Where have the AAA titles gone?

[neamerjell]

Steam seems to have become a dumping ground for every wannabe developer who just watched a two hour tutorial about Unity. I have a GTX 970 and have yet to hear the fans spin up...
(I only upgraded from a GTX 670 in anticipation of buying a 4k monitor)

Most of the stuff I have seen in the past 5 years looks like it was designed to run on a cell phone. Some even look like they would run on a first generation Pentium - back when all CPUs had a single core and speeds were measured in MEGAhertz!

Where are all the games that drive people to upgrade their PCs? Where is the next GPU slaughtering AAA title that would be the modern day equivalent of Crysis?

[PocketYoda]

Agreed they seem to all be console now.. Maybe PC is dying..

[Meneluma]

Actually lots of the not graphically impressive new games would not run on old computers even if they look like they could graphics wise, optimization isn't a huge priority these days, I can run the relatively stunning(still to this day) Mirror's Edge and Bioshock Infinite just fine on high settings, but I have absolutely terrible fps running some very simple looking indie games from the past two years on low settings. Non 3D games even.

[PocketYoda]

Publicado originalmente por Bluntly Honest Reviews:

Publicado originalmente por DanteYoda:

Agreed they seem to all be console now.. Maybe PC is dying..

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/06/11/pc-gaming-growing-e3/

Sorry just following gaming in the last few years says that there is fake news.. Real life does not seem to follow what those sites try to sell us..

[Meneluma]

Besides, PC NEVER was the "main" platform for devolpment.
Games like GTA 5 and the recent monster Hunter World came on consoles first and then got ported over after they sold well and if there was no legal contract preventing doing so.
Oh and not to mention the horror stories of good games with playable versions turning into very broken PC ports? Arkham Knight was the legendary bad example, but looking for something more recent, you have NieR Automata, where the Steam version is still broken compared to PS4 and the new Xbox One(and Windows Store lol) versions.

You won't get anything like Crysis where it will be playable only on the most powerful machines anymore, not even because of console, but the average PCs not being all that great.

No one will make the most amazing game that only NASA can play on their supercomputer at decent fps in between rocket launches, there is no money to be made from that.

[The•Siscus]

Publicado originalmente por Bluntly Honest Reviews:

Publicado originalmente por DanteYoda:

Agreed they seem to all be console now.. Maybe PC is dying..

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/06/11/pc-gaming-growing-e3/

How can a marketing article from Nvidia be a proof supporting your thesis?

Anyway, PC Gaming World is not dying, at least not in the immediate future...it's just transforming itself into an entertainment industry like cinema and tv, with a lot of trash for the majority and some good exception for the rest.
Steam is a good example: while Valve sees its profits growing every year, the general quality of the games is fallen down, but hey, I don't blame them, they are a private company, so.....

To answer the OP: market is changed from the times when people were forced to upgrade their PC: with new high hardware prices, a new audience that looks only for the fun (Youtube, Twitch), new marketing's politics that seek to reach the most vast audience possible for profit's reasons, it's very hard the a well established Software House will risk everything to make new games for a few people and their pumped hardwares.

[ReBoot]

Theres no shortage on A games. While their relative number sinks due to huge maases of crap barely qualifying as games, their absolute number isnt declining.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Publicado originalmente por Wishmaker_Latias:

Actually lots of the not graphically impressive new games would not run on old computers even if they look like they could graphics wise, optimization isn't a huge priority these days, I can run the relatively stunning(still to this day) Mirror's Edge and Bioshock Infinite just fine on high settings, but I have absolutely terrible fps running some very simple looking indie games from the past two years on low settings. Non 3D games even.

Ugh, still annoyed that the two semi-recent underwater metroidvanias Aquatic Adventure and Song of the Deep and the "sci-fi terraria" Asteria can't run at full speed on my machine. One can blame Mighty No. 9's poor optimization on shoddy workmanship, but you might be right that there's a more general pattern of poor optimization across the board. It might also be associated with people using certain game engines for stuff, rather than custom-built game engines that run more slimly.

(Incidentally, at least I can run MN9 at full speed consistently when I put everything on their lowest settings...)

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por neamerjell:

Steam seems to have become a dumping ground for every wannabe developer who just watched a two hour tutorial about Unity. I have a GTX 970 and have yet to hear the fans spin up...
(I only upgraded from a GTX 670 in anticipation of buying a 4k monitor)

Most of the stuff I have seen in the past 5 years looks like it was designed to run on a cell phone. Some even look like they would run on a first generation Pentium - back when all CPUs had a single core and speeds were measured in MEGAhertz!

Where are all the games that drive people to upgrade their PCs? Where is the next GPU slaughtering AAA title that would be the modern day equivalent of Crysis?

AAA titles be here like they always been. The thing is AAA studios don't put out that many games in a given year. So as a rule they tend to be few and far between.

So lets review. AAA only ever accounted for at best 30 games over the course of a year, frequently less. So yeah. not that many, When your game's budget runs in th +100 mil range, you can't really make that many. When your develoipment budget runs in the 100K range you can release more games in a given period of time.

Also the industry itself seems to be moving away from the AAA model.

[Longhaul]

AAA is being replaced with thousands of absolute trash shovelware titles... just look in the store... at any time...

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por Daynox:

AAA is being replaced with thousands of absolute trash shovelware titles... just look in the store... at any time...

I'm seeing Monster Hunter World on the Store page...is that the shovelware you speak of? ALso seeing the Arkham series.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Publicado originalmente por neamerjell:

Steam seems to have become a dumping ground for every wannabe developer who just watched a two hour tutorial about Unity. I have a GTX 970 and have yet to hear the fans spin up...
(I only upgraded from a GTX 670 in anticipation of buying a 4k monitor)

Most of the stuff I have seen in the past 5 years looks like it was designed to run on a cell phone. Some even look like they would run on a first generation Pentium - back when all CPUs had a single core and speeds were measured in MEGAhertz!

Where are all the games that drive people to upgrade their PCs? Where is the next GPU slaughtering AAA title that would be the modern day equivalent of Crysis?

AAA games have always had a long release date between them. The developers tend to push for specific seasons in order to increase sales. There are also not many AAA developers.

Indie developers tend to produce games year round and there are far more of them, so you will always see far more indie games coming out then AAA games.

[Dr. Fronkensteen]

They are working on their own clients to avoid the steam tax.

[Seraphita]

Publicado originalmente por Riedy:

Shiny things aren't always the best, you miss out on a lot of great games by only playing AAA.

Or do we? Seriously though, lot of indie games have so much potential and I got a very amazing experience from many of them. It really proves that gaming is not just all about AAA games...

[Crazy Tiger]

I don't even purchase AAA titles on Steam.

[R A Z E R]

Just wait for the new tomb raider/metro/forza.. I'm sure that will do well... Though i kinda have enough of all these random developers dumping indie games everywhere on steam. Most of those indie games aren't even good at all.