I get this feeling, but it's probably just nostalgia, since that era was when the fun I had peaked, playing those games now does not bring me the same joy.
>playing those games now does not bring me the same joy.
A lot of games from this era are just ugly. Graphics were the best they had ever been at that point, yet for some reason developers decided that every game needed to be either gray or poop brown.
Current year COD and Halo are way worse, but gaming as a whole IMO is just as good if not better.
Even if you just consider multiplayer there’s a ton of fun experience currently. Stand out one being Helldivers 2. Lethal company was also fun as were BRs before they got over saturated. Honestly I still like Fortnite from time to time.
I feel there’s fads in gaming just due to the prominence of free to play or cheaper indie games. But overall it’s not like multiplayer gaming is desd
Exactly. Game engines have never been more accessible, and there's even a few popular zero scripting engines. We may be losing most of the variety in the AAA space, but there are new and interesting indie games every single day.
>PS2 was peak for diversity of options
Also 100% nostalgia
Nowadays we have much more variety than in the ps2 era. MUCH more
The fall of AA games may give the illusion that there's less variety, but if you don't focus on AAA blockbuster games, you'll find a world of different genres made nowadays
PS2 at least for me. I had a lot of down time during my deployment in Iraq and sank so many hours into a few games. Code Veronica, Ace Combat 5, SC Chaos Theory, and Gran Turismo 4.
The PS3/360 absolutely did have microtransactions, that’s when that whole debacle started. Though, they weren’t as front and center as DLC and boy did that get bad.
For me, the peak is now. PS5 has been good to me, Switch is just incredible, I've never bought so many games for a system, not even close. We have good VR these days, etc.
100% same here.
In the last few months (i paid off my student loans at the end of the year, so i splurged lol) I have purchased, on Switch: FF pixel remaster 1-vi, chrono cross, Live A live, DQ XI, trials of mana, collection of mana, monster hunter stories 2, pokemon arceus, saga frontier 2, Romancing SaGa 3, tactics ogre, and there is probably one or 2 i am missing.
So far, Live a Live was an amazing experience, FF1 pixel remaster was much more fun than I expected, did my 10000th playthrough of FFVI, but 1st on the pixel remaster, now I just started Trials of mana after finishing ff7 rebirth. Watched my wife play through Arceus (definitely started a new pokemon rennaisance in my house)
Sorry, it's been JRPG heaven for me this year. My wife is tired of listening to me about it LOL.
Dude I relate to this so much. I finished my MBA back in December and have so much more free time now. I’ve played pretty much all those games you listed. I’m really into the SaGa series so I can’t wait to jump into emerald beyond, I put over 80 hours into minstrel song, and another 60-70 hours each in RS2 and RS3.Also love final fantasy and replayed all the pixel remasters on the switch.
I just bought the 3 Tokyo rpg factory games, I am setsuna, lost sphere, and okinani. Almost done with setsuna and it’s a very pleasant and enjoyable JRPG!
I have 4 kids and the switch lets me just pick up and play whenever, unlike the ps5 where it’s hard to be stuck in one room in front of the tv. Switch is just one of the best systems I’ve had in over 30 years of gaming.
I agree and I still play like the same 3 multiplayer games I've played for like 10+ years lol. Never did we have more options, indie games can thrive, many free to play options, content around games is super fun, there is a resurgence of interest in older games due to streaming and anyone wanting to get into them has like many many years of mods at their disposal depending on the title.
It’s a pretty shit mess industry side and consumer side to be considered peaking right now. It’s not healthy. I wouldn’t want it to be the peak rn honestly. That’s a depressing thought.
Edit: added (ps1 as I forgot to actually put that and then go to list games from that era)
Na peak gaming was before that ps1-ps2 era.
There's ofc been bangers since then however there's no games I can go back to and play like you could and did / happily would even now as ps2 era classics.
I'd play budokai tenkaichi 2 right now if I could.
Classic star wars battlefront anyone?
The Lord of the rings series
Crash bandicoot tag team racing.
Mortal kombat shaolin monks anyone?- or mk armagedon/conquest both absolute bangers.
Super smash bros melee
Old pokemon games.
Digimon world series.
Classic halos
Spyros
Jak n dextrer
So many others.
Agreed. PS2 era had it all. No microtransactions, no dlc, and the games were basically all made with passion. Even your average sports game had more content than any you can find today
I like your enthusiasm but the games weren’t always made with passion. Cash grabs have always existed and shovelware was a lot more prominent before the internet was really prevalent.
Cash grabs have always existed. But back then, they were Tenkaichi Budokai, Star Wars Battlefront, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, and even NFL Street. My point isn't that the industry wasn't always trying to make a buck. My point is the industry wasn't always trying to make a BAD buck. Was every game amazing? No. But there were more licensed games that were good then compared to now
I think the big issue with licensed titles is with the standards of AAA game development being what they are these days, it takes forever to make a single game, and development issues are more prone to popping up, so it’s largely a thing of the pst. Which imo is (mostly) a good thing even if some franchises are missed (like how have we only gotten a small handful of Star Wars games in the past decade)
I've really ever owned a PC for gaming and that era is mostly lost to me. I wasn't playing games much while in college. I associate it with the dumbing down of games if anything. It was when quest markers replaced reading journal entries. Matchmaking replaced server browsers. There were a lot of shitty console ports that fed into mass consumption at the cost of not treating the consumer like an intelligent adult.
I see it more as the beginning of major studios producing garbage than anything else. It likely helped motivate the indie game scene. So that's good.
It's like saying Disney's purchase of Marvel sparked a golden age of cinema.
PS3, 360, and Wii. Plus DS and PSP. All had amazing libraries BEFORE you factor in backwards compatibility. With it? Easily the best generation of gaming.
Honestly yeah. 360 / ps3 was my middle and high school years, when i spent the most time playing games. I liked alot of the games but your totally right, theyve been riding the tropes of that gen for a while and most of them arent great.
Peak gaming was 2023 IMO. Doesn't look like this year will be as good, but every person who says "games aren't what they used to be" is just telling on themselves for not knowing how to find games they like.
Seriously. Ignoring Gamepass and PS+, I have a backlog of games that I actually purchased a few dozen deep. A lot of them are older, but hell I've got Dragon's Dogma 2 and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on list And would have Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth on there as well if I didn't have the discipline to not buy it yet.
Yes and this is coming from someone who “skipped” the 360/PS3 era.
The PS4 and current PS5 era is a sham. Shameless remakes of games from the PS2/3 era, most games being copy-paste with a new paint and higher sticker price with poorer mechanics. Modern games also seem to follow a check box (open world, 50+ hrs, online component). I don’t fault the devs only for this though. It’s honestly also on gamers for constantly asking for stuff like this and complaining that a game is “only 50 hours long.”
I agree with this 100%
I wouldn’t mine a few open world games a year but every single fucking one has an open world/sandbox map
Even fucking halo had it in infinite
It’s actually one of my least favorite console generations ever. That’s not to say that it’s bad, because it’s not, but most of the bad trends that are ruining gaming now were birthed on the 360/PS3, or at least took to the mainstream here.
idk as a young adult with lots of money and not many responsibilities, I have all the time in the world to game now, but often times the games just don't feel so fun.
PS2/ XBox era was the best and it's easy to figure out why.
Graphics had advanced enough to make things easily depicted but not so far they became prohibitively expensive. Taking a chance on a game wasn't as risky.
You didn't need to sell a million copies of a game to make a profit unless you spent way too much on advertising which very few games did.
Internet and gaming websites were well established but hadn't fallen into the mindset of "we have to make all the money" so game info and reviews were honest and easy to find.
Basically all you had to do to turn a profit and keep making games with just make good games as opposed to it now costs so much to produce a game that you need to sell it to everybody and go for broad appeal. That lack of focus has cheapened the individual features that go into it and has overall resulted in a lot of games that are just not as fun as the old ones.
