Games like BG3 and Elden Ring that overdeliver used to be the standard. This isn't some crazy concept that's never been possible. These much larger studios have more funding, more manpower, and often just as much if not more time. There is no excuse. They want you to believe they can't do it because they want to keep underdelivering while charging full price, then sell you the rest of the game piecemeal.

Well, sadly that crappy port of Red Dead Redemption seems to be selling well 🤷‍♂️

Developers push it because they get away with it...

Why would you pure millions into a games development and not produce your best work? Is it incompetence or lack of creativity?

You have it backwards: they are NOT a new standard for AAA, they are just the old standard for AAA with modern production value (ie graphics).

The traditional cost of modern graphics has eroded time for actual game mechanics to be refined.

It’s wonderful when studios find ways to still make complete AAA 10’s at launch while still investing fully in aesthetics.

Diablo 4: 6 years development by 9000 individuals.
Can't make a gem tab.

I don't see why the author of this had to rope elden ring into this article lol. From already established the formula, which are already being used by other studios at this point. It's not like they are outside of AAA levels either, being funded by bamco, sony, and activision for their games.

I'm sorry but fromsoftware is definitely AAA at this point. Do you think anyone at Bandai says no to their budget now that every game they make sells like crazy? They're not some small time people Bandai Namco is a giant corporation. In fact I usually buy from Bandai for the very reason that most of their games are not only decent to good but they're also usually made complete.

Edit: I looked it up and bandai is the publisher of dark souls but not owners. My bad. My statement still stands that whoever from software goes to will give them whatever budget they want.

So, we shouldn’t demand games that clearly can be made in this day and age because… why, exactly?

This industry is full of greed and I’d say more so than any other media industry. I feel like they’re forcing consumers to accept and pay for games that are made to somewhat emulate the mobile game market in terms of GaaS or NFTs, and we’re told due to game development cost it has to be this way.

Then when a developer literally makes a game that’s a reminder of what games were made like back in the day and still can be, we shouldn’t demand other devs to follow suit?

How the f*ck does that make sense?

Weren't people saying it was running poorly on Switch 2 at CES earlier this year? I hope they fix that before release. If they can do 60 fps in handheld mode I might pick it up -- otherwise not interest in playing this game at 30 fps.

Placeholder I assume the listed date is 31/12/26