The only AAA game that I have legitimately enjoyed and played more than once is Red Dead Redemption II. Other AAA games are okay, but they feel a bit hollow and lack the immersion that RDR2 has. Then again, RDR2 was showing off a bit with what the industry can do.
AAA Dominance Is Eroding: 56% of PC Gaming Revenue Now Goes to Games Outside the Top 20
Submitted 1 day ago by commander@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://wccftech.com/aaa-dominance-eroding-pc-gaming-revenue-top-20/
Comments
Azrael@reddthat.com 2 hours ago
reksas@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
to me, aaa = mark of inferior quality
benjirenji@slrpnk.net 6 hours ago
For me it’s a lack of creativity and innovation when it comes to gameplay. Indies or just smaller studio productions take more risks and that’s a lot more exciting.
superduperenigma@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Zero creativity, zero innovation, zero passion. Too many AAA games feel like all of the design and decision making happened in a boardroom full of executives and market researchers, then the actual designers and developers just churn out whatever the higher-ups have decided the product will be.
jj4211@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Yeah, AAA productions:
- Must be multiplayer, ostensibly because people ‘demand’ it, but a narrative easy to believe when you know players are stuck with your servers and you can effectively shut down the game when it no longer makes money for you.
- Relatively fewer games to be made, no chances may be taken. Conventional wisdom tells them that people got over turn-based in the 90s, so even the FFVII remake refused to do real turn-based, while Clair Obscur showed that it was still absolutely welcome gameplay.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
that is my point exactly. doesnt matter how nice the game looks, if its uncreative crap nothing will save that.
zebidiah@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
To me, AAA means but it in 6-12 months for $10-20
mlg@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I’m too lazy to find my 3 year old comment but it went something like “AAA games are about as AAA as the mortgage bonds were in 2007”.
The era of the AAA gold standard is long gone. You no longer need a million dollar studio bankrolled by a big name publisher/console to make a groundbreaking AAA game.
Most if not all of those studios have been cost cutting for the past decade to maximize profit which is how we reached the current market of UE5 slop and DoA live service games.
There’s even an entire YouTube channel dedicated to showing how many current “AAA” titles have regressed in graphical optimization and quality from older game engines due to the lack of proper development, despite the advancement in consumer hardware.
Benchamoneh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
Care to link the channel for the curious friend?
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
You know what this is called? A healthy and competitive market.
Yeah, I get there’s layoffs, but that’s mainly at AAA studios and is a symptom of a previously unhealthy, highly consolidated market. The job losses suck, but now diversity and competition is coming back, and that’s generally a good thing for consumers.
early_riser@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Whenever investors get involved things go downhill. If the only two parties are a buyer and a seller, the only way the seller can make money is by making a product the buyer wants to buy. But investors don’t care about the product. They may not even understand the product. They only care that the product makes money.
AAA studios are failing because they want to please investors, not buyers.
StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 34 minutes ago
It’s this.
and it’s always worth distinguishing between executives and investors.
Executives are going to push the problem, but the core issue with most things related to bad products is often due to shareholders. In the US, where most of these companies are based, a publicly traded company is expected to make money for its shareholders. Shareholders have subplanted customers in the companies ethical obligagions. The law has been used to make this national policy. Controlling shareholders can (and do) vote to remove company leadership that won’t act how they want. It is not just that they have to generate revenue, they have to generate as much revenue as possible as determined by shareholders.
If a company goes public, It’s only a matter of time until it’s product goes to shit.
mellowistheyellow@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Well then they are simply stupid. Because if they did care that the product makes money, they would care about what the product the buyer wants to buy, because thats how you make the money.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Same thing happened with music.
It doesn’t mean AAA will go away, just like big stadium packing artists like Taylor Swift never went away. They just accounted for less of the industry’s total profits than they used to.
More of people’s disposable money is spent on a wider variety of music and games, often opting for more “indie” and cheaper versions of both. It’s a good thing, honestly, for people’s tastes to be more diversified and unique.
Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Except almost no one can live with music now, with the spotify model.
illusionist@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Sounds like you’re someone who thought a little about pricing.
Why should anyone get a royalty for a listen?
There’s a club in my town with a dj who plays each week. Club gets paid, dj gets paid. His sets are like ads for his work in the club. Why would I have to pay for each listen? Why would he has to earn for each listen?