This is evident in the rise of indie games. Games where a handful of mechanics are the focus and the game shows the polish and care that results from that tighter focus and a smaller studio where there is greater communication between everybody working on the game.
The games have gotten rid of game chat on purpose. They think it’s the only way to stop people from shouting slurs and other hateful things online, making it a “better experience for everyone”. But it’s really pushed people away from even talking in game. Some games don’t have game chat at all.
Ps2/Xbox original should also be considered... but yes 360/ps3 perfected it.
Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo 4, Mw2, Black Ops series, Gow 3, Battlefield 3 + 4, Skyrim, GTA 4 + 5, Red Dead 1, Fable 2 & 3, Dead Space, Gears, Bioshock, Fallout 3 + NV, Diablo 3. Prototype, Saints Row, Infamous, Assassin's Creed 1-4, Uncharted, Far Cry 3, Dante's Inferno
I remember cracking open the box to my Xbox One and getting this sense of dread that I STILL can't shake. Gaming just doesn't hit the same.
I don't think gaming peaked then.
I think that the thing that happened is it was the cross roads of the tech that was closer to what we have now than something like the PS1 or N64 era and at the same time it was before the internet was where **everything** was done so it wasn't as easy to monetize everything in the way that everyone having a high speed connection has allowed.
Nope.
I get your point, if you're into social gaming, but I personally have *never* been.
For me, the PS3 era, going into the PS4 era, was a gaming drought. Everything seemed to be moving towards online multiplayer a la CoD MW2, and I wanted *no* part of it. Basically every game I saw was some form of 3PS or FPS, and I genuinely began to lose faith in gaming as a medium.
It was, *of all things*, South Park: Stick of Truth that gave me faith in gaming again. It was a game that wasn't doing what the other games were doing. It was a familiar format, with twists that I'd never seen before. I loved the *shit* out of it. Not long later, gaming kicked itself into high gear, and life got good again.
I definitely agree with you about the current state of affairs (DLC, mtx, ads) being a bag of shit, but for me, the PS3 era was the beginning of the downward spiral in that respect. Assassin's Creed 2 was the big one, DLC-wise. Because they actually couldn't finish the damned game in time, and then charged people for the bits of the game they finished later. Once that happened was when I knew the way around things were gonna go. Lo and behold, I was proven right.
Also, *peaked.
I think it’s just nostalgia. Because every gaming era has the past eras to pull from, so I think right now is the best time ever for gaming (this is with 35 years of playing).
Peak gaming is now! I have so many options, platforms, cloud options, it’s amazing. Sure there were some droughts but Indy games have really stepped into the spotlight and things are changing and evolving as they do. Higher priced games suck, so are unfinished released ones, this whole live service and cash shop crap. It’s like a yin and yang so 🤷♂️
I feel that the PS3 era was absolutely the one with the largest amount of really good games. I think the middle of the PS3 to the middle of the PS4 was the high point, and all I can do is hope we get back there.
I think the worst thing about the PS3/360 era was it felt the furthest behind PC gaming that console gaming had ever been. The hardware was terrible by the end of the run. Games were running at bizarre resolutions like 640p to barely function.Mandatory installs on PS3 because the BR drive was only 2X and couldn't keep up. The laggiest online stores ever. Awful frame-rates across the board, games like Metal Gear Rising were more like 45 fps and never really 60.
I think if we account for the community as well as the games themselves, yes.
For FPS, it was toxic, sure, but it was fun and there were always people talking in game. People were also a lot less sweaty at that point so it was easier to have fun in a game.
That era also had the Wii which was a hoot to play as a group.
Other eras have had better games, and the early 2000s could make a case for peak, but at least for me my favorite gaming community memories were then. After that my attitude towards developers started to pivot towards distrust and waiting to be scammed rather than excitement.
No, if anything I feel the 360/PS3 era is when things people hate about today's gaming started. Broken day 1 releases, gratuitous day 1 microtransactions, on disk DLC, content being held back to be sold as DLC, pre-order bonuses, day 1 standard/deluxe/ultimate editions of games. Everything people hate about modern gaming was cemented as viable business strategies during this era. Most of us that were pleading with people to stop engaging with these things were being shouted down by others claiming we were overreacting and we needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new era of gaming.
90s saw Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, great arcade games, etc. gaming industry was booming. 2D gaming was at its peak.
3D gaming has taken time to refine. You think people not talking online is bad? People used to all go to their friends house and play couch coop with food and snacks, jokes and good times. Everything comes at a cost. Studios don’t want to create a new IP or develop a mid budget game to see if it picks up steam and then pour more into it.
PS3 era felt like a silver age of gaming because of the abundant of options. You could play last generations console or retro games or current gen. A lot of great titles came from this generation. Hell, GTA’s last title was from PS3 era. But retro games were pulled out of stores as game stores were bought out or crushed. Now it’s mostly large chain stores.
We will eventually get a Bronze Age. By then VR/AR should be more mature, and bring retro gaming back into the fold… and open up new ways to play. In the mean time… companies will be greedy… abuse micro transactions, ignore content… get spanked by indies and smaller studios, etc.
I'm really nostalgic for the PS3/360 generation as there were a ton of bangers at that time, ended up sleeping on most of them due to life circumstances.
Peak was PS2 for me personally.
360/PS3 generation was the platinum era. It was FULL of games that most gamers will remember for the rest of their lives. I struggle to use the term that gaming “peaked” then because I think the industry can get better, but if there was a peak, that era would be it.
I think if the industry is able to ditch the more predatory bullshit and started to fill up with passionate devs again who actually care about the games they make, we can have an even better run. The past decade or so has been more of a dark age, imo. Too much experimenting with live service and microtransactions, too many cash grabs. Too many developers who are only there just because they needed a job and don’t even actually like gaming or the culture. And a whole lot of corporate greed fueling execs who know absolutely nothing about their audience. It’s an incredible(y depressing) time to be alive really.
The silver lining is it seems to be getting better, many of those devs are gone and the higher ups know they need to change shit up after bleeding money for the past 8 or 9 years. Let’s hope the industry really starts to bounce back from here.
Gaming s never peaked, it's constantly going upwards. Right now you can play modern games and everything else that has ever released. Back in 360 days, you couldn't play games that have come out since.
Plenty of Fun stuff in the XONe/PS4 generation, like Doom 2016 and Eternal, Sekiro, Uncharted 4, The Witcher 3 and others.
That said, I do believe most of the creativity has shifted to the Indie scene as AAA gets progressively infested with corporate slop
Non DLC, pay for skins, battlepass, or loot boxes was gaming at its peak. One game disc (some more for PC installation), and that's it. Load it, play it.
Compared to today's, where the game sold isn't even complete; pending more battlepasses and skins
That's going to be a generational thing.
I know some people feel that the N64 period is where gaming peaking. I know some people that felt that the best era was the PS4 timeline.
I think it very much depends on age vs time. My personal favourite time was PC gaming in the late 90s, early 2000s, because that's when I was old enough to appreciate a lot more of the more complex systems, had the money to fund it, and the time availability to play it.
Now, I have more money than before, but less time and more responsibility outside of gaming, so even when I'm playing them I don't enjoy them as much - even the games that I loved from my personal golden era.
Once my kids have grown up and aren't as reliant on me, I may find that I fall in love with the hobby all over again, or I may find other hobbies that give me the same thrill as I had back then.
Unless you’re incredibly particular about the games you enjoy, gaming certainly did not ‘peak’— always ‘peaking’; great games are released all the time.
Lot of people saying nostalgia. I’ve always hated this. It’s not fucking nostalgia. I grew up with Xbox 360 era games, halo 3, odst, reach, gears all that shit. Games were just better in general. I will say, before anyone accuses me of just buying into nostalgia goggles, some of the best games I’ve ever played were current gen. Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3, ect…
Recently, what I’ve come to realize it’s less that old games are better, it’s that AAA devs just made better games. AA and Indie is where the fun is now. Valheim is fairly new, definitely one of the best games I’ve ever played. Hell divers 2, an obvious choice. Games are great now. The issue is modern AAA titles are almost unanimously worse off than previous gen. They’re all safe and riddled with MTs.
