Revolution Studios co-founder Charles Cecil remembers first hearing the term, "A number of publishers basically said, 'For every dollar we spend on internal development, we're going to account for a profit of three or four or five dollars,' or whatever. Virgin in particular had a lot of internal development, and they were posting huge profits, and that was fine, as long as you never ship the product – and by god, you never can it, because then you take an almighty write-off."
Indie Quest 2025 is a digital showcase event dedicated to independently developed Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs). Curated by Taylor Hoyt of the YouTube channel The Gaming Shelf, the event premiered on May 29, 2025.
Forge of the Fae just hits all the right notes. Everything I've seen makes me want it.
'If the big companies dictate what games can be created, I don't think that will advance the industry.' -Shihei Yoshida
🙄 same guy who said 80$ is a steal lol and according to him M$ shouldnt put good on a services🤣 wtf
Talks about "innovation" while all his previous company is focused on is GaaS and Remasters. Smh.
This guy is a walking contradiction.
This makes no sense at all.
What does his PREVIOUS company have to do with him and his statement??
Did he have a say on what they are doing? Could of sworn that was Jim Ryan’s fault?
Yet he was In charge and led the PlayStation to overtake xbox
Console VR was birthed because if him he pushed the whole psvr project if that isn't innovative then what is.
Doesn't matter how many alts you use to try and constuct ab alt narrative shu is highly respected in the industry and has done as much for gaming as some of the best names in the industry
@Profchaos
I don´t care what he did in the past.
Sony didn´t cared for him either as he was forced to accept a role as CEO of Indie games or get out! After everything he done for the company.
https://www.eurogamer.net/f...
I been seeing LOTS of innovative day one games on Gamepass (Including Clair Obscur) and all I´ve been seeing for Playstation first party @Full Priced is mostly (but not only) GaaS and Remasters. Deny all you want, that´s the truth.
Subscription services are absolutely awful. They have essentially destroyed the movie industry and unfortunately gaming may be next.
In the long term you will end up needing 10 different subscriptions and the prices will keep going up while the quality keeps going down.
Subscription services have f***ed the movie industry and it's work force, caused massive studio buyups by companies like Disney consolidating huge parts of the industry under one roof and have creatively sterilised the IP's they've gobbled up. The same thing is happening to gaming, MS being the main greedy piggy.
Well… if you’re talking about the US movie industry, then I couldn’t agreed with you more.
But the movie industry isn’t just the US. For some other countries, it’s been considered good. Like where i am, the movie industry here used to be terrible, now it’s a bit less terrible. Mostly this is because in the past movies only can make money mostly on it’s cinema run, but now after the cinema run they can get some funds from the subscription services. Which helps significantly.
But these movies mostly suck due to the low budgets and general lack of talent lol
I get what he's saying, but I don’t think we need subscription services to see a lot of the problems he's pointing out. All we really have to do is look at the gaming industry over the last two console generations. Even without subscriptions, the big AAA publishers have already been moving in a direction where almost every game feels like it's built from the same template. It’s all about streamlined, safe design choices that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience. At this point, you could probably ask an AI to make a AAA game from a certain publisher and it would spit out something pretty close to what they’re actually making.
Now, about the whole “walled garden” thing... that’s not some future problem, it’s already here. Consoles have always worked like that. Their entire business model is based on controlling what gets released on their platforms. Sure, maybe they’re not as locked down as the extreme examples people bring up, but the end result is similar. If you’re not making the kind of game the platform holder wants, you’re probably not getting through the door. We’ve seen it with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, even Valve does this in its own way with Steam. So yeah, the issue isn’t new or exclusive to subscription services.
Would a subscription-only future make that problem worse? Sure, it definitely could. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction anytime soon. Unless physical hardware truly becomes a thing of the past and everyone switches to streaming games, I just don’t see subscriptions becoming the dominant model. They’ll stick around as an option, but I doubt they’ll take over completely.
Now, what will take over completely is digital media, and that’s a whole different issue that’s going to hit us a lot sooner. PC and mobile are already basically 100% digital, and that makes up around 70% of the gaming market. The remaining 30% is consoles, and even there we’re seeing the shift. Sony’s removing the disc drive from boxed consoles, Nintendo is releasing just one super expensive 64GB cartridge for their new system, which means almost all third-party publishers will end up going digital and Microsoft is mostly digital already. You either get a digital-only or a physical box with disc that only acts as a activation key. So yeah, that future’s already knocking on the door and the damage will be enormous.
Right, because then you can’t sell individual games at $80, which is an incredible value for the consumer!
I find this statement quite telling. Apparently a certain fan base wasn't buying games at $60 or $70 dollars either. That's why the Gamepass model exists with day and date. What was the excuse then?
We as gamers want it all but don't want to pay for anything. Well, I take that back. A good chunk of them. You don't have to buy a game at $80. Wait for to go down in price. Most gamers have a massive backlog. Play those games until the one you wants drops and n price. Simple
I never buy any games at full price, it’s up to the consumer to wait for a price cut.
Generally I don’t buy above $10, normally around $5. So don’t agree with 80 70 60? Just wait a bit
Totally fair if that approach works for you, but the flip side is that some dev studios do rely on full-price sales to stay afloat—especially smaller or AA teams. The ‘just wait for a sale’ mindset can really hurt games that aren’t backed by massive budgets or publishers.
It’s also kind of a bummer to finally see a game release you’ve been hyped for, only to feel like you have to wait another year or two just to get a decent discount.
That said, I think the deeper issue is with bloated dev budgets. It’s wild seeing games like First Berserker or Expedition 33 launching at $50 while still managing to look great and make a profit. Meanwhile, some AAA studios say $70 isn’t enough to break even. That raises real questions about where the money’s going and whether the pricing problem is actually a budgeting problem.
To me, it depends on who made it and who will profit.
I bought No Man's Sky back in 2016. They gave me all updates, PSVR,PS5, and PSVR2 versions all for free.
That makes it worth every dollar I spent. Same with Balatro, Stardew Valley, Dave the Diver etc.
Yeah weird it's like a certain fan base that doesn't buy ANY games and their sales cratered that was why prices has gone up to $80...... hmmm...... they've the same one that has tried to buy up the industry and now has to release games on competing platforms to be viable now...... but you know the studio/company slipped my mind
You have a point on the bloated development budgets.
I mean look at black myth wukong’s $80m budget vs the $150-200m (possibly more) budget of concord.
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AAA is advertised as that the product is the highest quality and the top of the companies creative form. The term hasn't changed, the talent and quality of the work has. If the AAA label meant inferior quality to the general public then the term would have changed to fit the actual products being released. We can say a lot of things are meaningless to us, but it doesn't make it so.
I don’t think it’s meaningless, to be honest. I think it’s a fine way to classify games with a specific budget and talent behind it… not saying they’re all great or anything, but there’s a distinction between indie, AA, and AAA games. Not all games are made equally.
Modern triple A games aren't actually triple A. Triple A means high quality. They for some reason placed high budget as one of the things that define triple A and that is just not the case.
Hades for example is an example of a high quality game...triple A. Starfield on the other hand is like a AA low quality title.
Simply just means it's a heavily funded game and developed by a hundred plus developers. Doesn't mean it'll be a great game as we've seen many times.
It's interesting to see that AAA was an investment term before it became what it is today. I remember even the early days, no one referred to Super Mario Bros. as AAA or Donkey Kong on Colecovision as AAA.
It was a stupid term.