Over the weekend, I just happened to take a look at the list of games I’ve played over the last several months, and I made an interesting discovery. Aside from Silent Hill 2 and Metaphor: ReFantazio, there wasn’t a single “AAA” game on the list. I’m not even sure I would count Silent Hill 2 since it’s a remake of a game that was never “AAA” to begin with. I’m not sure about Metaphor either since it’s not exactly mainstream in the same way that something like Assassin’s Creed is.

Now, I’m by no means any sort of authority when it comes to games, but it wasn’t too long ago that my list was filled with “AAA” games. Really, there was a time when they were exciting and filled with new and fresh ideas. Now though? “New” and “fresh” almost seem like foreign concepts to the “AAA” space. No longer are the biggest studios the ones setting trends and breaking new ground. Rather, it seems like their sole purpose is wear already tired ideas and mechanics down to the nub and figure out how to wring as much money as possible our from those who continue to engage with their products. Sure, it’s still wildly popular, but not in good way.

Now, I fully acknowledge that this just could very well just be me being an “old gamer” yelling at the proverbial clouds, but still, isn’t strange that there hasn’t been much if any movement in the “AAA” space in the last 10 years? Perhaps even longer? New announcements from the likes of Ubisoft, Nintendo and even Activision and Xbox used to hold the promise of new and interesting experiences. Over the last few years though, has that held true? Every announcement from these companies has been remakes, remasters or just more heavily monetized and watered down versions of very long running series.

Even Nintendo has fallen into this pattern. What was Tears of the Kingdom if not Breath of the Wild with a single new mechanic? What is Mario Kart World if not just “Mario Kart but you can roam around a little now”? Same with the new Donkey Kong; same with the new Metroid? I might be stretching my argument a bit here, sure, but it still feels like a far cry from the daring new ideas the company would routinely put forward even as recently as the early 2010s.

With all of the recent developments with Switch 2, Sony, Xbox and all their price hikes, I can’t help but think that they’ve all essentially walled themselves into going for only the widest, most mainstream audience possible. The mainstream doesn’t tolerate new ideas. It doesn’t like innovation. It wants only what it’s used to and, as we’ve all come to discover, it’s willing to pay any price in order to get more of it.

This is why Nintendo has seemingly watered itself down while demanding ever-increasing premiums, why freemium is king and why Madden, 2K Sports and FC can all make disgusting amounts of money by having their players gamble for power year after year, in ever cruddier new versions. “AAA” doesn’t set trends anymore because it’s become too big to afford doing so. It’s almost become an entirely different animal, one irrevocably leashed to chasing profit and the entrenched tastes of the mainstream casual audience.

So much of the discourse around these companies and their decisions, the surprise, shock and outrage, stems from failing to understand this, I think. We just haven’t accepted the fact that things have changed and that all these massive companies, these so-called “leaders” of the industry, are leaders no longer.

At least, not when it comes to pushing the medium forward. The leaders now are the “AA” and independent developers, those that are not yet subject to the mainstream audience. They are the font from which ideas now flow. They are the ones leading innovation and making actual new experiences. I’m not even sure Nintendo and the rest are even downstream anymore, but are, rather, in an entirely separate space. It’s all kind of strange, don’t you think?

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How do you feel about AAA gaming these days? What do think about the quality of the games they put out now versus the games they made 10 years ago?

Image from the Steam page