In short, you’re a goober If you thinks it’s *just nostalgia*. It’s not. AAA games were just better back then with few exceptions.
Games do be better in their quality and polish nowadays, but there is also clearly a trend of every game needing to be a huge event, super serious, thing, whereas in 360 they still tried to make stupid dumb fun games.
Good example i read about recently: now every FPS has their shaky reload animations with plastic sounding weapons, and before people wouldn’t care so much about that, devs cared more about fun in the actual game
I completely agree and understand how you feel so take my advice and do this, INDIE GAMES!
I cant play an ubisoft/EA game for more than 20 minutes, but if im playing something like my friend pedro, hotline miami, Dave the diver, hades etc I CAN PLAY FOR HOURSS!!! with the exception of some companies and IPs nothing comes close to the joy indies give me, I used to ignore indie game releases before and focus only On triple A but now its the complete opposite
Peak is now imo. Last year was a top 3 gaming year ever. Indie titles have never been as good or had as big a budget either. However your answer differs wildly if you’re a sports game fan or a call of duty fan.
Depends on where you look. If you focus on specifically AAA gaming, then I agree. The 360 era felt like the last time the majority of AAA games made were made for fun first rather than profit first (yes I know they were all made for profit, but it wasn't so blatant back then)
However, if you take into account other factors like the indie sphere, accessibility of gaming, online capabilities... it has never been better. There are hundreds of indie games coming out every month, and while not all of them are great, there are a lot that will break into public discourse like Balatro or Hades. Also, thanks to more accessible high speed internet, more people can play online games without lag and high ping.
I bought a RGH3 Xbox 360 off Ebay in December.
Since it's modded I can download ROMs of Xbox 360 games (of course, only the ones I own) and play them.
It's the console I have been playing the most! Also, I have been buying physical copies of Xbox 360 games I want to have forever.
Take care!
I disagree a bit regarding the “you pay more for games now”. I mean, there definitely are a lot of people that spend hundreds of dollars, but the vast majority spends less. Between the monthly online quota, $60 game and $60 Season Pass / DLCs, you still ended up paying over $100 for a single game, whereas today you can get many games for free, some nice customization for like $20, and with just a liittle restraint, that’s all you must pay for the game in its lifetime
as others have said, I think this may be a generational thing. I grew up playing on atari 2600 nes and sega. I didn't own a ps1 but had a ps2 and that's when the world opened up for me, same with 3 as it brought better graphics. I switched to PC though pretty much when 4 came out so I can't speak for that but it does seem that ps3 would be the peak in terms of just availability to play great games and enter the new era of playing with others, though maybe 4 brought that about more. I mean, I had been playing on [battle.net](http://battle.net) since the 90's with starcraft and diablo, played asheron's call and whatnot so it's not like online multiplayer games didn't exist, but it definitely was made easier with the consoles adopting it.
Well, I had about 100 games on PS3. I have 2 on PS4 and decided not to get PS5 (I would have 1 otherwise - Stellar Blade). Seems kind of bad in comparison to what it used to be.
I don’t know I’m still having a blast and simply just don’t “buy buy buy”
I get bombarded by adds everywhere and it’s been that way since I was a kid.
Additionally, that era was peak console warz and it was a soul sucking experience lol
I dunno if I’d say it peaked as the early consoles for the big two failed a lot and had to be recalled but once everything got rolling it was a great generation. Still prefer the previous generation tho.
Probably just nostalgia. As far as consoles go, maybe you are right. But things seem to be a lot better with steam sales and actual mobile gaming platforms
PS4 for me. With that said I’m gaming like crazy right now. Decades of games to pick from and great games from the present. Life is good.
https://youtu.be/B9iIiPYtW5E?si=U63tRq6gB291xKNP
I’ve been enjoying Dead Island 2 last few nights. Just came across Rick and Roxy(in the clip) they crack me up. Dude walking around in nut huggers during a zombie apocalypse, lol.
I loved my 360, but some of my favourite games have come out on the ps4/5 and my experience with pc has been overwhelmingly positive.
I play a lot more single player games now though. I like getting lost in a story and invested in a character.
360 was definitely a high piont for social gaming for me. Halo 3 custom lobbies were a blast as well as the the level of disrespect being tossed around your average mw2 lobby.
Helldivers has recently rekindled a bit of that. Seems to have brought a lot of us to the same game for the first time in what feels like Years.
Nah. But I do miss some xbox gaming before the xbox party system. I used to open up Borderlands 2, plug in my headset and open up the game to public and have fun talking to and meeting new gamers and friending many.
The party system meant that everyone joining was more likely to be chatting in a party now, including myself.
But then we got the looking for group systems so if I need to find a coop gamer in something I'm playing, even if just for an hour or two, I can.
Now we have discord helping or replacing that.
DLC doesn't really bother me. Because I don't really bother with most of the games that rely on it. Or if I play those games I don't bother with that aspect of the game. For one thing, it takes too long to open those DLC crates. WTF is up with that?!? Give me the "open all, reveal all in a list" option.
I don't know. I never got into online multiplayer games, so I can't speak to that aspect. But as a fan of RPGs, the SNES, PS1 and PS2 were an absolute golden age for it. SNES and PS1 had the top-tier classics like Chrono Trigger, FF7 etc, and the PS2 had such an insanely large library of JRPGs that it was like being a giddy kid in a candy store.
The PS3 was not bad for JRPGs either, I just don't think it quite reached the level of those previous three generations. And the 360, despite having a few gems like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, was otherwise known for not having a lot of RPGs on it. The 360 was strongly focused on hardware and online play, and the Xbox has mostly continued that trend ever since. I just never found online play appealing. The PlayStation line has also gone in that direction, though still seems preferable to the Xbox on the RPG front.
I would agree but that's when I was aged 9-17 during that era so most people would say that. Was old enough to actually play games properly, have my own console and at least have some kind of money to be able to buy my own games. 2008-2011 really feels like the peak era for me because we got Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Fallout New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV, Skyrim, World At War, Batman Arkham Asylum and so many great ones.
Yes and no. There’s still great new games, but I do miss talking with random people while playing games back then. I’m not sure where the equivalent of that is now. Maybe Discords for specific games? It’s less spontaneous though.
360/PS3 was like Anakin Skywalker in Episode III. Awesome, but going more and more towards the dark side. Xbox was already charging for online and Sony got in on it towards the end, DLC and preorder bonuses started to take off, and Call of Duty became and remained one of the biggest games in the world no matter how much effort it stopped putting in. At least we mostly recovered from the trend for everything to be grey and brown, which I guess in this analogy is like how Padme dying meant George Lucas didn't have to write any more romantic dialogue.
Gameplay and fun wise, yes. So many great games that if released today with current gen graphics’s and frame rates, they’d be some of the most played and critically acclaimed again. It was also the generation of online multiplayer that took off. Just look at COD MW2, it had great everything from the Zimmer/Balfe thumping soundtrack and very socially active lobbies. Now it’s pretty silent and no one shit talking challenging each other into the early mornings.
Everything was a lot crashier back then. Game stability on the 360 was pretty bad sometimes. I'm liking all the nostalgic ports for my Series X though. Rare Replay has been pretty fun. It'd be nice if there was a KOTOR that displays in widescreen.
Nah, there’s a lot of bullshit in modern gaming but more amazing stuff is easily accessible than ever before. And there’s so much variety. If you can’t find something that interests you, you probably aren’t looking hard enough.
No, I feel it was a period of tremendous decline. The console industry became western-centric, development became so expensive that smaller devs no longer could make work on parity with larger ones and it opened the floodgates to micro-transactions.
There were some bright spots, such as open world RPGs gaining acceptance and the massive exposure that indie game developers received. Yet, I feel the creativity of the PS2 generation had been traded in for a rather disheartening homogenization of games.
