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Nvidia won, we all lost

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977 points todsacerdoti | 5 comments | 04 Jul 25 21:58 UTC | HN request time: 2.024s | source
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neuroelectron ◴[04 Jul 25 23:21 UTC] No.44468792[source]▶
Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector.

I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors.

The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.

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kbolino ◴[05 Jul 25 00:32 UTC] No.44469167[source]▶
The video game industry has been through cycles like this before. One of them (the 1983 crash) was so bad it killed most American companies and caused the momentum to shift to Japan for a generation. Another one I can recall is the "death" of the RTS (real-time strategy) genre around 2010. They have all followed a fairly similar pattern and in none of them that I know of have things played out as the companies involved thought or hoped they would.
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the__alchemist ◴[05 Jul 25 02:26 UTC] No.44469662[source]▶
Thankfully, RTS is healthy again! (To your point about cycles)
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needcaffeine ◴[05 Jul 25 02:29 UTC] No.44469673[source]▶
What RTS games are you playing now, please?
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1. sgarland ◴[05 Jul 25 02:56 UTC] No.44469797[source]▶
AoE2, baby. Still going strong, decades after launch.
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2. KeplerBoy ◴[05 Jul 25 07:02 UTC] No.44470664[source]▶
And AoE4, one of the few high profile RTS games of the past years, is dead.
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3. the__alchemist ◴[05 Jul 25 12:09 UTC] No.44472210[source]▶
That was disappointing to see. I thought it was a great game, with some mechanics improved over 2, and missing some of the glitchy behavior that became cannon (e.g. foot archer kiting) The community (nor my friends) didn't seem to go for it, primarily for the reason that it's not AoE2. Exquisite sound design too.
4. sgarland ◴[06 Jul 25 12:49 UTC] No.44480365[source]▶
I own all AoE games, and despite having 3 and 4 installed, I don’t think I’ve so much as launched them. Every time I think “I should try this,” I remember I want to try a new strategy in 2 instead.
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5. the__alchemist ◴[06 Jul 25 18:45 UTC] No.44483041{3}[source]▶
You and many people.

Give 4 a try! Its multiplayer is excellent. Kind of a hybrid between Starcraft and AoE2 in terms of pacing and civ divergence. (Fewer, more diverse civs)

The archer kiting/dodging mechanic that dominates AoE2 is gone.

I play AoE2, not 4 because that's what my friends play, but 4 is the more interesting one from a strategy perspective. More opportunities to surprise the opponent, use novel strats, go off meta etc.