Dragon Age: The Veilguard launched two days ago. It hit a peak of
~77K concurrent players on Steam over the past 24 hours. For comparison, Baldur's Gate 3, which launched over a year ago, peaked at ~73K concurrent players during those same 24 hours. It's all-time peak hit 870K.
So in just the second half of 2024, we've seen the failure of a new open world Stars Wars game by Ubisoft, an 9-figure GaaS by Sony, and a new Dragon Age title by Bioware. And the new Assassins Creed was so obviously doomed that it got pushed back to spring.
These are all massive, high-profile AAA or AAA+ titles by major companies, and they're failing one after another, some in truly spectacular fashion. Concord, for example, now probably holds the record for Biggest Videogame Flop of All Time, depending on how you measure that. (I'm sure the gameplay was better than ET, but more people bought and played ET.) In previous years, each of these big fall releases would have been titles that consumers were eagerly anticipating, and studios would have been hoping to position their titles for GOTY consideration. Instead, the company that made Concord has already been shut down, Bioware is probably done, and it wouldn't shock me if Ubisoft failed next year. I know Ubisoft is big, but I don't know that they're big enough to survive Outlaws and AC Shadows.
This industry needs a good controlled burn to clear out the deadwood, and it looks like we're finally getting it. What I'm hoping to see next are a few things:
- Less ideology crammed into games. I don't want to be preached at, and religious fundamentalists generally don't produce good creative products. (See Christian movies, Christian television, and Christian music -- this stuff is painful).
- Far fewer $200M+ titles. If you're making a game that expensive, it's too big to fail, which means the people calling the shots get way too risk-averse. Ditch the paint-by-numbers Ubisoft model. Ditch the paint-by-numbers Bethesda model. This stuff was innovative 10-20 years ago. It's played out now. It's slop.
- On a related note, AAA+ games increasingly rely on in-game monetization to make back their production costs. In-game monetization sucks. Another reason to make games smaller.
- Bring back the 12-16 hour single player game. You know who likes those games? Adult male gamers, who have disposable income to spend on games.
Larian Studios created a fantastic single-player RPG that genuinely moved the medium forward. FromSoft has a long track record of the same. Studios can do this if they want to. Or they can keep setting money on fire. It's up to them I guess.