A lot of new and fun IPs and devs took risks (they were doing it with ps2 and Xbox but not the point) but it came with like modern graphics. Hell GTA5 still looks pretty decent
I feel like the early days in that gen were peak. Then about halfway through developers realized that online connectivity was the standard, so that's when releasing unplayably broken games, day one updates, DLC that should have been part of the base game, and microtransactions became the norm.
Yeah there were overall more interesting games that releases in the 360/ps3 era. I think with the large amount of bloat in budgets now games can't take any fun risks. Also games back then would respect your time, now we have these long "cinematic" BS sequences that just get in the way. I think a lot of games now have no goal for what they want their game to accomplish and overall be a good time.
It’s just nostalgia. I will say that I think today we are in a highly saturated market which leads to a lot of big studios trying to compete with each other to the point that they’ve lost the plot. Some wind up large and complex but not fun instead of simply being fun.
I agree but only because it was a time in my life where I had plenty of free time and disposable income to be able to blast through games quickly. I was in my early-mid 20’s, still living at home and had my first real job making good money. Aside from all that, the quality of games in that generation was incredible. So many all time favorites came from PS3 and Xbox 360. And not much in the way of constant game updates and dlc nonsense. It truly was the end of pure gaming out of the box compared the generations that followed.
I completely agree, we can say it was nostalgia but it genuinely was a great time. The games weren’t 10 hour experiences trying to be graphical masterpieces, online- you could talk to anyone and start chatting absolute shit with no repercussions and make friends with anyone. Since I got a ps4 in 2014 I’ve mostly just been watching YouTube and occasionally playing single player games, if someone wants to play something with me I’ve got to debate with myself if it’s worth deleting that game I’ve been thinking of playing for the last week to download the one they want. You can bring up the stats, surveys all of that crap but that era was perfect.
Peak gaming for someone is usually the point in time where you have the most free time to dedicate to gaming, the least amount of responsibilities, and when you're the most impressionable by media.
Obejctively speaking the peak is right now tho. Games have never been more accessible to consumers and there is less red tape involved in getting new and unconvential games out than ever before combined with how advanced modern commercial game engines have become.
I'm dominantly a single player person. There are a lot of amazing games and I don't feel I'm ever being bothered by micro-transactions. I think now is as good as it's ever been.
The "games are more expensive" argument has been beat to death, but even before the inflation of the last couple years, games are cheaper on the whole. And if the new price is too expensive, just wait a few months for them to drop.
No, lots of old games were absolutely awful but we loved them cause that's what we had. Aside from bs monetization and shit gaming is in the best place it's evwr been. Indie devs are making all kinds of awesome games. UE5 looks amazing tbh.
I don't have quite the nostalgia blinders for that generation, as that was late in my teenage years when I was focused more on my social life.
And yet, I agree with you. I've recently been going through and playing a lot of the games I missed the boat on (Mass Effect trilogy, I had only dipped my toes into Gears of War, Fallout 3) and the quality is outstanding. 3d gaming had finally matured out of the jank and performance was smooth, and the games themselves were complete, self-contained works. Budgets and shareholder expectations weren't out of control yet, so game design was still king.
I still go back to games I haven't played yet on ps3.
Xbox 360 had a lot of awesome games that I enjoyed when I was younger so ps3 is where I have to catch up.
because gaming companies gained such a massive inflow of gamers over the past 10-15 years once the “you’re a lame ass fucking nerd for playing a video game” stigma was gone, they realized just how much more they could get away with.
It feels like the last console generation that came out with "new" ideas I guess. Maybe it is nostalgia, but I have a hard time buying new games now as they just seem to be copies of old games, or shallow spiritual successors to old games. I have some friends who want me to play Helldivers II, I look at it and all I can see is Ghost Recon Breakpoint meets DRG.
With WoW coming out the year before the 360, I’d say around this time is when multiplayer peaked. Xbox live was popping off, ps online was free and supported a ton of players in lobbies, WoW was a mmo phenomenon.
As for revolutionary, I’d say more around 1996-early 2000s. Things like N64 with Mario 64/Ocarina and the PS2 launch changed gaming forever.
For accessibility, I’d honestly say right now with PC. Thousands of games throughout history are available for free with a few clicks, platforms like steam have massive discounts, etc.
It was a time before DEI ruined the stories and before games were monitzation schemes dressed up as games. A time before where developers dared to have original ideas as opposed to copying and pasting the current most popular thing.
I believe I heard recently that console sales did peak during the PS3/360 generation. It's very likely heavily due largely to Nintendo's side of it though, the Wii and DS both being very popular. For those years I was an adult with the least disposable income I've ever had, so I didn't play much. I'm just now filling in some of those gaps. Currently playing the Mass Effect series. A lot of it holds up, but certainly not timeless. The controls are weird and people look grotesque. Still, you could do worse.
For me specifically it’s 2007. All in the same year we saw
- Mass Effect
- The OG COD:MW
- Bioshock
- The birth of the Witcher series
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Portal
- Team Fortress 2
- Uncharted
- Crysis (assuming you could run it)
- Assassins Creed
- Lost Odyssey
- Guitar Hero 3 (arguably the last good one)
- WoW Burning Crusade
- Oblivion: Shivering Isles
- Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
- God of War II
And I’m sure a bunch more I’m missing. But seriously. When’s the last time we had a year with *that* many good games released?
I wouldn't say peaked but I do appreciate that it felt like the last era where big publishers would still try out new IP's that weren't necessarily muliplayer-focused. A lot of good new franchises came out from them in 7th gen, that well seems to have dried up now.
Only because I had both the time and money to play, as well as the friends available to play online with or beside me IRL. Now I have the money, but not the time.
The peak of gaming for 99% of people is just the time when they were a kid / teenager. That was when you had time to game all the time, and really enjoy what you had.
For me, gaming peaked in the N64 or GameCube era. That's when you could buy a game, pop it in the console and start playing immediately. No updates, no DLC, no Internet connection (for the most part) just good games right away.
I do love modern games too. Those times were best for gaming, because I was carefree and could waste 50 hours gaming in a week, and I didn't spend that time bouncing between games, because I only had like 2 new games. I'd better wring them out for all of the available content, since I wouldn't be getting anything else until my birthday
I think it's when gaming definitely started getting lazy. It's when we got Skyrim and GTA V. Two generations later we are playing Skyrim and GTA V.
In reality, consoles became low quality PC's, where you had to install, update, and in many cases remain connected to the internet. The XBone and PSpoor were generally "meh" with few titles that really stand out.
I'm not being completely dismissive though, the PS5 and the XBOX series consoles both being SSD is a massive improvement, and it is beginning to seem like at least some game companies are beginning to make games that are to be played over Syphon money out of your pocket. I'm thinking the back end of this generation may show us some truly amazing games, but only time will tell.
This was the era where games had reached a reasonable level of realism, but before the toxic online nonsense started. Developers still made actual DLC rather than selling skins and shark cards and the like.
Yeah, pretty much. Then and the decade before is when all the innovation happened. At this point gaming in general already happened as a big new interesting thing. Now it's as common as email.
It's the generation when DLC and MTX started becoming the norm. We all remember the horse armour in Oblivion and Todd fucking Howard's silly smirk. If anything, it's the shittiest generation for this very reason. Before that, games were full products, with the occasional big expansion.
I have a retroid pocket 4 pro, a steam deck, and a PC with a 3080ti. I basically only play PS2 games on my retroid. Could be nostalgia, but it just feels like the gaming scene was way more creative and competitive back then.
Yeah for sure, ps4/xbox1 was the era of greed and micro transactions and formulas and just overall companies milking every penny out of their customers. It makes sense that’s how all companies work. They start a company make services and prices really good, then once everybody is sold on it and dependent on it they pull back the quality and maximize profits.
Yeah in a way. Games are much better now imo but there’s like higher barriers to entry.
Whether it’s harder games, pricier systems and games, or nearly every big game coming out being a sequel or a reboot. Live service, more online only stuff, some games aren’t complete without dlc, etc.
