The Issue At Hand

The gaming industry is currently one of the most volatile to work in. We can deny it, yet month by month we see studios close major titles flop or the next big anti-consumer scandal of games. So to start let us see where we’ve come from, what the roots we’ve set are, and if they are the issue here.

The Fifth Console Generation

Let’s first step back to 1995, “The Fifth Generation” of console gaming. Particularly to September of ‘95, when the original PlayStation launched with a whopping Eleven different launch titles in the US. Games such as Rayman, NBA Jam Tournament Edition, and Street Fighter: The Movie all hit the shelves alongside the console that, in just over its first year in the US, sold more than 3 million copies. Then more than double this number over the next year. Gaming was growing, as was its popularity in the US. By the end of its production life in 2005, the PlayStation/PS1 sold more than 40 million units in the US alone. The PS1 helped spawn a further market for gamers in the US. Plus in only the next six years we saw the initial start of a console war that has gone on for over fifteen years. Before there is a tree, there are roots, and before roots, seeds.

Generation Six

It’s early 2001, you’re at home enjoying your PS2 and great games like TimeSplitters or Star Wars: Starfighter on your box TV with the AV cables hanging off the front. But what’s this? A new challenger approaches in November 2001 with Microsoft’s Xbox and the new first-person shooter from Bungie, Halo: Combat Evolved. The console war was starting. Though this generation was a minor skirmish, it laid the foundations for where many older gamers stand today. From here we saw many titles and great games flourish, while others didn’t quite shine. At this point we were all still gamers, enjoy anything and everything the industry sent our way.

The Sevens, PC, and Beyond

In 2005 and 2006 gamers became divided. When you talked to other gamers, much like Thanksgiving dinner talks are dictated by who you voted for in the last election, your conversation always came around to, “What do you play on?” It was a new era of who had better exclusives, who could undercut the other harder on specific parts of the equation. The PS3 offered free online, but there was no Halo 3. The Xbox 360 held a massive population of competitive non-PC gamers, but they all paid every year to play online. PlayStation had Uncharted, Xbox had Halo. Xbox had Crackdown, but PlayStation had Resistance: Fall of Man. In the end, the consumers won gen seven. We had amazing titles and the competition benefited us.

This was great until the start of Gen Eight. Our expectations and our love of the industry slowly started to really hurt where they were coming from. We wanted AAA titles as quickly as we could get our hands on them until they stopped getting better. We wanted incredible stories, but yearly or bi-yearly. We wanted revolutionary multiplayer shooters, but only until the mechanics became just a bit too repetitive. We looked at these companies that thought they had found the formula, and we berated them for what we received. Just for reference, I’m going to list a few. ReCore, Star Wars Battlefront II, Mass Effect Andromeda, No Man’s Sky, Destiny, Destiny 2, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed III, Assassin’s Creed: Unity. If any of these titles ring a bell on the events that occurred then you may know how far these titles have come. Two games in this list had a different outcome than those who redeemed themselves in the eyes of their players. ReCore never saw any fixes for its endgame bugs and lacked in any further content after completion. Mass Effect Andromeda saw BioWare nearly removed from the hearts of gamers because of its issues. The rest brought themselves back from the brink with additional content, updates and various other moves by the developers.

Now, much of this has focused notably on console markets, and that’s not to say that the PC players of the world lack such experience with these issues, its that they handled their issues much sooner and their platform makes games much more restricted in who can play them based on the power of their machine. Console hardware is uniform making it easier to discuss. After recent developments though, particularly in the realm of one Golden Joysticks Ultimate GOTY winner Fortnite, we can now talk about crossplay. As we have come to an end of peoples care for the console war more of us are calling for crossplay. While there are many issues this can cause do to controller vs mouse and keyboard arguments, auto-aim, and other items we seem closer than ever.

So, Where to From Here?

From here we look forward. We are quickly approaching 2019 and 2018 has left us with a multitude of great stories. The list of games we have received are restoring faith in the industry, and while people thought the end of single-player adventures were at their end early this year, we see now that was wrong. Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassins Creed: Odyssey, God of War, Spider-Man, Detroit: Become Human, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, and Hitman 2. In this list isn’t even counted the numerous multiplayer titles received; A Way Out, Battlefield V, Monster Hunter World, Destiny 2: Forsaken, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2. 2018 was an upturn for gamers. We move in a cycle, and this could be our turning point. Returning to the days of early Xbox 360 and PS3 without the unnecessary console war. We are looking to a new generation of consoles and, hopefully, to a new generation of top-notch gaming.