Video games peaked with the Xbox 360 era and it’s been downhill ever since

The reader believes that the Xbox 360 and PS3 era was the pinnacle of gaming and that publishers should have realized this at the time.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, as they say. Eventually it hits everyone and seems to destroy all sense of perspective and reason. I am fully aware of this and that there is probably nothing that can be done about it. Knowing all of this, I’m fully convinced that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were the pinnacle of gaming, and while the last generation was good, I think it’s now clear that it laid the foundation for the mess we’re in now.

I mean of course all the layoffs and the fact that making games is so expensive and time consuming now. These are problems that were evident in the Xbox 360 era and before, as it gets worse with each generation, but publishers have done absolutely nothing to try to stop or slow it down.

We all know this now, but when I look back at my collection of Xbox 360 games, what strikes me is how many current franchises started back then and how many different genres that you don’t see today were still going strong. Even things like arcade racing are rare these days, but back then you got big budget stealth games, puzzle games, space battle simulators, 3D platformers, strategy games and much more.

It’s not that those games aren’t being made today, but they’re either indie games or low-budget efforts that most regular people don’t even know about. Back then, these games were all mainstream, or at least things you’d see in stores and casual gamers could be exposed to and tempted to buy – especially if they were on sale or second-hand.

All of that is gone today, and the only games that exist are free-to-play games that want to take over your life, or bloated single-player epics that want to do the same. Back in the Xbox 360 days, the average story campaign was 12 hours max and that was perfectly fine. Nothing overstayed its welcome and everything was finite so you finish it and then move on to something else.

Many people will say that the last generation was great and in many ways it was, but that was when games got bloated and live services started. There has also been a drastic drop in the number of new IPs being released until you get to today where there are virtually no new franchises being created. Just endless sequels, reboots and remakes.

In my opinion, the Xbox 360 was that sweet spot where games looked good, we had decent online features, and games were cheap enough to make and buy that both gamers and publishers could afford to take the occasional risk.

Everyone wants great graphics but it’s like eating too much and not exercising, it tastes great at the time but you know it’s not sustainable and will cause damage in the long run.

It sounds like such an old thing to say that things were better in the old days, but in this case I don’t see how wrong I am. Ideally, publishers would have realized the truth by then and then cooled the race for better graphics, so they only improved each generation incrementally (or maybe the generations lasted much longer, so people spent money on new games, not boring ones). Hardware).

I’m sure there are a hundred different ways to approach the problem, but instead they did nothing and pretended there was no problem. For once, the good old days really were better.

From a Gatorater reader

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