The next couple years are going to be INTERESTING times for gaming... Cohh on Twitch: / cohhcarnage Cohh on Twitter: / cohhcarnage Cohh Main Channel: @CohhCarnage Edit by: / oheyspun #CohhCarnage #twitch #streamer
Honestly Indies get away with microtransctions because they just rename it to supporter pack and then double the cost ratio and people buy it like hotcakes. Just look at Deep Rock Galactic. That game in reality costs $40 at its base price and has $120 worth of DLC. That's the same as a AAA game costing $70 and having $210 of DLC. That's Paradox Interactive levels of DLC and people will defend that game's DLC to the death. Double fuacking standards.
@@captainnoyaux You say that now, but be on the downside of a bunch of flops like Mighty No 9 and Crowfall and Camelot Unchained and etc. People start getting bitter and cynical about that side of the market too ya know. Everyone just lives in their own little bubble so they always think the grass is greener somewhere else.
@@Ralathar44 yn, as a fellow DRG employee of two years(xbox), it never occurred to me to scroll through the market place on start-up, and see the absurd amount of DLC that dropped in my time
heck ya... morally, creatively, financially Indies are where it's at. Or even smaller studios (AA) that aren't these HUGE AAA milk machines that try to ham fist games as fast and as packed with MTX as possible.
i think the best experiences wont be indies (they will still be great tho) the best will be what we saw last year like Baldurs Gate 3 or like Witcher 3 was. Middle sized companies that have the size (amount of people working on the project) and the passion to give us cinematic experiences that equal what Gamers remember from AAA studios 15 years ago. Small studios cant offer that and therefore they will rarely be the ones with really memorable blockbuster games. They will mostly see big success via youtube/twitch hypes, like among us or palworld. But those devs that are indies now and release for example something like Palworld THOSE are the devs that WILL HAVE the money tomorrow and those passionate devs will make the Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Baldurs Gate of tomorrow like Larian and CDPR who were no-names (or niche-, in-genre-only-names) when EA and Ubisoft ruled gaming.
It always have been. Every franchise which is already established and taken over by corporate interests gets turned into a soulless cash cow for the shareholders preeetty quickly.
Indies will become the new AAA that you will be talking sheit about in 10-20 years. Even EA was once an indie company that just wanted to prove video games were an artistic medium and inspire real emotions in you. There are still newspaper articles from when that was the company culture. Blizzard was once beloved as a smaller dev. ETC.
I’d definitely love to have more videos like this, where Cohh just shares his thoughts on games and stuff. Also saw his reaction to the new Dragon Age and loved to see that and agreed with him, so stuff like that would be nice in a bite sized video like this one as well. :)
@@FortunePayback I think unfortunately his non gaming content do get buried amidst all of the gaming playlists. Also Cohh churns out content on daily basis so it make sense to miss out on his thoughts video unless you specifically look for it or check in on daily.
A few years back, whenever i heard that "the future is indie games", i was like "meh, they are not as big and advanced, i don't care". But lately i mostly buy indie games, and i am much more satisfied with them. They are doing the things i want from a game.
I love the fact you are trying to get people to understand what is really happening in our gaming life. It’s not a a time to worry but a time to explore what we have.
The writing on the wall is that while big publisher decided to double down and even dare to utter "AAAA game experience" as a serious talking point, the industry is moving in the completely other direction. A direction were middle size studio/publisher have the flexibility to innovate and where single developers or double digits studios can self-publish on Steam and reach worldwide audience. So no, i am not worried about Game development. AAA has and will always close down studios. It's part of their corporate DNA to do so. Developers working for them should not get attached to their job there and instead make sure to use that time as a learning experience. Never expect corporation to act in your best interest.
This had to have been recorded immediately following the summer games fest - cause xbox, nintendo, etc. Showed off a bunch of AAA games coming this year and next. He'll, even GTA6 is coming next year dude... The only thing actually failing is summer games fest show. Geoff is losing his touch with the industry and doesn't get the good huge announcements, studios would rather show off their own games in their own directs and whatnot. But yea, there's layoffs and stuff sure- but there are actually a ton of AAA games coming this year and next. Hate to burst your bubble there...
I think it’s somewhat true. The more there is to announce and update on, the more than can be spilled over into third party shows. It’s not just that there’s a preference for showing things off themselves, but that they only have enough to fill that quota with not as much to spare.
