beefcat
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I hate the dumpster fire that is “definitive edition” as much as the next person, but…
It’s not $60 for San Andreas, that’s the price for all three bad remasters.
It’s not an ENB mod, actual artists made new shittier assets, and developers poorly ported the game to a new engine.
And this horse was already beaten into a fine paste over a year ago.
They absolutely are getting better audio&video fidelity, but that doesn’t mean much to, at least me, if the music is less memorable, the bugs are all patched, everything is over-monetized games as a service, all the assets are generic, and it’s all hyper-derivative remakes of remakes. I get that “fun is fun”, but once you’ve played so many games, you look back at games from 2001 and wonder why the only innovations we have are mantling, $20 hats, and Microsoft is buying everything.
I think this is a bit reductive of the current landscape. It really only feels true if you limit your samples to AAA games, which have always been focused on low risk and high profitability. I would argue that the industry as a whole has become much healthier in the 8th and 9th console generations than it was during the 7th console generation.
Here is my argument:
During the 7th console generation, the industry was experiencing explosive growth. Video game budgets ballooned rapidly as the new hardware demanded higher quality assets and developers needed to pump out bigger, more polished games to compete in the market. Small budget games became a rarity, often relegated to handhelds if they got made at all. Big publishers weren’t all that interested, and you needed their help if you wanted to get your game certified, marketed, and distributed at retail.
The growth of digital distribution changed all that. Platforms like Steam, and later the loosened requirements to sell games on PSN and Xbox Live, lowered the barrier to entry considerably. Over the last 10 years, indie games have exploded in quality, quantity, and popularity. And we’re even seeing the return of mid budget “AA” games. There is plenty of innovation and excitement going on in this space.
I would also argue that the rise of F2P for multiplayer games is a net positive, when done right (i.e. no P2W, cosmetic-only purchases), but that can be a more contentious opinion.
How is this false story still getting pushed to the top?
We literally just had a thread about it earlier this week. It was debunked.
The same story came up years ago, and it was debunked then too.
People will just believe anything these days.