The fact that the Switch needs accessories to fully function is insulting of itself. The Switch is awful for the disabled and unergonomic as it gets.

As for the online service being so naff, the part about that is that Nintendo only had to remove their heads from their [RUDE METAPHOR HERE] for one minute, they might realize that there's a better way to go about everything, in terms of their online service. This is the best they could provide, given the time to adapt or adopt?
Not just the 90s. But the 80s. When Tiger Electronics ruled the handheld market with a plastic fist and you couldn't go half a centimeter without finding a crap licenced game. Downtown Abbey? Sure. Doctor Who? Several. Tripped down the stairs and hurt your shin? That's a licence now!

As you went on to imply, the internet can't do anything, only people do things. The problem is unscrupulousness--people doing things not because they are right or good, but simply because they are able to do them.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the modern AAA industry is significantly different than the AAA PC industry that existed prior to 2008. The handful of massive companies that control the AAA (console) industry are directed by individuals that are not in the least bit excited or concerned about video games in and of themselves. This is something that I have not yet researched and do not know as a fact, but in no way do I believe that the executives I speak of play video games at all, even if they once did.

Nobody has forgotten about bad games. You are refuting an argument that no one made. I'm not aware of anyone who has claimed that bad or mediocre games are a new development. It is not a matter of absolutes, but statistics. I will speak only for myself when I say that the overall quality of AAA games was considerably higher pre-2008 compared to today, in terms of many parameters including innovation, pride of workmanship, and respect for the player's time/intelligence. There were not near as many compromises, which is a fact of life today even for the best games--not as a financial necessity, but simply in order to appeal to the widest market possible.

Hear! I have lost track of the number of times I have seen someone--apparently as per usual--pre-order or purchase a AAA game, play it without refunding, and then leave a negative review professing his outrage and insisting that he "will not support" such-and-such practice. I've done what I can to explain that, while a company dislikes bad reviews, it cares much more about green cash than red thumbs. If you are sending me a check every month you are supporting me--regardless of how you talk about me to your friends.

As I mentioned earlier, and I think Emob78 did as well, the corrupt media is responsible for not educating people about these issues. As long as Joe Gamer's favorite sites/writers/YouTube personalities are acting as if nothing is amiss, why would he do anything but view naysayers like myself as anything but crazy, disgruntled malcontents?

Exactly. A scrupulous individual would do differently, but an unscrupulous one can only be counted on to take advantage of a situation.

I totally understand where you're coming from. On the other hand - me only buying DRM-free there are already more interesting games released than I c an buy - let alone play and complete. And since your avatar is from Darkest Dungeon - a game like that wouldn't have been possible, or at least successful a few years ago.
Although I agree, that the old AAA mainstream industry really needs (and will probably experience) a crash in the next few years. They're playing their cards well in terms to trigger people to buy, but they're losing what people really want.

Bull.

The games before the millennium were so innovative, because there was lots of room for technological growth and experimentation. The low hanging fruit has been taken, so modern developers have a much more difficult time pushing forward the envelope. I guarantee that if you dropped a 90's developer in the modern era, they would have just as rough as time being innovative.

I am also pretty damn sure that people who worked on Persona 5, Red Dead Redemption II, and Prey all would disagree with your assessment of their efforts. It is one thing to say that something isn't your cup of tea, but it is a different kettle of fish when you start questioning the passion and ability of people who worked on a product. A disaster like Aliens: Colonial Marines is the exception, not the rule.

I'm stuck between the late '90s and early '2000s. Immune af.