Alanah Pearce said it months ago. The industry wide layoffs and cutbacks will impact the gamers in a year or two as AAA games will come less often and they will be worse than the ones we have been getting
@@Officercackster Was literally in regards to accessibility settings within games: "Having a kid can be a “situational disability” where accessibility is concerned! If you need to pause a game because your kid is running around your living room but you can’t, you’ll have trouble playing games with no pause menu. " huge fan of people misrepresenting statements for literally no reason other than laziness or malice
@@sebaso158 Then she shouldn't be playing souls games. There are plenty of other games to play that have pause menus. Souls games usually don't have pause menus, that's just how it is. She needs to quit whining and get tf over it.
@@bolg892 Hey bozo, I know reading comprehension is hard but nothing she said was that those games need a pause menu. She literally runs the Video Game Accessibility Awards and that quote was taken out of context when it was directly regarding accessibility in a broader sense of video games development and what those specific departs consider when implementing accessibility features
While I see this shift being mostly good for gamers, I see the future for game developers being way less stable, even volatile. Simply said, it will no longer be as easy to make a career of game development. The big corpo jobs add the stability and cushion the risks, so without that, a developer needs to be willing to scrape by and shoulder the risks themselves. It'll be more like today's music scene. There are still ways to make it by as a musician, but it's the dirty work. Things you know people will like. Cover bands, teaching, church bands. But you still do your passion projects when you have time (if you still have energy) knowingly that you can't bank on it blowing up. The markets are flooded since everyone has a direct path to releasing. A lot more comes down to social media presence and not your art. I'd say that the main difference in game development is that a lot of indie devs flooding the market now have a lot of technical experience and years of networking gained from the structure that was. They are now the direct competitors to your lobbyists. Good for games! Hard to penetrate for the newbies. This all comes from a guy that went to school for music and became a software engineer. I'm working on my own game projects, and about six months ago I was hoping to make the shift into game development so that I be in a business setting that would help me grow as a game developer. I'm just trying to restructure what that looks like to me now.
Investors are super cautious rn, due to a combination of higher interest rates and disappointing receptions to gaming titles that they expected to be awesome (rightly or wrongly). It'll probably get better once interest rates go down some and "riskier" investing bets become less punishing to make.
This is a fundamental problem for the top level of the industry, that the rest of the industry doesn’t care about at all. Small indie studios are flexible, and large indie studios have cash reserves to keep up high end development without investors because they aren’t stupid and they don’t have shareholders demanding every last cent.
Im not interested in any of the indie titles. is cool that we have them but i need the big AAA experiences. I disagreed when yous said that the upcominmg years will be lacking in terms of AAA games. Microsoft will have ton of them for 2025 and 2026. Also dont forget GTA 6 and other big ones that are coming.
The suits of these big companies are always just looking at trends and copying the stuff that is popular and making money. However what they fail to realize is that if they make the same stuff the market is going to get saturated. Back when Wow was at it's peak a lot of studios tried to make their own MMO, but they failed to realize that if their game isn't better than Wow people will stop playing it and return to Wow as soon as it has new content. There is a limited amount of time a player can spend playing different MMO:s and a lot of them will just fail. We are now seeing the same thing with live service games. Players don't have the time to play all of them. Especially when a lot of them are very mediocre and rushed by studios that were forced to make them. What makes things even worse is the FOMO tactics these companies use to keep players invested. This makes it even more hard for players to move from their prefered live service game to another. If they start too late there might be stuff that they can no longer get so why bother even trying it. While these big studios are battling it out with eachother smaller studios can just make good regular games. Those will always sell really well.
AAA games industry is failing mainly due to them moving the objectives of the developers from developing a good game to developing a profitable game (or what they think will be profitable). That shifts the focus from quality to quantity. You can see it clearly with the amount of "milking" corporations are making with certain brands like star wars, batman, etc. Once a studio is bought by a corporation, you can expect their games to be crap after a few years because they get pressured by management for profitability (because management are usualy made up of egocentric morons who think they know what people want), and you can see that with Bioware, for example. More and more, corpo management pushes games towards the live service front, just for profit (dont get me wrong, live service games can be good, its just the goal of the game that matters). That being said, some advice for corpos: - Always cater to the player base needs not the company - shift game development focus to quality, not quantity - Good stories are hard to find. invest in them - stop repeating. reliable game mechanics are good, but investing in new ideas is better - Safe is not always a good thing, sometimes its boring and it doesnt sell - stop making all games as live service games - if you want t make live service games dont use big brands (like suicide squad) - if you want t make live service games focus on the mechanics and player engagement, not the store. the store should always be considered as a "bonus" - listen to the majority of the community - Management : be honest about everything. people will respect you more if you admit to your faults. we are only human and nobody's perfect. mistakes happen, bad decisions can be forgiven, and are lessons for the future. Feel free to post more 😁
it isn't just AAA taking a breather or whatever it's also that xbox saved all of the announcements and reveals for their own show which made summer game fest look bad, and it won't surprise me if xbox and sony will stay away from geoff keighley game show for the most part. xbox showcase would've been so much worse if they did most of their reveals and announcements at the summer fast showcase. why is summer fest and gaming awards even a thing it's so bad for xbox and sony. why did E3 die just so we can have silly game awards no one really cares about. much rather have great sony, nintendo, and xbox showcases.
