Is This The WEAKEST Video Game Generation?

The Weakest Video Game Generation

Think back, if you’re old enough, to the launch of the PS2. What an unbelievable leap in technology that was going from seeing blocky character models in 3D worlds and thinking this was as good as it was ever going to get. But then, you see Solid Snake jump from The George Washington Bridge and when he looks at you, he looks like Snake. The Solid Snake you always imagined playing Metal Gear Solid on the PS1. Or watching Marcus Fenix take on hordes of the Locust from the barely there safety of a chest high wall. The amount of detail in Marcus, the Locust and the environments blew our minds. And lastly, Aloy encountering a Tall Neck for the first time, and realizing you need to climb to the top of that thing. Now, show me the difference between God of War Ragnarok on PS4 and PS5. We dare you. And that’s only the start of the problems with this generation.
Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’ll be breaking down why the 9th generation of consoles is not only the weakest we’ve had in decades, but also the most underwhelming.
I’ve been gaming for pretty much as long as I could hold a controller but my love for gaming really took off when I got my first PS1. I’d always had fun playing with my SNES but this was something different. The graphics, the games, and especially the storytelling were so much more engaging and opened up entire new worlds for me to explore and I couldn’t get enough. This passion only grew with the release of the PS2, mostly because by then I had to start using my own money if I wanted a new game, and I was enamored with nearly every new game and experience that was released, willing to try almost anything the system had to offer. This was the true experimental age of gaming; developers were allowed to try out their wildest ideas regardless if they ended up being a success or not. Not everything was a hit right away, but a lot of those games are still talked about even today, some over 2 decades after they were released. This was the time when we got franchises that are still going strong, like God of War, Ratchet and Clank, and Halo, all from developers who were able to not only release new entries in their franchises on an almost yearly basis but managed to significantly improve on them with each entry.
This was the generation when developers started making names for themselves. Naughty Dog would move on from Crash Bandicoot and give us Jak and Daxter and then with the PS3 the Uncharted and The Last of Us series. Insomniac gave us almost annual Ratchet and Clank titles and then gave the PS3 a true Halo competitor with the Resistance series, all while continuing to release Ratchet and Clank bangers. Rockstar was especially prolific during this time, pumping out 3 GTA games, Bully, The Warriors and the Midnight Club series, as well as many others. Konami and Capcom revolutionized horror in different ways with the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series, respectively. RE4 is also single handedly responsible for the over-the-shoulder perspective almost every action game uses these days.
The 6th and 7th generation also saw the rise of online gaming. No longer were you bound to couch co-op or overcomplicated LAN parties, you could play your favorite games with others across the country or across the world. Multiplayer modes in traditionally single player games like Call of Duty or Halo and even Gears of War exploded with millions playing every day and even forming lifelong friendships with people you’d almost certainly never meet in person.
And most importantly, if a game didn’t sell well, the studio wasn’t immediately shut down and oftentimes, developers would even get to make a sequel that improved on the first game and made the series a classic. Or not and we just got a bunch of crappy sequels to a crappy franchise because the games were cheap to make, and unknowing parents and grandparents would buy them as Christmas and birthday presents. And we all had to sit there and pretend we were excited about it. Don’t lie, you all did it too.
I’m spending a lot of time breaking down previous generations because it’s important to understand the difference and how we got to where we are today.
Gaming has never been a cheap hobby. Back in the 90s, cartridges were expensive. Like really expensive. Most new N64 games could cost up to $70 for first party titles. The switch to disc brought most games down to a more moderately priced $40 with some games even being released as cheap as $10. Shoutout to the Spec Ops series on PS1. This also meant that we could get more games released more quickly, which is how we got multiple Spyro and Crash games in such quick succession. Gaming was evolving and this was not only benefiting developers but gamers as well. Who doesn’t want more great games to play more often?
This trend continued from the 90s into the mid-2000s with no shortage of incredible and memorable games, oftentimes with multiple entries or sequels and some true gems that would become more appreciated over time. Honestly, the reason why some games were overlooked was because there was just so much amazing stuff to play in any given year, it was hard to keep up. The industry was thriving and expanding, bringing in more and more players every year and alongside the growing indie scene thanks to Xbox Live Arcade and eventually PSN, even smaller teams were able to make their dreams a reality and get their games into the hands of players everywhere.
The PS4 and Xbox One got off to a slow start, especially the Xbox One, but eventually, players had numerous titles that made the generation feel worthwhile with the likes of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Bloodborne, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, God of War 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2, and a handful of others, many of which were brand new IPs. But if you compare the output of memorable and genre defining titles compared to the 7th generation, the list pales in comparison. Once prolific developers were suddenly releasing fewer and fewer titles, with some either only releasing one or two during the entire generation, while others seemed complacent, continuing to port their greatest successes from the previous generation to everything imaginable. Yes, I’m talking directly to you, Bethesda.
