PUBG/Fortnite maybe, but Breath of the Wild didn't really set much of a trend, very few actually tried copying it, and in a lot of cases they just copied the style rather than the game itself. If anything i'd argue its theoretical copycat, Genshi Impact, was one who had more of an impact, though its just an extension of gacha waifu games popularity.
I agree, but I did say "or make a splash for the conversation of having done something that people hope is a trend". "Exemplary" on false pretenses or otherwise.
You probably couldn't actually get away with copying BoTW's "formula" and not being Zelda without people calling the game shit.
Another problem with those is that in most cases it's just other companies trying to cash-in on something's popularity, rather than someone taking on an idea and refining it or giving it a different spin like it was the case with souls games, or roguelites, or boomer shooters, etc.
Exactly. So one has to ask what the value of "trendsetting" is.
Baldurs Gate 3 is too early to tell.
Baldur's Gate 3 won't set a trend. CRPGs already existed and still come our semi-frequently today. The distinguishing factors for BG3 are the production values and the IP, things 99% of devs in the CRPG space cannot replicate. It was not innovative in any real way. It was just high budget.
Flintlock, Dungeons of Hinterberg, Kunitsu-Gami, CYGNI all dropped just within the last 30 days. All new IP, all great AA games, all priced less than full price. And that's not even counting the numerous cheaper indies, and this is just 4 weeks.
All a bunch of games that few people will play or care about, stuffing up storefronts.
We're supposedly getting Hyper Light Breaker this year.
We definitely are well into the era of 3D indies on par with PS3 / PS4 stuff. Their last game from 2021 is fantastic, Solar Ash.
This is western gaming, American indie team putting out stuff that looks like Gravity Rush.
Respectfully, no one fucking bought either Gravity Rush game. It's irrelevant, and not what people in this thread mean by "filling the void". Copying sub ~1 million sales games from aesthetics to mechanics is not adding anything.
Ok let's get this out of the way first - that's not what 'AAA' ever stood for (and it certainly isn't what company PR ever used it for). It represented high-production values / blockbuster budgets (in large part, a reflection of industry's continued obsession with hollywood, but admittedly, it grew beyond that since term's inception).
Dude, you're splitting hairs to see a difference that I haven't made. I do mean production values when I say "the higher end of what the industry can produce". What else do you think I'm talking about?
And obviously, these higher production value games only get those production values because the intent/likelihood is that they will be successful to the higher degree of what a game can be.
That is in stark contrast to R* spending 500M - 1B on their next game while the average indie competitor is quite literally working with 100x+ less. And this delta was just as pronounced in the 00s - a 10M$ AAA was relative to 100k$ budget productions on the other end of the scale. The absolute numbers grew - but the relative deltas were already there.
I don't see the point that you're trying to make here. AAA games and the distinction between indies (which obviously barely existed until the late 2000s) changes over time, yes.
And not all AAA games are equal in budget. They never were. TLOU2 cost 230 million to make and market, around the same as what GTA5 cost and more than double what TLOU1 cost 7 years prior, and less than half of what GTA6 will cost 5 years later. Spider-Man 2 cost 200 million to develop (they spent 100 million on licensing) 2 years prior to GTA6, but is still AAA. Most AAA games 5 years from
now won't match the cost of GTA6.
Yes in 2001. ICO was built on that sub 1M budget - like many similar scoped games of the time. I didn't compare it to Dark Cloud by accident - both were new IPs backed by major publishers, both had a core team of about 5-10 people, and both made their money back at 100k sales, so they never needed to compete with 'AAA's of the time for mindshare.
There's no evidence of almost any of that. Ico took 3 years of development and was originally supposed to be a PS1 game - so technically advanced and AAA that they had to move onto the PS2.
There's nothing about Dark Cloud or Ico having made its money back at 100k sales, in fact at many times that number, it's all but said that they were/are weak. Coming from the game's own creator.
There's no way that either game was made with just 5-10 people. But even at 20, that would be, at the time, not unusual for larger games. Deus Ex was made by ~20.
Early 00s had multi-million sales ambitions for big IPs (with top end going towards 10M). AAs simply didn't aim for that, just like they don't aim for 10-100M range today. Doesn't mean it never happens though (see Helldivers 2).
For 90s-2000s games, 10 million was an infrequent lifetime milestone for cultural icons. I mean, FF7 and the first Sonic game sit at ~15 million today. Around 30 years after release, with dozens of ports of re-releases between them. Don't know where you're getting any of this from.