meanwhile, these big companies you are using as examples are showing record profits. This entire discussion is inaccurate.. and based on what? Lack of new game announcements ? EA might be only one that didn't actually show anything major (that i can think of) all other studios did though
why concern? imo the market is saturated. you only have so much attention. unless you're a streamer and all you do is play games. the market will correct itself. make trash, get shutdown. someone will come along and make a good one.
Honestly I think this will be good and bad. On the plus side, it will perhaps pull those only interested in profits away but that has down sides too. Indie companies are FAR more financially exposed than a larger company. On poor selling title can sink a small studio. Plus for every wildly successful indie game there will be a dozen that do poorly, perhaps even just because they release at the wrong time, and the developer behind them could face bankrupcy. Finances in any business endevour are always a double edged sword. Plus at the end of the day, I doubt a game like Elden Ring, will ever be cheap to make and I think it would be sad for games like that to become rare in the gaming landscape.
lots of bs in this video ignoring all triple a studios that thrive lol and focused on ubisoft rofl. looks like cohh started advertising his indie game already rofl
People say Indie games are the future and yet they SGF show had more indies than AAA and they say the show sucks. Meanwhile Xbox gets praised for their AAA showing. Give me a break
The indie space can be a shining beacon while AAA takes a break, but in order for that to happen, players need to understand that these teams don't have the same level of resources as AAA. Players need to accept that games can't be localised into 30 different languages, games can't have hundreds of accessibility options, can't be optimized for every possible PC build. Indie studios are spending thousands of dollars to get all of these extra QOL features into their games so they don't get called out and slated by Steam players demanding the world. At the risk of their own financial stability. Players need to lower their expectations as we enter this brave new world of games.
If all triple A studios went under overnight, I would have zero concern for the future of gaming. There's so many amazing indie games that I could be content with them for the rest of my life.
Honestly not sure if I feel too happy about this. Sure large studios tend to make failures lately but there are just some games that for indies are out of scope. Games like RDR2 and mmorpgs for example. Most of those indie games showcased are things I pick up for free on epic and they just end up collecting dust in my library. Some companies manage to slowly build up to be able to make excellent game like Witcher 3, who after two lesser scale games or (I hope) kingdom come deliverance 2. But most of my favorite games are made by big studio with a lot of resurses and money and after seeing a lot of kickstarters, I don't have great fate in indies. Something truly great like Valhaim is rare occasion.
The problem is that we’ve seen 20k game developers lose their jobs in the past couple of years and most of those people are leaving games forever. Those are the people going somewhere else, not the “money people” as Cohh calls them. The effect of these layoffs will be felt over the next 5-10 years as we begin looking at a gaming desert. People just can’t “go indie” anymore. Even Rami is saying this and he’s forgotten more about indie development than most will ever know. I’m sure that we’ll still see great games in the future, but I don’t that future will be as bright as Cohh hopes.
My biggest concern is that these triple AAA publishers are going to do "an Embracer Group" and buy up a boatload of indie developers and then Microsoft them to hell once they delivered the goods.
No AAA titles announced for next year? Maybe nothing you enjoy, but there's plenty of AAA games that've been announced. - 2025 AAA releases - 2XKO Death Stranding 2 Doom: The Dark Ages Fable GTA6 Marvel 1943 Metroid Prime 4 Monster Hunter: Wilds Pokemon Legends Civ VII
Umm...still not sure if good or bad in my opinion. I'm worried. Some of those "smash" indie hits, would honestly have been called unacceptable trash from a AAA studio. Satisfaction is generally a function of expectation. It's a heck of a lot easier to exceed expectation...when their is no expectation. We need both, AAA and smaller indie teams, they serve different needs and carry different expectations. Imagine the backlash if people start to expect the same in terms of polish and completeness, from manor lords as they do from GTA. Indie devs better develop some thick skin, if they are the main source of our games for a bit, they won't get the same level of forgiveness for the....quirks. Those of us who treasure indie titles are a heck of a lot more forgiving than the usual mainstream. Expectation. I said it so much, felt like I needed one more.
