Re: Hot New Games Aren't

On 12/23/2024 10:51 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 Everybody loves new games. That's a truism of the industry; it's
something they depend on and market heavily. Don't miss out, they tell
is; buy the game now before everybody jumps ship to the next big
thing.
 Except... apparently that truism isn't quite as true anymore. Steam's
Year in Review shows that only 15% of the total time spent on games
was spent on games released in 2024. More than a third of their time
was spent on games eight or more years old.
 The thing is, new game SALES haven't really decreased. But people are
spending more time playing their older titles. And games that -just a
generation ago- would have been declared obsolete and ancient still
have quite a draw to them.
 There are all sorts of reasons for this and, honestly, I think that
the sheer number of bots grinding games like TeamFortress and
CounterStrike for gambling tokens probably skews the numbers quite a
bit. But the popularity of SteamDeck, the huge influx of free or
highly-discounted older games, and the malicious monetization of
modern titles probably are all influential too.
 I certainly have no gripe with this; I've been championing older games
for years! Go older games; strut your stuff! These new-fangled
releases ain't got nothin' on you!
 Where do you stand? How many of the games that you played this year
were released in 2024, and how did that compare in playtime to any
older games you played?
 

According to the Steam profile I played 1 new game (2 if you count ER's DLC as a game, it's bigger than a lot of games, but technically isn't.) out of 12, so 8% (16%.)  Technically EDF 6 which is the one game was released 2 years ago, this is just an English re-release. Originally Japanese only, but I had the patience to wait for this release, where some don't and bought the Japanese edition 2 years ago because they couldn't wait, despite not knowing the language beyond such words as sushi and arigatou.  So technically you could say I played no new games this year.
I played a lot of games elsewhere besides Steam though, there might have been an indy game or two that was 'new'.  I was going to say Roboquest might have been new, but nope, that was last year.
In 2023 I did play at least one new game - Baldur's Gate 3.
--
-Justisaur
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