long list
- Indie games. Just as a whole. People here really don't know but, but outside of GAF and on the internet especially Indies are some of the most popular games as a whole
Terraria for instance. That game was just reported as selling 58 million copies. This means it's sold better than God of War Ragnarok, Spiderman 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring. It's one of the most popular games on the internet, but in GAF nobody... well, GAF.
This little segment of games is ridiculously popular and I love it. I'm so glad that they're finally getting the mass mainstream attention they deserve
- Digital Distribution. Ignoring the whole DRM aspect of it, it's pretty convenient and really easy to play games once you have purchased them.
- Emulation and retro game preservation has been hitting its stride over the past couple of years. from better CRT shaders, improved accuracy on more systems, 7th gen emulation starting to get to a usable and recommended state, and others. HD Mode 7 for example is one of the best things to happen to SNES emulation.
Remember Super Mario Kart and F-Zero? Those games using that mode 7 background display technique to create rotating and scaling psuedo 3D areas? That's now in HD, you can scale it up from any resolution and it's shockingly impressive and clean to look at! It's been this way for 4 years too, the emulator (BSNES-HD) has been out for a long while now. You need a great PC to run it though, as it's CPU heavy
Not to mention PS3 emulation as a whole. Games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Uncharted 2 are finally breaking out of their PS3 prisons to end up on PC, and it's a great thing to see honestly.
Finally, the talk about decomps. Ever since that Mario 64 decompilation in 2019, old games from all around have been receiving efforts to get their game's source code decompiled.
People love this because it's a great way to get their stuff on PC, but it's also useful just because you can look inside and see how these games tick. Like for instance, there's nothing stopping you from making a 3D platformer with movement shockingly similar to Mario 64- since the game's code is just OUT there now, you can do it. I think stuff like this is also a reason we've been seeing a massive uptick in indie 3D platformers recently, but that's for another time.
Now, with the recompilation tool announced for N64, we can get native PC versions of old console games even faster!
- Platform agnosticism. Nintendo aside, more video games have been showing up on more platforms period... Mostly on PC, but in general, more games have been coming to more systems. Used to be 20 years ago that if you wanted to play most of everything you needed a PS2. Now, you can play anywhere and get virtually 90% of what you want to play. Excluding Xbox, of course (RIP
adamsapple
)
- the handheld boom post 2020.
This is not just me talking about the Steam Deck.
This is me talking about in general.
Options for Non-Nintendo handhelds have spiked even with the rise of mobile phones. Emulation on android has become far easier (and even for Iphone too due to the brand new rule letting more apps on the app store) so you can just play more games.
Windows powered PC handhelds have been hitting their stride too as the Deck brought new eyes on the market and now it's frankly oversaturated with a wide depth of options. I'm worried the bubble might burst in a couple of years, but until then there's a PC handheld out there just for you, whether you like them SteamOS flavored, Clamshell flavored, with a keyboard, or with a 10 inch screen.
I have more, but I am done.