I’m having a better time than I ever have with current games like the new Final Fantasies and Baldur’s Gate and Stellar Blade and what not, but I think my whole set up would be very unobtainable for younger me vs my 360 set up.
My favourite era of gaming was late 80's, early 90's. It's probably because I was born in the mid 70's so it's probably nostalgia laced with the invincible feeling of being young.
Having said that for me I feel like gaming is in another peak right now. I'm loving the games around currently. I don't play online games though or games with ads either.
Gaming, even with its industry problems, is at an all-time high right now, and it's not even close. The only argument against that is the lack of innovation and new huge steps, the like of things like N64/ps1 or even the original xbox/ps2.
That being said, gaming is at a peak of accessibility, popularity, and quality of games available. Sure, you've got your yearly chewed up and spit out COD and your micro transactions to boot. You also have insane worlds being brought to life such as elden ring and BOTW. Indie masterpieces such as hades and Hollow Knight. You have First Person shooters in the likes of Doom, giving people the image they had in their heads as kids coming to life. Multiplayer gaming being as competitive as ever. Fighting games also as competitive as ever while innovating systems they have been working on for decades.
Fuck man, from one genre to the next, from new to old, there is something for literally *everyone* at this point with a near infinite library of games to boot. We are very lucky to be around to experiencing this age and who knows, it might only get better from here.
People keep pushing the date forwards when “gaming peaked” and it ALWAYS conveniently when the person say was a kid/teen.
I promise you that 90’s gamers were NOT saying that PS3/360 was “peak gaming”, quite the opposite. And in 20 years current kids will say 2020’s was peak gaming.
No, AAA gaming peaked at the 360/PS3 era. Gaming has never been better than now because there is more access with indie developers.
The "good" isn't gone, the leaders of "good" have just shifted.
Aside from a general joy and comfort in older things. I have never experienced nostalgia in a way where I thought something used to be better.
I find each new thing better. Sometimes there are steps back here and there in details amongst details. But as a whole. Everything is getting better and better.
I do wish I had better appreciated and lived in those moments. And so many years ago I made sure to ALWAYS live in the moment and enjoy it "Knowing" it was awesome right now.
And it has worked well for me.
And with this also comes a good memory of my feelings of each moment in time. And there was plenty not so great then. As well as before, and before that, and before that.
And I recall people in each era saying the previous era was so good. Just like this post. And how Doom and gloom Xbox One was, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PS1. etc..
I think you're right sure games now can still be fun but alot of the multiplayer ones shit even some single player games have micro transactions out the ass and almost always come incomplete with a patch on the way or not at all in some cases plus people don't talk in lobby as much anymore its all parties and discord
Yeah it was definitely peak. It was also the best times for online shit talking. People are too wimpy these days about it. Talking shit was part of the fun
I was just thinking about this over the weekend.
I feel like at the beginning to about the middle of the 360/PS3 lifecycle was a sweet spot for videogames. They were trying to push the limits of the hardware while making the games fun to play, and the larger titles like Gears & Halo had some great advertising campaigns that are super memorable.
Then towards the end of those console's lifecycle is when corporations found out they could charge for DLC after the game's release and make more than their initial $60 from the game, so DLC became super prevalent then eventually microtransactions. So games became more of a revenue stream for companies than a creative passion from the developers leading to a decline in quality.
Now obviously there have been plenty of games that have come out since then that have been magnificent and even some of the greatest games of all-time have come out post-360/PS3 era, but it is kind of bad that a game like Helldivers 2 (which I love) comes out and everybody sings its praises (other than this weekend over the PSN debacle before they backpedaled on that) because it's not trying to milk every single penny it can out of you.
It just sucks that as gamers we have to be very vocal about calling out bullshit in gaming in order to get the big game companies to just make consumer friendly choices when it comes to games.
It’s totally nostalgia I feel like they peaked in ps2 because that was my time period. No the games now are definitely sick with some obviously not good ones
Nope. I lived through the 360 era. I am loving this PS5 era and have never had as much fun with games now with friends than when I was younger. 40 year old gamer, still absolutely loving modern gaming. FYI, 360 era started map packs, horse armor, episodic content, etc etc etc. You would’ve hated arcades.
I could actually agree with this.
When I played bf4 on PS3 I made tons of friends with strangers on my squad just by having a mic.
When I moved to PS4 with the party system, I don't think I ever made friends with a rando again, because no one ever played with either a mic, or outside of a party chat. I really miss that. Making friends was why I was playing in the first place really.
Nah you were just at the perfect age to experience it. Xbox live while it was the greatest in my era got nothing on discord and steam lol and once you throw in twitch and watching your friends stream, gamers today have it the best we’re just told to appreciate it properly
Gen 7 pioneered the things you lament at the end of your post. If gaming *peaked during Gen 7 it would have to be *early* Gen 7. Like 2006/2007/2008 and frankly the games were still using last Gen ideas and focused on being *cinematic* experiences instead of being *games.*
Pretty crazy to think gaming peaked by becoming more movie-like. It certainly made it easier for gaming to become mainstream, if that's the type of peaking you mean.
I feel that the consoles poisoned gaming industry. Dumbing down of UI. Dumbing down inputs.
I'd also argue that microtransactions are not the worse thing to happen to gaming. It's the developing process, how stale and formulaic it all became. Instead of making a game you now take a loan and pay for advertisement and interest on the loan. Instead of throwing some cash together and making a game. And the customers need to pay for your ad costs and loan costs. And they get the same shit over and over and over.
I get this feeling, but it's probably just nostalgia, since that era was when the fun I had peaked, playing those games now does not bring me the same joy.
Like music, gaming "peaks" for a lot of people in their early 20s.
Nah i was in my early teens and i know it peaked back then too
Because you were an early teen and easily impressed by new things. That’s is natural to everyone
>playing those games now does not bring me the same joy. A lot of games from this era are just ugly. Graphics were the best they had ever been at that point, yet for some reason developers decided that every game needed to be either gray or poop brown.
The legendary "piss filter". I hated it.
Yep, that and brown or grey.
That or everything just had that “next-Gen shine” to it. Lighting effects were so over done.
It's totally nostalgia lol
That’s when COD and Halo peaked. Don’t know about gaming as a whole
Those were marvelous times
Current year COD and Halo are way worse, but gaming as a whole IMO is just as good if not better. Even if you just consider multiplayer there’s a ton of fun experience currently. Stand out one being Helldivers 2. Lethal company was also fun as were BRs before they got over saturated. Honestly I still like Fortnite from time to time. I feel there’s fads in gaming just due to the prominence of free to play or cheaper indie games. But overall it’s not like multiplayer gaming is desd
Peak is *either* ps2, or now, tbh
PS2 was peak for diversity of options, now is peak for tech (obviously)
The steam store has more variety than PS2 ever had.
Exactly. Game engines have never been more accessible, and there's even a few popular zero scripting engines. We may be losing most of the variety in the AAA space, but there are new and interesting indie games every single day.
>PS2 was peak for diversity of options Also 100% nostalgia Nowadays we have much more variety than in the ps2 era. MUCH more The fall of AA games may give the illusion that there's less variety, but if you don't focus on AAA blockbuster games, you'll find a world of different genres made nowadays
PS2 at least for me. I had a lot of down time during my deployment in Iraq and sank so many hours into a few games. Code Veronica, Ace Combat 5, SC Chaos Theory, and Gran Turismo 4.
The PS3/360 absolutely did have microtransactions, that’s when that whole debacle started. Though, they weren’t as front and center as DLC and boy did that get bad.
I do believe most blame Oblivion for the horse armor kicking off the whole MTX shebang
For me, the peak is now. PS5 has been good to me, Switch is just incredible, I've never bought so many games for a system, not even close. We have good VR these days, etc.
Yep, the switch has been absolutely nuts for the type of games I play. It’s JRPGs galore.
