There's a story making the rounds (originally from a place called Newzoo) that market research shows that 60% of console and PC game time is being spent on live service games that have been around for more than half a decade, and in general gametime has consolidated around a small number of releases, making the gaming industry even more of a feast or famine proposition than it ever was before. Only 8% of game time is being spent on non-annualized (i.e. not Madden or Call of Duty) new release games, meaning that companies making the kinds of games that I'm excited to play are competing for a relatively tiny slice of an already stagnating pie.

Now game time doesn't translate directly to revenue, so it's probably true that your average Fortnite player spends much less per hour than someone who picked up Alan Wake II, so the numbers aren't quite as gloomy as they look, but it's clear that the gaming model has shifted substantially and that to some degree publishers are right that the future is in live services, even if their approach to the style of game is often terrible and counterproductive. There's a certain logic that it makes sense to make 10 live service games hoping that 1 will hit big and provide revenue for the next decade, vs 10 single player games where even if you get 6 hits you might make less money than a single Apex Legends or Destiny 2 might throw off.

From my perspective...these just aren't the games I want to play. I don't really like multiplayer games, I often don't like playing games at release, and barring my time with EverQuest and to some extent WoW, I almost never want to play the same game exclusively for months on end. I like variety and exploration and new worlds. I like playing both Spider-Man 2 and Tears of the Kingdom, and having them be extremely different experiences. I played a lot of Destiny and at the end hated my time with it because of how grindy and repetitive it was. I want to play stuff and move on to the next.

Of course single player games will keep being made. If nothing else there are hundreds of incredibly talented indie teams out there making great stuff. And you can still make money in the single player space. But the big publishers have seen the writing on the wall and the times are changing. To some extent they have changed. Gaming is my main media hobby and like a lot of aging people I'm starting to see my tastes a little marginalized. It'll be fine; my backlog will last longer than my lifetime anyway at this point (especially if you count games I want to play but don't own), but a lot of my favorite games of all time have come out recently and I like playing new stuff.

At least Nintendo seems to continue to have success with the older model. It has relatively few live service games (I guess Splatoon sort of counts?) and it is still doing fantastically, though of course a lot of Switch playtime is spent in Minecraft and Fortnite. I do love some Nintendo games. But I love other games too and to see their numbers dwindle is a little upsetting.

What I'm saying is...THE KIDS PLAY TOO MUCH DAMN FORTNITE!