7 Reasons Why People Are Giving Up On Gaming
3. Aggressive Monetisation Is The Norm
Did you know Diablo Immortal made $100 MILLION in under two months? That it's set records for Blizzard IP, mobile storefronts and the balancing act of "how much game do we need to get right, before we can start charging"?
Because it has.
Blizzard's divisive as hell, meme'd to death Diablo Immortal is one of the worst-reviewed games of all time... and yet, the general public don't care.
Don't get me wrong, there absolutely are victories against the likes of Anthem, The Avengers, Star Wars: Battlefront II and what will likely be a squeaky fart of a release for Gotham Knights, but the idea of aggressive in-game monetisation going away or being replaced by Battle Passes just isn't the case, and likely never will be.
If anything, we're seeing a combined effort.
The sweet spot for most people seems to be nailing the core mechanics of something enough, so that even if monetisation and premium currency pop-ups are constant, at least there's SOMETHING to actually play.
Multiversus is a perfect example. Once third-party devs started ostensibly taking the Nintendo approach I mentioned earlier - polishing a tiny amount of the game and monetising things afterwards or for a premium price point - it was off to the races.
Budgets for high-end video games aren't being relaxed. The industry's bigwigs simply don't think an audience will respond to 10 smaller projects versus a Far Cry 6, so the consumer has to pay the bills and keep shareholders happy instead.