That statistic does not show that AAA games are not dominating. It could just mean that there are more than 20 AAA games selling well. From the article, they note that "the top 79 games to account for 80% of total PC playtime".
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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And of those top 79 how many are of AAA or "AAAA" budgets?
AAAAA
AAAAAAH
WONDERFUL! It's been quite rare for me to buy outside of indie and AA. This is where innovation happens!
Increasing hardware prices will only further this trend
I seriously have been wondering about AAA games lately. Do you think instead of pushing amazing graphics, they might dial back slightly and optimize more instead so they can sell their games to more people?
Graphics quality stopped being an issue IMO 10 years ago. Today creative graphics style beats graphics quality more often than not.
It's true but I mean developers are still making games with crazy good graphics. I mean do you think priorities will shift going forward.
Silksong and Stardew Valley
I don't care about triple A titles anymore, I love RPG, but the last really good AAA RPG to come out was Skyrim from 2011, that's 14 years ago!! I suppose fallout has it's good points, I just can't stand the dystopian atmosphere in those games.
I also like Borderlands 1 and 2, but Borderlands 3 and 4 have been disasters, and they want $70 for a game that is mostly a repeat of previous games, with updated graphics, which anyone can do if they utilize the better hardware features on modern cards.
Contrary to those examples there are hundreds of gems big and small, that (also) have actually fun gameplay and good graphics and originality. For instance 7 days to die, a 12 year old game that is still developed and improved on, and you can choose to play old versions if you want. That's like having a series of 6 games from a triple A title, but for half the price of 1!
The latest gem I found is Windrose:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3041230/Windrose/
Windrose Play by Glock 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qww28tHVHLI
An absolute gem (survival/RPG/exploration), that runs perfectly on my older Radeon 6600XT GPU on Linux. made by a smallish team of 15 developers, it's a prerelease but it already has a ton of content, and it cost less than half of most AAA titles.
But there are also titles like the Infected, that is made by ONE GUY!!, that plays great has great graphics and a unique play-style and story.
So why the hell do AAA games so often suck so bad? My guess it's because it's games by management, that both make them more expensive, because all managers have their own ideas of what makes a game sell, typically things that make the games unnecessarily expensive to develop, and sometimes it even ruins the gameplay. Then there's the constant obvious monetization attempts. Because it's more important to make an extra buck on the game, than actually make a good game out of the box.
The result is that the actual gameplay quality of AAA games is often poor, and the games are too expensive for what they deliver, and small indie teams can make better games at lower cost.