Very optimistic take. Here's another one: AAA studios and their publishers may not be announcing AAA games at the moment, but there is no way they're abandoning the industry to make way for Indie studios to get that "sun". They're going to stop producing expensive single player games with a whole lot of front loaded content, and they're going to keep shifting (a process that has already begun) toward games that charge you on a continuing basis for drips and drabs of content. Much of this will be on mobile. Less upfront investment and a longer tail, both things their investors will love. These AAA companies will still have the biggest marketing budgets, the name brand recognition, and the licensed properties to grab eyeballs, so those Indies' share of the pie will not increase at all, but the games will become crappier, more soul-less, and more expensive (over time).
None of which is to say that there won't be just as many Indie devs as there are today. But the sun won't be shining on them any more than it is now, and it'll be contingent on consumers, as it always has been, to find these companies and their games. It'll be up to them to avoid playing whatever bullshit Marvel or COD or Elder Scrolls ftp game is plopped in front of them, and look for new, fresh ideas. Many won't, just like they don't now. And for a lot of them, because of the nature of these big studio games (designed to keep your attention and money for long periods of time), they will never feel the need to look in an Indie games' direction.
I don't know anyone who unironically plays ubisoft games and has fun. There is a reason games like minecraft exploded because for decades triple A$$ gaming has been making garbage that real gamers don't care about.
For an example of how things generally go with this stuff, good and bad, look to CD Projekt Red and Larian. Look at where they started and where they are now. There are studios making AA games and so high quality as to be barely recognisable above AAA. There will be places for these devs to go when the "big trees" lay them off. Those big guys are clearly only chasing profit, that's not good or bad but its how capitalism works and the companies are so large that they don't see the ground anymore. There will ALWAYS be a place for gaming, if the big guys leave to chase the latest mobile or live service trend, someone WILL pick up the slack as the market is still there. Just gotta be patient and clear some of that backlog guys 🙂
Gamers never ask for big corps to gobble up all these diff devs and kill them off.... Gamers care about.....GAMEPLAY. Forget all the other bullshit, and concentrate on gameplay and you'll put out a 'good' game that peeps will flock to.
Just scrolled through my last 100 games played and I don't think a single one is indie. If AA and AAA single player experiences die out then I may have to find a different hobby.
One game company I will always stand by is Capcom; the monster hunter games will continue to have a bright future, and it seems like resident evil will keep going strong too, that's two colossal IP's (among many other decent IP's) in an industry full of professional garbage right now. They'll always have my support
It seems gaming is going in that direction and I hope you're right that it goes further in that direction. My favorite game of 2023 was Lies of P, an amazing game made by a studio that previously was making mobile games. The last Triple A game I bought was Cyberpunk, but that was years after it came out, it was just ok.
It sucks that people are losing their jobs, but unfortunately it's bound to happen. It's not like the C.E.O's who made all the problematic decisions that caused games to suck for the past decade are going to step down instead of firing people. They'll continue to make those bad decisions until they are forcibly removed by the shareholders, who are also not very bright when it comes to game development. For the next couple years though we have plenty of indie games coming out! It's also a fantastic time to pick up and try older games that you've never played before. Take time and enjoy things!
It's a cycle. It's just a very long one. The small studios do well, get big, go public, and after many years of mistakes in search of profit, get pushed aside for smaller studios. Unless people rethink the way they approach business, the cycle will continue.
AAA games mostly suck. The last AAA game I purchased was ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, the Viking One. Indie games, on the other hand are where you can find some true gems.
The gaming industry is a cancer since corporate greed took over every major studio and it became so obvious for most of us when quality declined greatly because every game regardless of how suitable it was for a console was dumbed down for a console release. Can't do more complex control schemes because it has to be mass compatible and playable with a controller, lighting effects and overall graphics have to be dialed down a lot because it has to run on consoles, no we have to take everything out of a game that needs some skill to master because then fewer people will actually play it.. et cetera.
You clearly didn’t understand the video, he’s saying the Indie companies are going to become the ‘new age triple a companies’. They just wont be AS soul sucking and money focused whilst getting the same amount of money from investors since they will be the ones replacing the old Triple A companies whilst having a track record of making amazing games without having said investments, making it a perfect opportunity for consumers to actually enjoy triple a games again
@@ASol300LOC I think it's a really naïve take to think that Indy companies if given the resources, funding and manpower of AAA companies wouldn't be exactly the same as the current AAA games given enough time. I may just be a bit cynical but people are in general greedy. It's not just big companies it's everyone including consumers
The underlying cause, why big AAA are falling, is not clear (and should). I suspect money investors are simply afraid. With the kind of backlash and vitriol games are received these days, who would want to invest in this sector? You mention more "sun" (more money) going to indie developers, but it may just be that there is simply less investment, and the games that get made are those labors of love with much less resources than the AAA.
