Live service on console was obvious on the way for every genre back on the 360/PS3 era with FIFA ultimate team and publishers also having that period of time when they were trying to kill used games with that single account multiplayer access code

Then it became super obvious because of PC from the super success of TF2 hats and eventually CSGO skins by like 2015. Trying to compete with WoW was an ocean of dead video game studios. Fortnite perfected live service on consoles and CoD adapted and went just as wild with it

Single player games, my hot take is Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Assassin's Creed killed AAA single player narrative games by succeeding so well to making future games mediocre. Mass Effect had interesting alien species dynamics but never took them with much of any depth. They were Star Wars movies rather than the wild Star Wars EU. Uncharted was a hyper popular Hollywood blockbuster where the emotional highlight being the beginning of Uncharted 4 with Nate and Elena being a cute couple.

Assassin's Creed stories kept going deeper and deeper into name dropping famous figures/mythology that it became parody. Historical clout chasing wrapped together in a nonsense overarching plot that should have had some satisfying ending back in 2012 but instead is effectively spin-offs the series

So Mass Effect hints at interesting politics but plays things safe and gives you none but Hollywood space opera in video games with solid animations and facial animations were fresh in the 360 era. Uncharted was even more extreme in that regards than Mass Effect where there was still novelty in Hollywood mimicry with even better graphics and even more scripted for explosive set pieces. Assassin's Creed and eventually Far Cry and Watch Dogs are bottom feeders. Chase trends, name drop - shotgun approach for trailer fodder. They are sadly the standards of AAA single player narrative

Also live service single player games are competitive. Stories are just as shallow but frequent in release and graphics at a level good enough now. Talking like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves

What did James Gunn say about superhero movies? It’s not that the trend is over and people hate these games. It’s that they hate BAD games.

Plus, I’ve been buying plenty of indies that likely don’t feed into these statistics. It’s not even a hipster thing now - a lot of streamers just like playing the newest indie coop like REPO, Peak, Phasmophobia or Lethal Company.

Translation: Gen-Z does not want to buy those godawful AAA games.

I'm only ever buying coop games nowadays. Playing coop is simply the most fun you can have playing games. I'm a Millennial tho, and I do pirate the occasional AAA game.

I'm taking the Rossmann route on this, and using a net in order to get games that are no longer on any storefront.

That's what my producer, Neigsendoig, did with WWE 2K19, because it's abandonware now by most standards.