First, I never mentioned anything at all about "before the millennium" or the '90s. Innovation in AAA PC gaming was steady right up until the release of Crysis in 2007, when the AAA PC industry died. To name a few more:

The Longest Journey, Deus Ex (2000)
Gothic; Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (2001)
Morrowind; Warcraft III (2002)
Far Cry (2003)
Half-Life 2 (2004)
F.E.A.R. (2005)
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006)
The Witcher (2007)

If by "low hanging fruit" you refer to ideas, I assure you the issue is not a lack of ideas. Here is something to consider: I'm sure you have heard a person claim that he is sticking to consoles because he "prefers gameplay over graphics". Well, since the death of the AAA PC industry in 2008, technical innovation has been restricted almost entirely to graphical realism. Aspects that actually facilitate gameplay innovation and had until that point improved, such as AI, physics, and audio simulation, have remained static or even degraded.

In the AAA arena, innovation in gameplay has been quelled by the deliberate decision to conceive, design, and code only for console hardware, which is unremarkable when introduced, and remains wholly static for up to eight years at a time. During a console's tenure, gamers expect graphical improvements, which means any chance of using any processor cycles for AI, physics, or sound processing is out of the question. AAA PC games are no longer developed, not because they aren't profitable--that has never been the case (Crysis (2007) was very financially successful, and far exceeded Yerli's expectations)--but because the big companies can make more money designing and coding for the console. They are more than willing to make a comparatively mediocre product if it means mega-great money instead of just good money. The older gamer-run studios wouldn't have done that, because they actually cared about video games in and of themselves, and not just as a means to an end. Don't get me wrong--they did in the end sell out, which is how we got here after all.

I don't see how this relates to anything that I wrote, so I'm not sure how to respond. What, specifically, was this directed in response to?

People aren't trusting the AAA titles, anymore. The normies trusted the older gamers with their favored AAA, 'cause the AAA didn't suck. Slowly, it's all falling apart, and no one wanted to be the first to say it, so now that someone said it, everyone else (the companies, not gamers) is coming out of the closet as well. Random generation was always a thing in gaming, but now it's hot, and i mean really hot: you get more bang for your buck. Things with strong storylines and such probably aren't hurting (RPGs and ARPGs), 'cause they're harder to properly randomize (like fighting games and other niche genres). However, platformers and the like? Why buy mario if you can play randomized mario that never runs out of levels? Unless we're doing mario maker, of course, where you either get shit easy, broken, or rough levels.

EDIT: What the normies ('cause they're the silent majority) are playing (based on word of mouth i'm hearing, so take it with a grain of salt):

Fortnite
PUBG
Minecraft (still, but it's dying, 'cause it went "too hardcore")
Dead by Daylight
Don't Starve
Red Dead Redemption 2
VR Chat (if you want to call it a game)
Monster Hunter World (Or, at least, looking at it)
Stardew Valley
The Binding of Isaac
Detroit: Become Human (This seems to be the oddball out)

Basically, multiplayer games and games that vary alot per playthrough.

Unfortunately, I can't see the link you posted as my VPN isn't functioning properly as the moment. Chinese internet really sucks....

I did some quick looking around but it seems to me (just opinion here) that the reason for the sales slowdown is aniticapation for the new Switch model and the small library compared to other systems. Also consider right now, some Nintendo flagship titles haven't been released yet. Just going from memory here but Super Smash Bros should be coming out at the end of this year, Metriod should be coming next year and Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu should be out this month. These titles along with Mario and Zelda have always been system sellers.

I'm also looking at it from a hopeful, yet watchful perspective as I am interested in getting a Switch. However, I also remember the N64 games where the lack of games can cause the system to take a while before it gets momentum.

Worse than the Virtual Boy and Nokia N-Gage?

Considering people have preferences for using the Switch in docked, handheld or tabletop mode, it's going to be diffcult satisfying all ways of using the Switch out of the box. I'd rather pay extra for the accessories I will use than buy one big package with all the accessories and only use half of them. My only gripe here is the cost of those accessories.

From what I've seen, they did do better before they decided to pull this nonsense. Scrapping the virtual console for the Switch, a major selling point of the 2DS and 3DS and opting for a subscription based service with less functionality compared to competitors X-Box Live and Playstation Now is just stupid. Also, I thought Nintendo didn't want to compete with MS and Sony after the Gamecube failed to keep up.

