yeah, except for the fact that none of the games shown today came even close to the Matrix demo or the first UE5 demo. this shit is on par with RDR2, TLOU2 and other last gen games.
What's happened is that the real talent is gone. They have been replaced with people who want to work from home. dont want to stay past 5PM. dont want to be criticized at work. want to push an agenda instead of graphics fidelity. want to shitpost on twitter instead of actually work for a living.
Sony went three years in between e3 conferences and showed up with one game with gameplay and that too so last gen people think its cross gen. one game. they have 20 studios. full of lazy bums who dont want to work.
Despite the consolidation, too much talent left big studios, and games take too long to make, PLUS everyone wants to work from home and by work from home, I mean sit on their couch and do nothing.
This is why so many games are delayed or release like shit.
Yes, let's blame all the lazy underlings for sitting on their arses instead of giving it their all... back in reality, it doesn't matter where you're working from or how, strong leadership and creative vision are what deliver great products. Cynical cookie-cutter games geared primarily towards chasing trends and making money aren't being greenlit by some junior designer who's busy doing laundry when they should be working. That said, even If the rank and file are slacking off, then I'm hardly surprised; no one's going to want to go the extra mile for generic games that are doomed to failure.
Getting paid those ridiculous salaries at the top of a company means taking responsibility for the work that company does: if staff are unmotivated and productivity is dipping, your job is to figure out why and fix it; if products are failing to find an audience and a market, you need to ask what went wrong; if parent companies or shareholders are pushing things in the wrong direction, you need to have the courage to stand your ground and convince stakeholders to believe in your vision - you take the six-figure salary then you take the responsibility that comes with it.
Also, the
graphical demands argument is hard to take seriously having just watched Tears of the Kingdom sell 10 million copies in three days. If Sony and Microsoft were releasing 4K/60 versions of Tears of the Kingdom, with solid art direction and outstanding gameplay, people would soon forgive them. Honestly, when I think about what mechanics TOTK has achieved on such basic-ass hardware, and wonder just how much further you might be able to push that on a Zen II processor with 16GB of RAM, I want to cry.
Everyone's like 'Breath of the Wild is the most influential game of the last twenty years!' Meanwhile, I'm looking around at all the gliders finding their way into open-world games and thinking 'woooo.... way to miss the fucking point'. The sad truth is that Breath of the Wild had next to zero impact on the industry and as a result, major players are still marching ahead with the same narrow vision they've had for the past decade.