10 Ways The Video Game Industry Has Gotten WORSE This Decade

The last ten years has seen a lot of changes. We started 2010 with one console generation where Microsoft was leading the pack, only for them to hugely fumble their entry into the eighth console generation. Sony on the other hand reversed their fortunes with the launch of the Playstation 4, providing gamers with a slew of critically and commercially exclusives like God of War, Spiderman, and Uncharted 4.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has had something of a renaissance. The lacklustre Wii U and its obtuse peripheral were made into a distant memory by the emergence of the Switch and its more classically framed titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Now, I don’t particularly enjoy focusing on negatives, I would much rather celebrate the positives and look at the strides and achievements that video games have taken these past ten years.

With that in mind I’ve tried to critique the flaws of the issues surrounding and pertaining to the gaming industry, rather than reel off its shortcomings and turn this into a list of gripes and moans.

From the ever-increasing storage space to the conditions that employees and custodians of the industry are put through, hopefully 2020 and the years succeeding it iron out these kinks, leave the field better off for gamers and game-makers alike.

This affects the console crowd a great deal more than PC folk, but the arrival of the Xbox One and Playstation 4 saw a jump in the RRP of console games from a reasonable £40 in the UK to a harder to justify £50, with the US spiking from $50 to $60 respectively.

The inception of free-to-play and games on Android and iOS (something I'll get into more detail later) brought in a new wave of casual gamers, and gave rise to a different way of monetising video games as a service rather than a one-off single purchase.

With this model being adopted by many of the bigger publishers and developers, it makes it a hard pill to swallow when a consumer is asked for £50 upfront, £20-£30 for a season pass, and heavily encouraged to spend money in an in-game marketplace.

As the paradigm slowly (albeit with some understandable reluctance) shifts towards digital downloads over physical discs, this has yet to be reflected in the marketplace pricing. As the titan that is Amazon offers decent prices on most games and CEX has cornered the market on preowned titles, the Xbox Marketplace and PS Store price themselves out of their own game.