Anyhow. "Low hanging fruit" isn't just in terms of ideas, but also technology. As any given technology is developed, the improvement decreases with each generation, until it grinds to a stagnant crawl. That applies to cars, microwave ovens, animation, and computers alike. It is only with new technological frontiers, like propeller planes to jets or ICE vehicles to electricity, that major innovation can resume for a time.

Moore's Law once held true, which was as follows: "Every two years, transistor density doubles". This essentially meant that computers made leaps in performance, but the law started to wear down around 2010. In effect, developers no longer had major performance increases to power revolutionary techniques or ideas.

In any case, consoles are a good thing for gaming: they offer a stable environment for a developer to build games within, and the machines are cheap and approachable for the layperson. That allows for many more games to be created and spread, permitting the medium as a whole to evolve over time. The pace may not be obvious, but change is still happening.

Wirth's law reigned true this entire time. I remember back around 2010 there was a comparison involving "an 80s mac" to a "modern computer," at basic tasks and the mac won by a margin on a single test: otherwise it was too close to declare a winner.

The industry is the trouble itself. It's been the one getting into hot water left and right. But you know, it doesn't even matter that they're in trouble. They know some internet backlash or some boos in a crowd won't eventually hit their pockets. In fact, they're in so much trouble thanks to their realization that this trouble is almost insignificant when compared to their pure profits, or shall we say, return on investment.

Now a company like Activision may be in a wee bit of serious trouble, not because their sales are tanking (the opposite actually), but because their shares have dropped in price. I dunno whether they went back up.

Now such a cycle of trouble which ends up affecting nearly all of us could be stopped if we- no, everyone stopped feeding them money for everything they ever create. Of course, that's just unrealistic. We can't even expect to reliably manage a 10% hit in sales. It'd also be useful if they snapped out of their mood to monetize the ever living hell out of everything by not buying microtransactions, if not simply opting not to buy any games riddled with them entirely. That's also just as unreliable, simply because you'd have to convince the "whales" they love so much to stop falling to their schemes.

While we may celebrate the troubles they're getting themselves into, let's not forget they often have the final laugh. Unless you get everyone to stop supporting them, they'll always be there, and they'll brush these troubles off with relative ease before eventually announcing you to the new Call of Duty.

Its simple, play/buy the games you like, ignore the rest and stop reading social media circlejerks.

A lot of people making games back then were educated and driven plus they had to solve problems themselves or build game objects from scratch.

I found this retro interview on Goldeneye that talks about the making of the game, making an example of these points.
It's aiming system was ahead of the time. I don't think there were any FPS games before it that had free aim on the guns or dual wield in a proper fps. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/an-oral-history-of-goldeneye-007-on-the-n64

On one hand, it would be lovely for another E.T. to happen (complimented of course by a second game crash actually happening). On another, it would be hopeful.

Today, we have pundits to show up and say that this or that game is actually fine and that players around the world are entitled, or expect too much from an industry, or yet again the good ol' "games are too expensive to make" excuse. Or just straight up unreliable reviews of games. These can work better in a publisher's favor to help step around the backlash.

This will be made even worse as games are way too easily always-updating these days. E.T. had one shipment go out with no ability to update, thus what buyers eventually got was the game that marked as the culmination leading up to the video game crash. But if E.T. was to be released today, assuming it is released in its sorry state as it was at its time, it could just be patched overnights to become a better game. You can rely on these same pundits praising the update and that it is now playable and all that jazz. Later on, the game gets reviewed in its updated state to better if not glowing reviews.

Suffice to say that if a crash were to happen, it won't be a broken, buggy mess like E.T. That's a matter easily reversed with a patch. A crash would be more likely to happen if a a much anticipated for game showed its greedy fangs as early as possible without any hint of subtlety. Progression in AAA games is said to be slow, but I haven't seen an instance of a high profile game where you need to wait hours to get something done...unless you pay of course.