Here’s the thing though, these games are highly reviewed and played but it may still in fact be more profitable to keep pumping out mid tier trash. For companies that have long forgotten the time when they had a soul and were a group of passionate gamers, that’s all that matters.

Exactly. Ubisoft is the perfect example of this. Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, R6. They used to take risks and try to push gaming forward with amazing ideas and design that made my kid brain explode.

Now those IPs are dead or extremely stale. And it’s because releasing an AC with microtransactions makes them more money than making an offline single player Splinter Cell. Or releasing a skin for 20 euros for R6 siege makes them a huge profit for the time invested in creating it.

God I wish we’d get a new single player Splinter Cell. Some of my best memories I have as a kid are playing the original Splinter Cell. Even if we do, it’ll be riddled with microtransactions and will fail to capture the magic of the original games.

It’s strange though, because Ubisoft on paper should be something I hate, but when I actually play one (and I’m a single player gamer), they’ve got fun gameplay, and the store, although it is there, generally keeps out the way and when I accidentally press the button in the menu that goes into it, there’s nothing I’d ever consider handing over actual money for. The game never points you at it, or makes you feel it’s needed.

I don’t even know who it’s for. Who buys cosmetics in a single player game? It genuinely feels like it’s just been put in to appease the beancounters.

That said I don’t get excited enough to buy them at full price, and normally wait until they’re on PSPlus or something. There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.