This is an absolutely absurd out of touch take. High quality games by indie devs is more common then ever, we are seeing a resurgence of story driven games that have ZERO MTX.

I got some news for ya pal, “gaming” is not Ubisoft and EA. For example, Sony’s exclusives: horizon, spider man, god of war, the last of us, uncharted, and that is ONLY SONY.

In the milsim genre there is a HUGE renaissance of games like ground branch, grayzone, six days in fallujah, etc. this is the case for many genres right now and has been for years at this point.

You are quite literally judging the ENTIRE fucking industry on a few big name studios and the shit they push out.

Putting that aside for a moment, even then, your take doesnt reflect reality. Sony is one of the biggest right now studio wise in console games and they’ve been bridging the gap to PC for years now.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/ps5-emphasizes-player-engagement-over-game-sales-according-to-sony/ar-BB1mnlvf

In a shift from previous strategies, Sony has revealed a new focus for the PlayStation 5 that prioritizes increasing the amount of time users spend playing on the console, rather than solely concentrating on the quantity of game sales. This strategic change reflects an evolving consumer behavior observed during the era of the PS4, aiming to boost profitability through enhanced engagement within the PlayStation ecosystem

If anything, the big dogs are walking away from mtx and sales numbers and focusing on what makes good games that bring people back.

Furthermore,

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/playstation-exec-believes-game-developers-will-prioritize-immersive-narratives-over-ever-improving-graphics-in-future/1100-6523668/

The man who heads PlayStation Productions and product at PlayStation Studios believes that the future of gaming will be about "immersive narratives." In fact, Asad Qizilbash thinks developers will focus on emotional storytelling over visual fidelity in the future.

Which takes down your other stance about how it’s only about graphics these days. Again it’s not just the big dogs, have you seriously NOT seen the insane amount of extremely popular games that use retro styles? Years and years old like hotline Miami, or brand new like animal well, etc. it never stopped.

Video game dunkey’s BigMode studio is yet another great example of these concepts and priorities reaching popularity and approval

almost everything today is a rehash

You are simply telling on yourself here. We get it, you are not connected to where gaming is today, whether that be due to nostalgia or perhaps a hyper focus on a specific niche, but to judge the state of the entire goddamn industry based on that?

Bottom line: make ann effort to actually play some well received and highly regarded games just from the past five years and you’ll understand why your take is hollow.

that's only true for big publishers. sounds like you never look at indie or indie publisher games.

meanwhile I'm losing my mind because i don't think I'll ever have enough time to even try half the games in interested in playing.

just this month about a dozen games were released that I want to play. how will I ever keep up?