A reader argues that declining sales for consoles is because children are no longer interested and instead distracted by Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox.
Everybody’s been talking about how the games industry is doomed lately, with lots of different explanations to try and explain what’s going on. While I agree things are getting very worrying, I feel there’s a number of factors that nobody’s talking about, either gamers or publishers.
Obviously, the amount of time and money that games need nowadays is not good, with no attempt from anybody to dial things back. But that’s not the only issue. Console sales are down, for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox, but there’s not much talk about why, when it seems obvious to me: kids no longer care.
Of course, children do still like video games but the numbers show they don’t like them in the way that their parents do. Your average tween is not interested in Final Fantasy or Assassin’s Creed, they probably don’t even care about Call Of Duty or EA Sports FC. All they care about is Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite.
Now before everyone writes in the comments that their kids or nephews or whoever like normal games, obviously some do. Everyone’s different and it’s not like all kids are clones, doing and liking the same thing, but the general trend is as I’ve described. Gen Z and younger isn’t nearly as interested in traditional games as older generations and they don’t play nearly as wide a range of titles.
In general, everyone plays far fewer different games now than they used to, which is one of the reasons why Game Pass hasn’t taken off in the way many expected. Price and time is a factor but it’s also the fact that people get caught up in their favourite live service game and they only tend to play that and maybe one or two others.
With kids though it’s even more specific than that. You’ll notice that Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite all have a lot in common, despite the base experience being very different. They’re all games that allow you to build things and even Fortnite is increasingly reliant on player-made content for its appeal. Roblox doesn’t even have any core gameplay, as far as I’m aware. It’s not really a game at all but a platform for kids to make their own games.
At some point, people might fall out of love with the Battle Royale mode in Fortnite but Epic Games are putting a lot of effort into building up the Creative and Lego modes to compensate for that. I’m sure those will become the most popular part of the game soon, if they’re not already.
Because they’re based around making content these games are all theoretically infinite. There is no reason to go and play other games when these three are constantly changing and, importantly, all your friends are on there for you to hang out with.
An entire generation, perhaps two already, are growing up not playing traditional video games and instead they’re becoming ever more invested in just one or two live service games. That’s why console sales are slowing down and why they’re only going to dip further in the future.
Rather than being cool and high-tech, playing video games seems old-fashioned and irrelevant to kids today. And if they do play anything other than Roblox and co. it’s going to be a quick timewaster on their phone.
Consoles are dying and while that’s partially due to poor decisions by Microsoft and Sony I believe it’s primarily because the audience for it is getting older and it’s not being replaced by younger fans.
By reader Feverbean
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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