This criticism is genuinely like 10-13 years out of date, gramps.

Don't forget to delete last year's version from all your customers' hard drives!

A collectors edition that doesn’t include the game either.

90€ + 50€ • DLC? Isn't that too little for the poor record-profit industry titans with budgets in the billions and nonsensical brand loyalty all over the world?

What stands out most from the article is that the 18-24 demographic has a 25% drop off compared to other groups with a 5% drop off.

Not a great sign for the future if cut backs isn't simply due to deciding to be fiscally responsible, but overall money problems for every day expenses.

Reporter Rachel Wolfe concluded that contributing factors to dropped spending included a difficult job market, student loans, and a particularly high credit card delinquency rate among those aged 18 to 29.

even if we do, the cost doesnt justify the poor quality of some of these games.

Also modern games are trash, that's kind of a big one you are missing

I have money for games...but NONE of it is going to any company that makes me scream AAAAA..or when they charge 40+ for a game. screw em.

even their 100$ trash at 95% off..hell no. that's even worse cause you know the game is extra shit.

all my money goes directly to Indy devs. games are actually fun, made with passion and they don't try to screw me every chance they get. I stopped with big title garbage like 6-7 years ago. never going back.

this mentality even applies to all my shopping. I don't buy crap anymore and I wish more people would do the same.

But then how can you create an artificial divide and pit one generation against another?

Playing indie games only until so-called AAA get their shit together, if ever . . .

Setting aside how unusual it is for overall spend to decrease in this age cohort (I encourage people to read the WSJ report linked in this article), this is the only comment here that hits on the most newsworthy part of this. Video games have been recession-resistant for decades, but now we're seeing it as a leading category for cutbacks. Even though gaming is a low-cost hobby, zoomers have found alternatives, and that surely includes F2P games.

While trends haven't been great for a while now, this is the most alarming data I've seen yet for the traditional gaming market. I feel like I'm gonna blink and there's going to be a generational divide like there is with baseball.

Exactly.

The Internet forgets it constantly and shitty slop farms like modern day vice love to ignore it:

Call of Duty isn't just competing with Fortnite. They are both competing with Andor and the NFL and mr beast and Subway Surfers and so forth. Also dating but genz is extra genz about that.

Its a tale as old as time itself. Once you have disposable income you have responsibilities. Some people insist "games aren't as good as they used to be because I didn't spend 500 hours playing Final Fantasy 29 over and over again". Others are unable to respond because they slept wrong and tweaked their neck.

Other outlets (including both Aftermath and Remap which are ACTUALLY the gaming news parts of the good vice...) have talked about this ad nauseum. Kids, generally, aren't buying even 50 dollar games. They are playing f2p shit on their phones or playing fortnite or roblocks which are also both f2p games. And the spending for those is generally not tracked alongside the GTAs and the like.

Like, we all shit on Sony for their horrific mismanagement and their quest for a live service game (and cheer that they aren't as bad as microsoft, I guess?). But... there is a reason for that. That might not be what us olds want to play (I actually like some live service games but whatever...). It is more conducive to what people who still have time to spend money on gaming want. Which is ALSO why there is such a big push for "collector's editions" and "limited re-releases" so that the olds who don't have time to play will still buy a 200 dollar cartridge they'll never use.

You nailed it with the age thing.

Kids on consoles with mom's money, those kids that eat up shit like Fortnite and other live-service shovelware.