Uh just a question but at 0:46 Cohh says "Didn't get any announcement of any major triple A titles next year or the year after" But didn't the new doom game get revealed to be released next year, and wasn't a lot of Triple A games to be showcased in the xbox announcement also for 2024/2025, or were those not the major ones Cohh talked about?
@@amjjayy Cohhs issue is he doesn't understand how long AAA take to make. if we go 1-2 years without a single AAA game is that the end of the world? Bro has a backlog of 10000000000 of AAA games he could be playing like persona 5 royal/reload, but he just doesn't seem to care about ANYTHING in his backlog. he just wants all that new AAA games so he can get lots of views on twitch.
for me its great, its like half and half. You take the best games out there and use mods from talented individuals and it enhances the experience so much. VR is great once you overcome the hurdle to buy a quest 2 and set it up on your pc... Now you can mod the best games into VR. Cyberpunk VR is awesome. So are many other games, just needs a little time and work to tweak them all.
Greed ruins everything eventually. Don't go public if you want to keep a player-centric mindset as developer, that is all. I hope Larian, Warhorse and everyone else who is up and coming will find the wisdom never to sell out or grow beyond their natural limits. It never ends well.
Executives of this game companies are not gamers but a businessmen, they are thinking that games is for kids and kids waste money on a nonsense game so they only make low quality game with full of microtransactions. Indie games is our only hope for a good game development nowadays.
The less AAA games the better. Very few are actually great games. Most AAA games are very forgettable. My favourite games (with a few exceptions) of the past few years have been indie games.
What I'm really concerned about is the staggering amount of game releases. simply too many in my opinion. there are so many games, it's too much sometimes. just stop for a second, and count how many different games have you shown us in this video alone. as much as all of them interest us, where can people find time and money to play such a staggering amount of games. And then think of all the indies that didn't get to be seen or played because you were busy with something else. My best friend falls in that cathegory. he has an incredible indie game that he released in 2022 and the game is just unknown, buried under hundreds of other games. and people we reach out to try our game always say the same thing: I'm busy covering other games. there are just too many in my opinion. ask yourself: how many games are in my wish-list?
Corporate games is bad for us, "AAA" as almost completely turned into these Corporate games that nickle and dime players for everything and do not deliver on a fun experience
Gaming in the late 2010s and now 2020s is just awful, at least bigger games. Generic and only microtransactions with a ton of bugs and performance issues. Indie games are great tho. Sorry to say but I really hope the whole industry will crash soon. It's just a big mess right now.
Existing AAAs will decline, a few indies will find great success. Those indies will grow to be the new AAAs through venture funding and acquisitions by holding companies. The cycle will repeat. I don't like it, but I think it's what will happen.
AAA games will be still around, but sane people buy it later on discount. Indie games is awesome on PC, but it less appreciated in consoles communities.
Smaller projects/games has the benefit of not needing to be smash hit to be profitable. And thus smaller games can be more niche. AAA have the problem that alot of them are to alike, they have to appeal to the masses.
the thing is gamers largely dont care about indie titles. everyone will claim to the high heavens that they love indies but when push comes to shove they spend their money on big franchise entries first and foremost.
I've been worried about the future of games too. The costs of development, both financially and with time, has began to outweigh the profits.. And any deviation from continuous growth results in criticisms and a lack of profit. The risk is great for these devs.. Something has to change for gaming to become sustainable. Otherwise we're heading toward game dev as a hobby being back to the norm. You're not wrong though, in that there is a blessing in disguise in seeing gaelme development being spearheaded by those who love games again, and not by those who simply love profit.. But as a casual gamer, I don't think we're quite ready for that either. I hope I'm being dramatic, but this video is pointing out evidence that would lend credibility to my overall fears here.
Pocketpair is one of the best examples of the forest analogy Cohh used. Yes, pokemon is (regrettably) still hugely successful, mostly because it's... you know pokemon, the biggest media franchise in the world, but it's like a giant tree with most of it's branches cut off. And in sweeps the tiny tree Pocketpair, sucks up all the sunlight, and gives the players something they actually want. And boy has that tree grown a WHOLE lot in a short time.
Indie game devs lead with innovation and creativity, producing hits like "Hades" and "Among Us." AAA studios bring resources and technical prowess, despite high costs and market saturation. Both sectors are crucial: indies push boundaries, while AAAs refine and popularize new ideas. This balance ensures a diverse and dynamic gaming future.
Shoutout to the editors! Great video and totally agree on the topic. Nice to see some smaller studios getting the attention they deserve when the bigger ones don't deliver. Looking forward to it.
