Yeah, but those are all mostly mobile games, aren't they? I was focusing on the console market mainly, and maybe PC as an adjacent, when I threw out the 80/20. You can probably change it to 70/30, but it's just a way of saying that a small selection of GAAS on console, hold most of the wealth (revenue) in the GAAS market on console itself.
Yes, they are mostly mobile as Asia market mostly mobile. But they are spilling into PC/Console space very fast, practically every continuation of these series are Mobile/PC or Mobile/PC/Console
And there are hardly consolidation on consoles. Yes, it looks like a few games grab all the money, but that's because there are few games at all and not because heavy consolidation. Like every gacha launched on Playstation besides First Descendant is successful. And FD problem is of their own making, not because of oversaturation.
I don't know western ones too well, but it seems that it's very similar situation where if the game is bad - it fails and otherwise it's not that hard to carve a niche for themselves, especially given that new entries a few and far between. Like Naraka had no problem carving place for itself when Fortnite and PUBG were already huge and everyone though that BR market essentially locked down.
But there arguably already are "MiHoYo of the West" companies right now. Epic and Rockstar are arguably the top picks for that type of title, and I guess if you include sports games into the equation, there's EA. I don't agree with the idea that GAAS is in an infantile state in the West, especially if you look at the mobile space.
Western Gaas market behind east, especially on mobiles, by like 5+ years and it's not my estimation.
What west currently missing:
1. Convergence of mobile and classic media of PC/Console that significantly increase playerbase and allow seemless transition from portable gaming to big screen gaming. That's a huge convenience boost when you have both mobility and high quality and people really like it.
2. A very weak tapping into PvE games those has like x10 capacity of PvP. GTAO and HD2 are PvE, but EA, CoD, Fortnite, Apex, Lol, Valve etc are all PvP
There may not be an exact MiHoYo equivalent from America or Europe, but MiHoYo aren't perfect, either. They just admitted ZZZ underperformed and that's partly because they're saturating the addressable market for their GAAS, as they have multiples of them, and there is some self-cannibalization occurring as a result.
It still made a billion dollar for half an year - there are just different meaning what is "underperforming". Not on the level of HSR that did 2.5 bil in first year (though it was 1.5 times longer as it launched much earlier in year) but it still a very big number.
And Mihoyo woes are not exactly self-cannibalization, they have ways to alleviate that (they use the same strategy game companies do - put niche populat against GTA and in other times just put different genres in the same time window), but rather that a large number of competitors coming in and market go into deconsolidation as many games targets specific player strata or preferencies making it hard for "one game grabs them all" they had for several years
Biggest Mihoyo loss last year were otome (girls) games (there were two big ones, not counting Nikki) as even though they try to balance gender preferences in their games, they still more male oriented and they lose hard for girls-only games. Probably one of the reason for ZZZ performance as they had to made it clearly very male oriented per market request.
It s actually smart for Mihoyo to make many different games (they have even more in pipeline) as market become fragmented they could grab more fragments. Not surprised though as they know very well that AA gacha market is very diversified and many have money (they actually was on a smaller side in AA space when they did bet for AAA gacha) - so in one or two dev cycles all others will catch up so they have a limited window of opportunity to maximize their future position.
Well when you put it that way, makes you wonder why SIE haven't tried that approach outside of Helldivers 2. Like, could they adapt their cinematic story-heavy single-player model to a live-service PvE environment? Maybe Helldivers 2 would be a good way to test that with some meaty ongoing, evolving story campaign in a PvE context?
Maybe. I am quite baffled by what those guys thinking honestly
They'd have to change some approaches; can't rely so much on cutscenes for example in the normal context, but it would be a great opportunity to innovate that approach with more interactivity while still maintaining the cinematic focus. And if SIE can't do it or aren't interested, I hope some other company comes along and gives it a try.
Cutscenes just fine, there are often quite a lot of them in story oriented live service games (FF14 even have a single cutscene that lasts for 1.5 hours and the whole length at 159 hours just mind-blowing, it's longer than most series/anime), ZZZ also don't take it lightly as every chunk of story usually has one or two cutscenes.
There are just need to be some filling to keep people engaged till next content drop