Especially if that DJ is residing somewhere else and won’t ever come to my town because it’s too small for him.
Why do we create superstars? Why does “superstar S” have to be paid millions because millions come to their show. Even though I stand 500 m away, I can’t see them, I can’t hear them properly. Why can’t it be that there is a cover band covering those songs. Maybe even doing a better job. On a loval concert, with great sound, a good stage, less crowd, less people, more fun.
Why do we cheer a dj with electronic music, who just plays one song after the other, with a little bit of mixing now and then and choosing the next track based on the crowd? Why aren’t people in the center of the music (anymore)?
Why is our system so fucked up?
GTG3000@programming.dev 7 hours ago
It’s funny, I recall Benn Jordan saying in multiple videos of his that his profits went up when he removed all his music from spotify.
SaraTonin@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Live shows and merch have been the way artists make money since before streaming was a thing
I_Jedi@lemmy.today 19 hours ago
I pirate my music and keep it in my local storage.
FluorideMind@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
They don’t seem to understand not every game needs to be a red dead.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
I’m happy with every AAA game striving for RDR2 level of quality if we also get AA games from the same studios. And of course indie games are always gonna indie.
BillCheddar@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I’d pay the $70 or even $100 for a AAA title…if it released complete, relatively bug-free, and didn’t try to soak me with microtransactions and subscriptions.
But that’s not what’s they’re selling.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
This is whats wrong with gaming.
idiots being too eager to throw ever increasing amounts of money at companies, to get what they used to get for 50, with zero self awareness that they are the cancer thats killing everything.
early_riser@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Counterpoint: games were more expensive in the past, sometimes even before adjusting for inflation. Goldeneye was $70 new.
The problem is that back then you bought a complete game to play forever. Now you buy an unfinished mess that despite costing as much, makes it abundantly clear that the game isn’t yours through DRM and in your face micro transactions.
SanitationStation@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Exactly. AAA is supposed to be pushing the standard forward and compete for my attention by making a better product.
If i can get an equally good or better game for less money i will obviously go for that.
OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
sheetzoos@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I fear for the new Mass Effect game.
network_switch@lemmy.ml 23 hours ago
I find this a bit entertaining especially hearing advertisers and executives occasionally vent on stuff like this. A huge portion of modern people especially the younger they are:
- Don’t go outside
- Don’t read billboards, bus wrap advertisements, bus stop advertisements, ignore advertisements in sporting arenas and uniforms, etc
- Use adblockers online/ignore online advertisements
- Mute the television when ads are on
- Don’t have television subscriptions
- Pay for streaming services at a level that removes ads
- Watch like no advertising shows like award shows
- only watches TV for the finals of a sporting league championship and when advertisements comes on mutes the TV or focuses on their friends
- Don’t discuss advertisements with friends like people did in the past
- Show up to the movies late to avoid advertisements
- Generally have an anti-consumption/anti-advertisement attitude even if they are consumerist. Being advertised to is an annoyance enough to buy something else
- Throw away mailers immediately without reading
- Ignore people trying to advertise on the street/passing out flyers
- Don’t answer the door
- Don’t answer the phone
- Generally has no idea when anything new is coming out and mostly exists in a social bubble
- Practically no monoculture
- Etc
Besides the not going outside and problems that can arise from being in a social bubble, it’s all good stuff to me. For decades advertisers and businesses have optimized everything for selling products and now people are so desensitized to it to not care. Like no one actually cares about times square takeover advertisements anymore. It’s not a big deal.
It’s actually incredibly hard to advertise media now. Advertisements have to manage to seem organic or come off as predatory. So in comes the influencers but no influencer is as influential and trusted as a prime time advertisement before social media/YouTube went mainstream with people children to elderly
JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Yould think the ad companies would get the message…
mghackerlady@leminal.space 2 hours ago
I think it’s more companies should question whether the advertisement they pay for is actually effective or if they’re just told it’s more effective
benjirenji@slrpnk.net 6 hours ago
Google bad record profits last quarter, so it can’t be that bad.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Some of the most wildly out of touch professors and students I’ve shared space with were business peeps.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
They do, just interpretation is different with their smooth brains.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
You forgot
- pirates a lot of media
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
When you’re not allowed to own anything, piracy isn’t theft.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 15 hours ago
- Don’t discuss advertisements with friends like people did in the past
This one is big and I never noticed it until a few years ago. My wife and I never got cable when we moved into our own place. One time my mother in law was talking to my wife about some commercial and my wife just said she hadn’t seen it. My mother in law got really weirdly upset or something, like my wife was trying to be condescending or something. But she was talking about it the same way people might talk about a funny skit from a show. It wasn’t until being away from it for years that I realized how odd it is.
Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
This is the way.
CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Like when BG3 came out and other devs whined about being unable to deliver such a game? Maybe they shouldn’t be considered AAA studios if all they do is waste their budget.
Alandrus_Sun@ttrpg.network 6 hours ago
I’d love to play AAA games. But now that they’ve been optimized for frame generation, my 3070 can’t play them to my standard.
If I’m going to stare at a pixelated mess, I’d rather it be curated by an indie artist than technical difficulties from DLSS compression
Soggy@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
3070 can’t play them to my standard.
You’ve poisoned yourself. Chasing fidelity and refresh rates has done for graphics what short-form media did to attention spans. I’m emulating PS1 games and playing Fallout 4 on a 970 while my computer fans blow like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and I am free.
mellowistheyellow@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
That and they are also $70 new. Like yeah no thanks
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Do they still make AAA games anymore? They take so long to develop and lots of them get cancelled at the very end or a month after release.
Azrael@reddthat.com 3 hours ago
No. AAA games don’t really exist anymore. They’re a thing of the past.
Aerlorn@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Believe most games people perceive as AAA are actually AAAA but its all a loss of hogwash
tal@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Rank Title FTP? 1 Roblox Yes 2 Counter-Strike 2 Yes 3 League of Legends Yes 4 Minecraft In China 5 Fortnite For modes other than Save the World 6 Dota 2 Yes 7 Valorant Yes 8 World of Warcraft No 9 The Sims 4 No 10 Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 No 11 Escape from Tarkov No 12 Overwatch 2 Yes 13 Marvel Rivals Yes 14 PUBG: Battlegrounds Yes 15 World of Warcraft Classic No 16 Grand Theft Auto V No 17 Diablo IV No 18 Wuthering Waves Yes 19 Genshin Impact Yes 20 Apex Legends Yes I think that a bigger story there is the dominance of F2P games.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nearly every every on that list is also a live service game that has been released for years. It’s almost like supporting your product post-launch builds a dedicated userbase or something.
(And yeah, I know it’s actually because of the profitability of addictive design patterns combined with microtransactions. Let me dream, please.)
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is also survivorship bias. Plenty of companies would love to support their game post launch and make this much money, but they go under trying to follow the same playbook; even the ones that were successful doing so before.
tal@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I should totally put release date on there too. Just a sec, will add on a column with that.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Free to play, and “ever games” or whatever you want to call them. Solid classics that are easy to return to for years. Left 4 Dead 2 is a great example.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Shouldn’t the sims 4 be considered free to play? The base game is free, only the dlc is paid.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Or effectively F2P/MTX based ones.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 day ago
F2P games are subsidized by a small minority who will throw a hundred dollars a month into the game to obtain and max out whatever FOMO event or item/character is on rotation, and by an even smaller group of obscenely wealthy (or mentally ill) players who will spend tens of thousands of dollars just to say they own everything.
I’d honestly be fine with this model if the ones funding it were treated like patrons of the arts or something, but instead the industry hired a bunch of psychologists to run incredibly unethical experiments to create literally addictive design patterns encouraging the weak-willed or mentally ill to spend more.
Modern F2P game design is predatory and downright evil in the way it’s carefully cultivated to be just fun enough to continue playing, while constantly dangling the promise of more enjoyment if you’d only spend a tiny bit more (with that ‘bit more’ often only granting a small chance at getting what you want, with ‘pity’ systems only guaranteeing the desired drop if you spend the equivalent of around a hundred bucks in premium currency). But since it’s obscenely profitable, I don’t foresee it going away without legislation banning those practices.
NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
Way too many American games in there :(
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Good, nearly all AAA games provide is pretty graphics and little to no substance. Those that do are the very rare exclusions. Like CyberPunk2077, its story was good, graphics if you could run them good, but the gameplay was hollow until a lot of reworking.
mghackerlady@leminal.space 2 hours ago
I wouldn’t even consider Cyberpunk AAA. AAA to me is like. Ubisoft. Ea. Activision/blizzard. Those kinds of people. AA are games with decent funding but made to be good rather than a live service microtransaction slop. They’re your rockstars, atlus, segas, those kinds of studios.c
DisgruntledGorillaGang@reddthat.com 2 hours ago
Rockstar is absolutely AAA.
sirico@feddit.uk 6 hours ago
People forget what gaming was like before the consoles went mental. It’s just returning to it’s roots. Greatest pc games have always been small teams of passionate developers.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
The making of Goldeneye is a great documentary.
BroBot9000@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Good! Fuck that generic sludge being pushed out by shit companies ran by sociopaths.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Lol, I know what you mean but take a look at that top 20 list and notice there’s only like 2-3 games that aren’t generic sludge pushed by shit companies ran by sociopaths.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Wlel duh. Most of those AAA’s launch in broken states with lots of bugs and performance issues. And a lot of titles don’t even run well on the best hardware you can buy. Borderlands 4 ran atrocious on even the absolute best GPU you could buy.
And with the whole season pass, day one DLC, preorder bullshit, shit is more expensive than ever.
The industry only has themselves to blame for this.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
The $70 is the introductory price, like the first dose of a drug that you get for cheaper to get you hooked. The actual price has been tabulated by a department with psychologist support to ensure it’s into the four digit range.
KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
I bought like 4 games last week for under $20.
AAA Gaming needs to get with the socioeconomic times.
yesman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
PC players are always going to lead the trend because we have the most options. Microsoft and Sony are in a race to enshitify their ecosystems, while Nintendo is actively hostile towards it’s customers and fans.
Meanwhile I’m playing through what was originally a Playstation exclusive title that I got on sale on Steam, and run on Linux.
mghackerlady@leminal.space 2 hours ago
I’ve always thought sony was fine. Good exclusives, not a terrible experience, is fine with you buying your games. A bit expensive, but otherwise better than xbox and nintendo. Nintendo is good if you want nintendo but otherwise kinda shit
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
And then there’s the F2P-P2W/ad-riddled-and-sustained hellhole that is most of mobile gaming.
TachyonTele@piefed.social 1 day ago
Spider-Man is a fun game
spip@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I feel like this doesn’t account for people who play older games. Like I’m currently playing the God of War reboot. That would count as playing something that’s outside the current top 20, but still very-much AAA.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Who can afford £70? Especially given the price increase consoles and PC components are seeing. Like many people, I wait a few years until it’s on sale.
Drbreen@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
The last 3 games I bought were from indie devs. Road to Vostok being the last one purely based on the fact I wanted to support the guy and look forward to its continued development.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 14 hours ago
Other than cyberpunk, armored core, and elden ring I can’t remember buying a new aaa game. Usually humble bundle keeps me busy enough.
tacosanonymous@mander.xyz 23 hours ago
Y’all can afford games?
😳
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Because “top 20” are live service games that have been going on for years…
The top, however, remains deeply entrenched. The Top 5 PC games have been unchanged since 2023. In 2025, only Marvel Rivals and Wuthering Waves were among the rare new entrants to break into the Top 20.
If someone buys a hyped up single player game from on of the biggest studios of all time…
Itll most likely still be “outside the top 20” even tho it’s AAA
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
This article seems to be lumping mobile and PC into the same bucket which is probably more of a red flag for the analysis they are doing here. Of course revenue is going to be more split when you add in tons of mobile games that are very effective at taking lots of money with minimal interaction.
chairlegoftruth@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
EA: hold my A key. 1000004713
Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
This trilogy was really confusing.
Gork@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
What about the AAAA games, like those that Ubislop put out?
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
What’s driving this trend? The enshitification of triple AAA titles fucking slapping surcharges on EVERYTHING; day one dlc, microtransactions, always online DRM, the ability to revoke access to the shit we pay for, it’s death by 1000 cuts. EVERY anti-consumer action, every attempt to squeeze more of us while delivering the same rehashed shit over and over just drives me further into the arms of indie developers. The intent of us withholding our money and refusing to purchase your shit is to provide publishers with a sense of pride and accomplishment for retaining their customer base.