Microsoft might have purchased someone, maybe

listening to the jeff gertsman podcast today and he mentioned about Playground didn't have the fable type humour in early versions of the game. Also he mentioned MS have created gamers who will not buy games but wait till its on GP (I still buy games but do wait for certain games to go on GP)

Charging 70 notes for a game is as much to blame for that. I'm much less likely to take a punt on a game at the price. Stellar blade for example I may have bought. Glad I didn't though as I played the demo and it's shite.

I read this a couple of days ago: Do game developers still want to publish on Xbox?
It's an article by Skill Up's Edmond Tran.

Good article, interesting that they also earmark PlayStation as suffering from some of the same audience ambivalence to a degree and PS+ deals being the only worthwhile route for some smaller games.

I'm a big fan of the value subscriptions offer (I've got a lot out of Game Pass over the years), but there's no denying the complete purchasing apathy they're breeding amongst consumers, same goes for the entire entertainment industry really.

Very rare on Xbox. Used to be every XBLA game was required to have one.
Think Penny's Big Breakaway was the last game I saw a demo for.
Not sure about PS or Switch(which I need to find as it's no doubt flat now as i left it packed when i took it on holiday last October).

I think there's an argument that gaming has been devalued over the years, when you think of the outgoing generation namely us and the incoming generation namely kids and teens they're used to free game and all that nonsense that comes with it. When I think of how cheap games can get and things like Gamepass and PS Plus, realistically speaking, why would you pay full whack for games these days???

Hogwarts legacy is the only game I've bought, I think, for years. Oh and the marvel live service one.

I'm all for saving some money and waiting a few months for cheaper games or even waiting till they appear "free" in a subscription service, however, I do like to splash some cash on games I really like.

I personally think it's important to support your hobby now and again rather than always waiting for bargain basement prices. If you are happy with Fortnite/apex or candy crush stuff then fine.

Smaller indy stuff like Animal wall should also be fine as they are made by passionate folk.

Last game I paid full whack for at launch was Total Warhammer 3. I regretted that as it was a boring mess for about a year.

I was going to get Dragons Dogma 2 at launch but Witcher 3 has got in the way, which I got for a tenner. Why buy a game at full price when there's hundreds of great games I've never played before I can get for cheap?

Edit: wait, I bought TOTK at launch, no regrets with that one

On one hand people are really outraged that all these studios are closing, on the other hand they are like I only ever spend £6 on a game. I can't work out how these 2 things might be in some way linked!

I don't think they are particularly linked, unless we're classing games companies as charities now, and we should be paying them more than they ask for.

It has been decades since I've felt the need to buy a game at launch.

Once that is removed, there's not really any reason to pay $70 for a game this week that I won't play for months, when I could buy the same game for $5 six months later and not play it for months.

But it's the games companies/publishers/retailers who are setting the prices, nothing to do with me. If most Switch games get discounted to 75% off every 2 weeks, I'm not going to buy them at full price just to somehow support the company.

(I have paid more than the minimum for some bundles, but that was mainly to support the charity)

[edit] If anything, games companies should refund all the money I've spent on games that I haven't played! 

Yeah I did read about how many games are being released on Steam and how hard it is to actually get seen. Like yes, it's great that a single person made game such as Manor Born does really well but the reality is that it's really just a drop in the ocean with how many games are being made all looking to dominate our time and how many just don't sell and wither away.

Not only is it so much easier to make and publish a game these days, they're also in competition with all other media, plus also all other games and media that have ever been (except NolF!)

It used to be that only relatively big publishers had the ability to get physical games into stores, and stores would mostly stock newer games.
So buyers were almost forced to buy newer games. 

But now you can go on somewhere like Steam and not only get newer big games, but all the newer smaller games, plus all the older big games and older smaller games.

Tbh I'm rather surprised that big new games still seem to be able to pull in huge numbers of sales. I guess it's mainly due to the fact that the amount of people playing games has dramatically expanded. (no longer just teen boys).
And I guess there's still quite a few people who want to be part of that initial launch zeitgeist.