a good player from a bad one.

If you wanted to git gud you had to suffer through countless hours of getting destroyed. I don’t know if today’s gamer is still up for that. However, games like Counter-Strike and League of Legends are more popular than ever and those are definitely not easy to get into.