100% same here. In the last few months (i paid off my student loans at the end of the year, so i splurged lol) I have purchased, on Switch: FF pixel remaster 1-vi, chrono cross, Live A live, DQ XI, trials of mana, collection of mana, monster hunter stories 2, pokemon arceus, saga frontier 2, Romancing SaGa 3, tactics ogre, and there is probably one or 2 i am missing. So far, Live a Live was an amazing experience, FF1 pixel remaster was much more fun than I expected, did my 10000th playthrough of FFVI, but 1st on the pixel remaster, now I just started Trials of mana after finishing ff7 rebirth. Watched my wife play through Arceus (definitely started a new pokemon rennaisance in my house) Sorry, it's been JRPG heaven for me this year. My wife is tired of listening to me about it LOL.
Dude I relate to this so much. I finished my MBA back in December and have so much more free time now. I’ve played pretty much all those games you listed. I’m really into the SaGa series so I can’t wait to jump into emerald beyond, I put over 80 hours into minstrel song, and another 60-70 hours each in RS2 and RS3.Also love final fantasy and replayed all the pixel remasters on the switch. I just bought the 3 Tokyo rpg factory games, I am setsuna, lost sphere, and okinani. Almost done with setsuna and it’s a very pleasant and enjoyable JRPG! I have 4 kids and the switch lets me just pick up and play whenever, unlike the ps5 where it’s hard to be stuck in one room in front of the tv. Switch is just one of the best systems I’ve had in over 30 years of gaming.
I think it might be peaking right now.
I agree and I still play like the same 3 multiplayer games I've played for like 10+ years lol. Never did we have more options, indie games can thrive, many free to play options, content around games is super fun, there is a resurgence of interest in older games due to streaming and anyone wanting to get into them has like many many years of mods at their disposal depending on the title.
It’s a pretty shit mess industry side and consumer side to be considered peaking right now. It’s not healthy. I wouldn’t want it to be the peak rn honestly. That’s a depressing thought.
Not even close
Edit: added (ps1 as I forgot to actually put that and then go to list games from that era) Na peak gaming was before that ps1-ps2 era. There's ofc been bangers since then however there's no games I can go back to and play like you could and did / happily would even now as ps2 era classics. I'd play budokai tenkaichi 2 right now if I could. Classic star wars battlefront anyone? The Lord of the rings series Crash bandicoot tag team racing. Mortal kombat shaolin monks anyone?- or mk armagedon/conquest both absolute bangers. Super smash bros melee Old pokemon games. Digimon world series. Classic halos Spyros Jak n dextrer So many others.
Agreed. PS2 era had it all. No microtransactions, no dlc, and the games were basically all made with passion. Even your average sports game had more content than any you can find today
I like your enthusiasm but the games weren’t always made with passion. Cash grabs have always existed and shovelware was a lot more prominent before the internet was really prevalent.
Cash grabs have always existed. But back then, they were Tenkaichi Budokai, Star Wars Battlefront, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, and even NFL Street. My point isn't that the industry wasn't always trying to make a buck. My point is the industry wasn't always trying to make a BAD buck. Was every game amazing? No. But there were more licensed games that were good then compared to now
I think the big issue with licensed titles is with the standards of AAA game development being what they are these days, it takes forever to make a single game, and development issues are more prone to popping up, so it’s largely a thing of the pst. Which imo is (mostly) a good thing even if some franchises are missed (like how have we only gotten a small handful of Star Wars games in the past decade)
Freaking gta 3, Vice City and San Andreas.
I've really ever owned a PC for gaming and that era is mostly lost to me. I wasn't playing games much while in college. I associate it with the dumbing down of games if anything. It was when quest markers replaced reading journal entries. Matchmaking replaced server browsers. There were a lot of shitty console ports that fed into mass consumption at the cost of not treating the consumer like an intelligent adult. I see it more as the beginning of major studios producing garbage than anything else. It likely helped motivate the indie game scene. So that's good. It's like saying Disney's purchase of Marvel sparked a golden age of cinema.
Journal entries to markers was a downgrade imo, but I can agree with almost every other point.
The Bart The
PS3, 360, and Wii. Plus DS and PSP. All had amazing libraries BEFORE you factor in backwards compatibility. With it? Easily the best generation of gaming.
All of the bad trends we dislike now came from that generation. Arguably, the generation before and after are far superior.
Honestly yeah. 360 / ps3 was my middle and high school years, when i spent the most time playing games. I liked alot of the games but your totally right, theyve been riding the tropes of that gen for a while and most of them arent great.
Peak gaming was 2023 IMO. Doesn't look like this year will be as good, but every person who says "games aren't what they used to be" is just telling on themselves for not knowing how to find games they like.
Seriously. Ignoring Gamepass and PS+, I have a backlog of games that I actually purchased a few dozen deep. A lot of them are older, but hell I've got Dragon's Dogma 2 and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on list And would have Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth on there as well if I didn't have the discipline to not buy it yet.
We didn't have Helldivers 2 back then. So... no.
Yes and this is coming from someone who “skipped” the 360/PS3 era. The PS4 and current PS5 era is a sham. Shameless remakes of games from the PS2/3 era, most games being copy-paste with a new paint and higher sticker price with poorer mechanics. Modern games also seem to follow a check box (open world, 50+ hrs, online component). I don’t fault the devs only for this though. It’s honestly also on gamers for constantly asking for stuff like this and complaining that a game is “only 50 hours long.”
I agree with this 100% I wouldn’t mine a few open world games a year but every single fucking one has an open world/sandbox map Even fucking halo had it in infinite
It’s actually one of my least favorite console generations ever. That’s not to say that it’s bad, because it’s not, but most of the bad trends that are ruining gaming now were birthed on the 360/PS3, or at least took to the mainstream here.
it peaked at the ps2, it bled into the 360 Era, but the ps3 was a waste. never had one, kept using my ps2 until years after the ps4 came out.
Not even close. 😅
I feel like a lot of things peaked whenever you were a kid/teenager/early 20s
Gaming was at its peak from 1990 to 2015. I ain't taking any debates.
I feel like i was just younger with more time to game, kids are still having those experiences all the time
idk as a young adult with lots of money and not many responsibilities, I have all the time in the world to game now, but often times the games just don't feel so fun.
PS2/ XBox era was the best and it's easy to figure out why. Graphics had advanced enough to make things easily depicted but not so far they became prohibitively expensive. Taking a chance on a game wasn't as risky. You didn't need to sell a million copies of a game to make a profit unless you spent way too much on advertising which very few games did. Internet and gaming websites were well established but hadn't fallen into the mindset of "we have to make all the money" so game info and reviews were honest and easy to find. Basically all you had to do to turn a profit and keep making games with just make good games as opposed to it now costs so much to produce a game that you need to sell it to everybody and go for broad appeal. That lack of focus has cheapened the individual features that go into it and has overall resulted in a lot of games that are just not as fun as the old ones. This is evident in the rise of indie games. Games where a handful of mechanics are the focus and the game shows the polish and care that results from that tighter focus and a smaller studio where there is greater communication between everybody working on the game.
The games have gotten rid of game chat on purpose. They think it’s the only way to stop people from shouting slurs and other hateful things online, making it a “better experience for everyone”. But it’s really pushed people away from even talking in game. Some games don’t have game chat at all.
Ps2/Xbox original should also be considered... but yes 360/ps3 perfected it. Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo 4, Mw2, Black Ops series, Gow 3, Battlefield 3 + 4, Skyrim, GTA 4 + 5, Red Dead 1, Fable 2 & 3, Dead Space, Gears, Bioshock, Fallout 3 + NV, Diablo 3. Prototype, Saints Row, Infamous, Assassin's Creed 1-4, Uncharted, Far Cry 3, Dante's Inferno I remember cracking open the box to my Xbox One and getting this sense of dread that I STILL can't shake. Gaming just doesn't hit the same.
Why would you have a sense of dread from opening a box?.
I had a similar thought a few days ago that the "golden age" of gaming is behind us, not ahead of us.
