Depending on what you actually count as a “video game” the industry is now generating somewhere between 200 and 350 billion dollars a year in annual revenue, making it by far the largest entertainment sector in the world regardless of whatever your exact definitions may be.
More people are playing video games than ever before, they are playing them for longer, and (the not so secret reality is that) video game companies have gotten a lot better at getting money out of them while they are.
Over what should have been the best half decade in the history of the industry, the overall market is down by as much as 30% from its peak, in the same time that the broader market has more than doubled.
Sooo how is it possible that even with record sales, record new revenue streams, record numbers of new players, and record new opportunities to monetize that new audience… video game companies have still managed to screw this up so badly?
Your links are all broken because they appeared to be copied and pasted without actually pasting the full unabreviated hyperlink.
Here’s my take:
First, the Videogames made money based on number of plays, and the developers had to strike a balance between innovation, replayability, difficulty, and price then ship directly to arcades.
Then, the home console era took off, and competing consoles started signing exclusivity contracts with game developers in order to compete. Innovation was still a strong influence, but storylines and graphics became the major selling points. During this time, studios began consolidating as larger ones like EA, Activision, Tencent, etc all bought out smaller ones and dissolved them to move talent around to different flagship products.
Next, live service games proved incredibly profitable and hosting them became cheaper every year. Instead of monetizing a game once, developers could monetize them infinitely by simply adding microtransactions. During this time online distributors also became popular, giving rise to Steam and Epic Games stores to sell games purely digitally instead of via physical media. This has culminated in some distributors removing access to paid for games, as they were never truly purchased only leased.
Finally, major console companies started buying up or partnering with major studios, and then maximizing profitability which naturally means one thing: More Live Service Microtransactions, Less of Everything Else.
But Gamers aren’t idiots. There is a gap in the market for content that we own, in physical form, with good story, and decent graphics. But there are no longer any professional studios left to make them. This has led to the term “Indie Studio” becoming broader and more successful, and the constant decline in the trust of major studios. Now, “AAA Studios” as they’re referred to as, mostly sell towards children and people easily manipulated by social media feeds that they target to advertise on, but a new legislative landscape is slowly introducing obstacles for them to do that. It’s plain to see that the current way of things is unsustainable and set to collapse.