A newly released game industry report by market researcher Newzoo shows that while the PC and console market grew 2.6 percent in 2023, overall playtime decreased as gamers spent more and more time in a smaller list of old games like Fortnite* *and League of Legends.
Fully agreed. There is certainly much more need for solid stories and gameplay than there was before. A mid-level game could wow an audience when it incorporated new tech, but now making the trees slightly more leafy isn’t having the same effect.
The biggest changes that come to mind are the XBox camera which was quickly rejected by customers and the Wii pointer remote which didn’t survive to the next generation. Controller and mouse/keyboard just seem to work. Even with the collective action requirement removed, we return to these proven inputs.
To be fair, the remote was always just one-side of a controller, it didn’t change much, but they provided two things.
a way to put them together into a controller format
a first party controller with all the same mechanical features