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The greatest challenge to future games will be competing against those already out there – and that are refusing to go anywhere.

GamebizIndustry did a very interesting 2 part write-up on the current state of the game market that provides some data and commentary on the current gaming marketplace.

Some interesting points:

• Game spending is down as inflation and food/housing costs have gone up after Covid over-exuberance. Player counts are back to a more stable and sustainable level.
• Total game spending has been flat the last several years as we exited Covid. However, more games are getting released all the time so the simple math tells you the average game is making less than it was a few years ago.
• When a game now cost $200-250 million to make (instead of $20 million like in the past) risk tolerance goes to zero. Expect far less innovation in big titles and low-risk sequels.
• Behemoth games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, or Call of Duty are sucking all the air out of the room. They are ‘black hole’ games that suck everything in and keep it there.
  • Those games are amazing at funneling players and keeping them there with their social hooks.
  • Every IP holder is trying to get their IP into a Fortnite or into a Minecraft rather than building out their own games, because that’s where the audience is.
• A third of people who turn on their consoles every week are playing Fortnite. Half of the total hours spent on PlayStation or Xbox every month is in just the top ten live-service games. That’s before anyone else even gets a chance to be played even once.
• The data is clear: console buyers are becoming older and more affluent and the younger generations are choosing mobile or PC because of the ease of entry and because they already have the devices.
• What you’re seeing, particularly with younger consumers, is a default to the free-to-play entry point.
• Platform exclusive content’s days are numbered
  • Everyone’s publishing everywhere. The expectation is that whatever I want to play, I can play it wherever I want. If not, I’m not interested.
• $80 price points
  • Upfront price is a huge barrier to get people even to try a game. Why pay $80 when Fortnite is free and “big, complex, and with so many different ways of playing”
  • Anything targeting the $80 price bracket is likely to either be a sequel or something that’s similar to another game that sold well – a ‘comparable’.
• Women make up a huge segment of the audience – accounting for roughly half of Switch players.
  • They play and pay a lot less.
  • They generally don’t self-describe as a gamer
• Even though the combination of outsourcing and AI could help to curb the rapid acceleration of game development costs, they are not sure it will actually create the deceleration of cost. AI is like Excel for accountants. It’s a tool that makes part of their job easier, but it’s still hard work that requires expertise.
• The future of game development will probably look more like movie production. Studios will likely only retain a small band of creative directors and producers, then hire contractors or co-development studios once the pre-production is done and concept set.

Links:

• https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-big-picture-part-one-i-dont-know-if-games-are-recession-proof
• https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-big-picture-part-two-make-it-cheaper-and-simpler-lets-do-that-instead

Dylan Browne demonstrates a 321 billion-polygon forest on UE5 (77,376 instances of 20 million poly trees). Nanite Foliage leverages a voxel-based method to achieve dense forests. The Witcher 4 uses it and it about to be debut in the upcoming release of Unreal Engine 5.

He also did a fascinating ray-traced translucency experiment

Links:

• https://80.lv/articles/unreal-engine-5-6-s-ray-traced-translucency-with-substrate-materials
• https://80.lv/articles/get-a-glimpse-of-nanite-foliage-with-voxel-representation-in-ue5-7