This was also where the cracks in the industry began to show. Gaming became more corporate mandated with nearly every game coming with DLC, season passes or tacked on multiplayer. Anything to keep gamers playing their game and only their game. Gaming wasn’t for gamers anymore; it was for the shareholders. Budgets began to balloon to ludicrous figures and a focus on live service and battle royale overtook the latter years of the generation and managed to oversaturate a budding genre before it even began.
Skip ahead to 2020 and the imminent release of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S. The two most powerful versions of either company's consoles to date. Right? Well, no. Apparently not.
The PS5 and Xbox Series Consoles already had an uphill battle releasing in a year when the entire world was still recovering from a global shutdown which resulted in chip shortages making these brand-new consoles in high demand and short supply. Naturally, this incentivised both Sony and Microsoft to walk back some of their next gen “exclusives” in order to maintain as large a player base as possible. The PS5 did at least launch with a couple next gen only titles such as the Demon’s Souls remake and Astro’s Playroom as a pack-in game, but after an abysmal showing for Microsoft’s flagship series Halo, the company chose to delay the game by a year, leaving their shiny new box without a single first party exclusive.
This trend continued into the next year with only a small handful of games being truly “next gen” exclusive and everything else that was originally promised for this brand-new hardware also releasing on the PS4 and Xbox One. Somehow, these games that were originally only possible on the strongest hardware on the market, could also be scaled back and released on the previous, underpowered consoles. And side-by-side comparisons of next gen and previous gen versions showed there was barely any noticeable difference between the two, with many titles that promised 4K 60FPS failing to even marginally hit those benchmarks.
Both Sony and Microsoft released two versions of their consoles as well with both cheaper versions being digital only consoles. However, Microsoft in an attempt to undercut Sony, made their Series S console not only cheaper, but also woefully underpowered compared to its big brother. This has severely handicapped not only Microsoft themselves as none of their games feel truly “next-gen” because their scope needs to be scaled back in order to run on the Series S potato, but it has crippled 3rd party developers as well. Many studios have gravitated more towards the PS5 for their big releases rather than limit their scope to release on both the Series X and S, which is apparently a contractual obligation to release on Xbox consoles, inadvertently giving Sony a large amount of 3rd party exclusives.
This is also where this generation has been struggling as well: exclusives and quite honestly new releases in general. Whereas with previous generations players were spoiled for choice come the big holiday release window, these days there’s rarely anything to get hyped or excited about. So far this generation, only a couple of Sony’s internal studios have released anything that could be considered a “console seller”. Insomniac is single-handedly keeping the PS5 alive, with the vast majority of Sony’s first party studios remaining radio silent almost 5 years into the generation. It’s even worse for Microsoft. Despite too many acquisitions to count, the big green box has yet to produce anything that could be considered a “must play”, with some of their biggest titles even now releasing on the PS5 seemingly to recoup some of those massive acquisition costs.
At of the time of writing, the PS5 barely has over a dozen “next-gen” PS5-only exclusives and the Xbox Series consoles have even less. While Sony’s Jim Ryan initially discussed the company “believed in generations” that no longer appears to be the case. This is in addition to many Sony’s other exclusives amounting to nothing more than remastered or “Director’s Cuts” of PS4 titles.
If we compare where the 9th generation of consoles is compared to the 8th, the outlook for the industry becomes even more dire. While there were of course still some cross gen games during the first year or two of the PS4 and Xbox One, those versions that released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 were almost entirely different games, with many features and even entire mechanics or levels having to be cut. The PS4 and Xbox One were released in 2013 and comparing the same amount of time having passed for the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, the number of games is night and day. There is almost nothing that makes forking over hundreds of dollars for these consoles that are now considered half-way through their life cycle even remotely worth it. A majority of Xbox Series exclusives are playable on the Xbox One through Game Pass, and Sony’s recent push for their games on PC means those without a PS4 or 5 will only have to wait a short amount of time to receive probably the best versions of those Sony exclusives.
This is only scratching the surface of the audacity of this generation, with Sony also recently announcing a mid-gen refresh with the PS5 Pro at an eye watering $700. And with no disc drive or stand, both of which are sold separately. The PS5 Pro also seems to finally be fulfilling the promises made by Sony for the PS5 during its initial reveal, 4K 60FPS, no more choosing between performance or fidelity modes, as well as the possibility of 8K output, which hilariously was printed on the box of the initial release of the PS5 but has since been removed from the box art. Nintendo, despite their unprecedented success with the Switch is also fundamentally holding back their players as well. The Switch was already underpowered compared to the PS4 and Xbox One when it was released in 2017, locking die-hard Nintendo fans out from the vast majority of 3rd party releases and forcing gamers to play these games via cloud gaming, which is never an ideal compromise. Thankfully the Switch 2 is reportedly more powerful, supposedly the equivalent of the PS4 Pro, which considering that most games these days are still releasing for that console, should give Nintendo fans a lot more 3rd party options going forward.