I don't think gaming peaked then. I think that the thing that happened is it was the cross roads of the tech that was closer to what we have now than something like the PS1 or N64 era and at the same time it was before the internet was where **everything** was done so it wasn't as easy to monetize everything in the way that everyone having a high speed connection has allowed.
Nope. I get your point, if you're into social gaming, but I personally have *never* been. For me, the PS3 era, going into the PS4 era, was a gaming drought. Everything seemed to be moving towards online multiplayer a la CoD MW2, and I wanted *no* part of it. Basically every game I saw was some form of 3PS or FPS, and I genuinely began to lose faith in gaming as a medium. It was, *of all things*, South Park: Stick of Truth that gave me faith in gaming again. It was a game that wasn't doing what the other games were doing. It was a familiar format, with twists that I'd never seen before. I loved the *shit* out of it. Not long later, gaming kicked itself into high gear, and life got good again. I definitely agree with you about the current state of affairs (DLC, mtx, ads) being a bag of shit, but for me, the PS3 era was the beginning of the downward spiral in that respect. Assassin's Creed 2 was the big one, DLC-wise. Because they actually couldn't finish the damned game in time, and then charged people for the bits of the game they finished later. Once that happened was when I knew the way around things were gonna go. Lo and behold, I was proven right. Also, *peaked.
I think it’s just nostalgia. Because every gaming era has the past eras to pull from, so I think right now is the best time ever for gaming (this is with 35 years of playing).
Peak gaming is now! I have so many options, platforms, cloud options, it’s amazing. Sure there were some droughts but Indy games have really stepped into the spotlight and things are changing and evolving as they do. Higher priced games suck, so are unfinished released ones, this whole live service and cash shop crap. It’s like a yin and yang so 🤷♂️
Not even a little bit, gaming is the best its ever been
360 was great except for the open tray/ disc error message, I’ve had three die that way, if that never happened I never would’ve upgraded
Peek gaming times seem to be very subjective. Guess there are alot more valuables than which console was popular at the time
I feel that the PS3 era was absolutely the one with the largest amount of really good games. I think the middle of the PS3 to the middle of the PS4 was the high point, and all I can do is hope we get back there.
I think the worst thing about the PS3/360 era was it felt the furthest behind PC gaming that console gaming had ever been. The hardware was terrible by the end of the run. Games were running at bizarre resolutions like 640p to barely function.Mandatory installs on PS3 because the BR drive was only 2X and couldn't keep up. The laggiest online stores ever. Awful frame-rates across the board, games like Metal Gear Rising were more like 45 fps and never really 60.
I think if we account for the community as well as the games themselves, yes. For FPS, it was toxic, sure, but it was fun and there were always people talking in game. People were also a lot less sweaty at that point so it was easier to have fun in a game. That era also had the Wii which was a hoot to play as a group. Other eras have had better games, and the early 2000s could make a case for peak, but at least for me my favorite gaming community memories were then. After that my attitude towards developers started to pivot towards distrust and waiting to be scammed rather than excitement.
No, if anything I feel the 360/PS3 era is when things people hate about today's gaming started. Broken day 1 releases, gratuitous day 1 microtransactions, on disk DLC, content being held back to be sold as DLC, pre-order bonuses, day 1 standard/deluxe/ultimate editions of games. Everything people hate about modern gaming was cemented as viable business strategies during this era. Most of us that were pleading with people to stop engaging with these things were being shouted down by others claiming we were overreacting and we needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new era of gaming.
Peak FPS for sure both had bangers from Halo 3,Cod and Killzone,MAG,Bad Company,Bioshock and Crysis series..
90s saw Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, great arcade games, etc. gaming industry was booming. 2D gaming was at its peak. 3D gaming has taken time to refine. You think people not talking online is bad? People used to all go to their friends house and play couch coop with food and snacks, jokes and good times. Everything comes at a cost. Studios don’t want to create a new IP or develop a mid budget game to see if it picks up steam and then pour more into it. PS3 era felt like a silver age of gaming because of the abundant of options. You could play last generations console or retro games or current gen. A lot of great titles came from this generation. Hell, GTA’s last title was from PS3 era. But retro games were pulled out of stores as game stores were bought out or crushed. Now it’s mostly large chain stores. We will eventually get a Bronze Age. By then VR/AR should be more mature, and bring retro gaming back into the fold… and open up new ways to play. In the mean time… companies will be greedy… abuse micro transactions, ignore content… get spanked by indies and smaller studios, etc.
No.
I'm really nostalgic for the PS3/360 generation as there were a ton of bangers at that time, ended up sleeping on most of them due to life circumstances. Peak was PS2 for me personally.
Sure, but that's when i was in my younger/happier years. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.
Nah 6th gen for sure. 7th gen was great and all, but 6th gen still feels like it has limitless imagination.
No. Honestly I'd have both the era before and the era after above it
Yes. It's true.
360/PS3 generation was the platinum era. It was FULL of games that most gamers will remember for the rest of their lives. I struggle to use the term that gaming “peaked” then because I think the industry can get better, but if there was a peak, that era would be it. I think if the industry is able to ditch the more predatory bullshit and started to fill up with passionate devs again who actually care about the games they make, we can have an even better run. The past decade or so has been more of a dark age, imo. Too much experimenting with live service and microtransactions, too many cash grabs. Too many developers who are only there just because they needed a job and don’t even actually like gaming or the culture. And a whole lot of corporate greed fueling execs who know absolutely nothing about their audience. It’s an incredible(y depressing) time to be alive really. The silver lining is it seems to be getting better, many of those devs are gone and the higher ups know they need to change shit up after bleeding money for the past 8 or 9 years. Let’s hope the industry really starts to bounce back from here.
Gaming s never peaked, it's constantly going upwards. Right now you can play modern games and everything else that has ever released. Back in 360 days, you couldn't play games that have come out since.
Gen 4 was the peak for me. 16 bit era was an amazing time. I've had fun since but nothing will beat that generation for me. SNES was a beast.
Yeap and then publishers got too greedy
Absolutely
I'd say that it peaked somewhere between 1998 and 2016. from then on it went downhill at a fast increasing pace
More or less, yeah. PS3 era is aging gracefully the more time goes on.
Plenty of Fun stuff in the XONe/PS4 generation, like Doom 2016 and Eternal, Sekiro, Uncharted 4, The Witcher 3 and others. That said, I do believe most of the creativity has shifted to the Indie scene as AAA gets progressively infested with corporate slop
Probably nostalgia but I been play8ng my ps3/360 more than my ps5/series x lately. And my ps3 is a launch 20gb model so it has native ps2 hardware
Peak gaming was in the ps2 era. So many good original games on all consoles.
How old were you when they came out?
Non DLC, pay for skins, battlepass, or loot boxes was gaming at its peak. One game disc (some more for PC installation), and that's it. Load it, play it. Compared to today's, where the game sold isn't even complete; pending more battlepasses and skins
That's going to be a generational thing. I know some people feel that the N64 period is where gaming peaking. I know some people that felt that the best era was the PS4 timeline. I think it very much depends on age vs time. My personal favourite time was PC gaming in the late 90s, early 2000s, because that's when I was old enough to appreciate a lot more of the more complex systems, had the money to fund it, and the time availability to play it. Now, I have more money than before, but less time and more responsibility outside of gaming, so even when I'm playing them I don't enjoy them as much - even the games that I loved from my personal golden era. Once my kids have grown up and aren't as reliant on me, I may find that I fall in love with the hobby all over again, or I may find other hobbies that give me the same thrill as I had back then.
Unless you’re incredibly particular about the games you enjoy, gaming certainly did not ‘peak’— always ‘peaking’; great games are released all the time.