The lack of truly “next-gen” exclusives is only half the problem this generation however. The entire industry has become “corporate-ized” to the point where there have been more layoffs and studio closures in only the first four years of this generation than seemingly all the previous ones combined. The video game crash of the 80s notwithstanding. This has undeniably been the generation of “safe” games with many releases being legacy sequels, remakes or remasters, or even reboots of older popular franchises, reimagined for the mystical “modern audience”. Video games used to be developed by people who actually loved gaming, and their love, passion, and creativity was on display in the games they created. Nowadays, video games live and die by their Metacritic scores with some developers being denied bonuses if their game fails to reach a specific score with critics.
Publishers telling gamers to “get comfortable with not owning their games” has caused quite a lot of backlash alongside numerous titles becoming digital only and requiring constant internet connections even for single-players focused titles. Everything about this approach to the industry is wildly anti-consumer and spits in the face of die-hard gamers who are seeing their favorite hobby or past time ripped from their hands by corporate greed. The push for an all-digital future has also been met with quite a lot of resistance from the gaming community. The closure of the Xbox 360 marketplace, the Wii U and 3DS online stores led to the loss of hundreds if not thousands of titles that are no longer playable anywhere else if you didn’t already own them before the shutdown. Sony attempted to shut down the PS3 online store and was met with so much resistance, they walked back their decision. With the PS3 currently being the only way short of digging out a PS1 or 2 to experience the majority of Sony’s back catalog, we can’t even imagine how much history would have been lost in the PS3’s online store closure.
This has also become the generation of publishers and developers pulling an EA and attempting to tell gamers what they want rather than listening to fan demand. The frequently used corporate term “if you don’t like, it don’t buy it” has become a rallying call for many games as players have voted with their wallets leaving many brand new releases underperforming. The push to label all gamers who don’t like the direction of the industry or how a specific game handles a license, or legacy characters have now been labeled as toxic by publishers and developers and even the journalists who cover these games. Gone are the days when people could simply express their opinion and thanks to the rise and pressure of social media, gamers, the ones who pay for these products to keep the industry going, have become public enemy number one. Everyone should be entitled to their own opinion whether you agree with it or not. Do some on both sides of the argument take things too far? Absolutely. And none of that is ever okay or something that should be condoned in any capacity, but we have become so far removed from people simply having open discussions about their own takes on anything that what once was a community that brought people together has become so divisive it might never fully recover.
So, what does all of this mean for the remainder of this generation? It’s not in a great place, unfortunately. Much of the lack of new releases could easily be attributed to the ballooning budgets of many games and ludicrous development times. Some developers have even left big publishers because the new project the studio has begun production on could take upwards of 10 years to see a full release, leading to many big name and once proficient developers only releasing one or two if any new games in each generation. Realistically, any new game that enters production today won’t see market release until the PS6 or Xbox Next. Coupled with ridiculously bloated staff, massive overhead and multiple studios working on a single title, there is almost no room for anything new to even get off the ground let alone reach the conceptual stage. With numerous big budget releases not only failing to make a profit but also leading to complete studio closures while those who mandated the doomed project continue to fail upwards, the entire gaming industry could be on the verge of another crash similar to the one in the 80s with Atari.
Once prominent developers are forced to churn out soulless cash grabs or worse yet, live service games, for publishers only focused on an endless revenue stream to keep their investors happy. Activision is especially guilty of this, folding multiple studios into the Call of Duty machine who were instrumental during the 360 and PS3 era, giving players some of the best experiences of that generation. Even indie developers, once championed by gamers for their innovation have devolved into almost nothing but “Souls-Likes”, Metroidvanias, cozy games or even live-service titles. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this if you’re a fan of these genres, and there have been some absolute bangers, much of the innovation and experimentation seems to have left even the once up and coming indie scene.
I understand at the end of the day, video games are a business, and they need to make money to continue making games, but when no one wants the product you’re selling, then something is inherently wrong with the system. Rather than doubling down, the industry needs to rediscover what made gaming so lucrative in the first place, the feeling of discovery, innovation, experimentation and a true love for the medium. The pursuit of the uncanny valley will never outlive a fun game with a creative art style and solid game mechanics. There’s a reason the retro gaming scene has exploded in recent years, and it's due in large part to the nostalgia gamers have for the good old days when gaming was all about the fun of gaming itself.
We absolutely love video games of all kinds and only want the chance to have even more to play, but if this generation is any indication, the best days may well and truly be behind us.
Do you think there’s still hope for this generation of gaming or is it too far gone to be saved? Share your thoughts in the comments.