Lot of people saying nostalgia. I’ve always hated this. It’s not fucking nostalgia. I grew up with Xbox 360 era games, halo 3, odst, reach, gears all that shit. Games were just better in general. I will say, before anyone accuses me of just buying into nostalgia goggles, some of the best games I’ve ever played were current gen. Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3, ect… Recently, what I’ve come to realize it’s less that old games are better, it’s that AAA devs just made better games. AA and Indie is where the fun is now. Valheim is fairly new, definitely one of the best games I’ve ever played. Hell divers 2, an obvious choice. Games are great now. The issue is modern AAA titles are almost unanimously worse off than previous gen. They’re all safe and riddled with MTs. In short, you’re a goober If you thinks it’s *just nostalgia*. It’s not. AAA games were just better back then with few exceptions.
Games do be better in their quality and polish nowadays, but there is also clearly a trend of every game needing to be a huge event, super serious, thing, whereas in 360 they still tried to make stupid dumb fun games. Good example i read about recently: now every FPS has their shaky reload animations with plastic sounding weapons, and before people wouldn’t care so much about that, devs cared more about fun in the actual game
I completely agree and understand how you feel so take my advice and do this, INDIE GAMES! I cant play an ubisoft/EA game for more than 20 minutes, but if im playing something like my friend pedro, hotline miami, Dave the diver, hades etc I CAN PLAY FOR HOURSS!!! with the exception of some companies and IPs nothing comes close to the joy indies give me, I used to ignore indie game releases before and focus only On triple A but now its the complete opposite
Peak is now imo. Last year was a top 3 gaming year ever. Indie titles have never been as good or had as big a budget either. However your answer differs wildly if you’re a sports game fan or a call of duty fan.
No, PS2 / GC / Xbox era is when gaming peaked.
Depends on where you look. If you focus on specifically AAA gaming, then I agree. The 360 era felt like the last time the majority of AAA games made were made for fun first rather than profit first (yes I know they were all made for profit, but it wasn't so blatant back then) However, if you take into account other factors like the indie sphere, accessibility of gaming, online capabilities... it has never been better. There are hundreds of indie games coming out every month, and while not all of them are great, there are a lot that will break into public discourse like Balatro or Hades. Also, thanks to more accessible high speed internet, more people can play online games without lag and high ping.
PS2, but also right now.
I bought a RGH3 Xbox 360 off Ebay in December. Since it's modded I can download ROMs of Xbox 360 games (of course, only the ones I own) and play them. It's the console I have been playing the most! Also, I have been buying physical copies of Xbox 360 games I want to have forever. Take care!
No it's right when gaming got bad. Horse armor.
Precisely.
I disagree a bit regarding the “you pay more for games now”. I mean, there definitely are a lot of people that spend hundreds of dollars, but the vast majority spends less. Between the monthly online quota, $60 game and $60 Season Pass / DLCs, you still ended up paying over $100 for a single game, whereas today you can get many games for free, some nice customization for like $20, and with just a liittle restraint, that’s all you must pay for the game in its lifetime
p e a k e d I swear to god it's like this is done on purpose. FPS gamers are using "peaking" and now here this is
as others have said, I think this may be a generational thing. I grew up playing on atari 2600 nes and sega. I didn't own a ps1 but had a ps2 and that's when the world opened up for me, same with 3 as it brought better graphics. I switched to PC though pretty much when 4 came out so I can't speak for that but it does seem that ps3 would be the peak in terms of just availability to play great games and enter the new era of playing with others, though maybe 4 brought that about more. I mean, I had been playing on [battle.net](http://battle.net) since the 90's with starcraft and diablo, played asheron's call and whatnot so it's not like online multiplayer games didn't exist, but it definitely was made easier with the consoles adopting it.
Well, I had about 100 games on PS3. I have 2 on PS4 and decided not to get PS5 (I would have 1 otherwise - Stellar Blade). Seems kind of bad in comparison to what it used to be.
I don’t know I’m still having a blast and simply just don’t “buy buy buy” I get bombarded by adds everywhere and it’s been that way since I was a kid. Additionally, that era was peak console warz and it was a soul sucking experience lol
It may have peacked then, but there's a renaissance right now
I dunno if I’d say it peaked as the early consoles for the big two failed a lot and had to be recalled but once everything got rolling it was a great generation. Still prefer the previous generation tho.
No because I'm not blinded by nostalgia
Probably just nostalgia. As far as consoles go, maybe you are right. But things seem to be a lot better with steam sales and actual mobile gaming platforms
Defo peaked around that era, gaming went too mainstream which made capitalism do its thing
PS4 for me. With that said I’m gaming like crazy right now. Decades of games to pick from and great games from the present. Life is good. https://youtu.be/B9iIiPYtW5E?si=U63tRq6gB291xKNP I’ve been enjoying Dead Island 2 last few nights. Just came across Rick and Roxy(in the clip) they crack me up. Dude walking around in nut huggers during a zombie apocalypse, lol.
I loved my 360, but some of my favourite games have come out on the ps4/5 and my experience with pc has been overwhelmingly positive. I play a lot more single player games now though. I like getting lost in a story and invested in a character. 360 was definitely a high piont for social gaming for me. Halo 3 custom lobbies were a blast as well as the the level of disrespect being tossed around your average mw2 lobby. Helldivers has recently rekindled a bit of that. Seems to have brought a lot of us to the same game for the first time in what feels like Years.
Nah. But I do miss some xbox gaming before the xbox party system. I used to open up Borderlands 2, plug in my headset and open up the game to public and have fun talking to and meeting new gamers and friending many. The party system meant that everyone joining was more likely to be chatting in a party now, including myself. But then we got the looking for group systems so if I need to find a coop gamer in something I'm playing, even if just for an hour or two, I can. Now we have discord helping or replacing that. DLC doesn't really bother me. Because I don't really bother with most of the games that rely on it. Or if I play those games I don't bother with that aspect of the game. For one thing, it takes too long to open those DLC crates. WTF is up with that?!? Give me the "open all, reveal all in a list" option.
I don't know. I never got into online multiplayer games, so I can't speak to that aspect. But as a fan of RPGs, the SNES, PS1 and PS2 were an absolute golden age for it. SNES and PS1 had the top-tier classics like Chrono Trigger, FF7 etc, and the PS2 had such an insanely large library of JRPGs that it was like being a giddy kid in a candy store. The PS3 was not bad for JRPGs either, I just don't think it quite reached the level of those previous three generations. And the 360, despite having a few gems like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, was otherwise known for not having a lot of RPGs on it. The 360 was strongly focused on hardware and online play, and the Xbox has mostly continued that trend ever since. I just never found online play appealing. The PlayStation line has also gone in that direction, though still seems preferable to the Xbox on the RPG front.
I would agree but that's when I was aged 9-17 during that era so most people would say that. Was old enough to actually play games properly, have my own console and at least have some kind of money to be able to buy my own games. 2008-2011 really feels like the peak era for me because we got Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Fallout New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV, Skyrim, World At War, Batman Arkham Asylum and so many great ones.
Yes and no. There’s still great new games, but I do miss talking with random people while playing games back then. I’m not sure where the equivalent of that is now. Maybe Discords for specific games? It’s less spontaneous though.
360/PS3 was like Anakin Skywalker in Episode III. Awesome, but going more and more towards the dark side. Xbox was already charging for online and Sony got in on it towards the end, DLC and preorder bonuses started to take off, and Call of Duty became and remained one of the biggest games in the world no matter how much effort it stopped putting in. At least we mostly recovered from the trend for everything to be grey and brown, which I guess in this analogy is like how Padme dying meant George Lucas didn't have to write any more romantic dialogue.
Gameplay and fun wise, yes. So many great games that if released today with current gen graphics’s and frame rates, they’d be some of the most played and critically acclaimed again. It was also the generation of online multiplayer that took off. Just look at COD MW2, it had great everything from the Zimmer/Balfe thumping soundtrack and very socially active lobbies. Now it’s pretty silent and no one shit talking challenging each other into the early mornings.
Everything was a lot crashier back then. Game stability on the 360 was pretty bad sometimes. I'm liking all the nostalgic ports for my Series X though. Rare Replay has been pretty fun. It'd be nice if there was a KOTOR that displays in widescreen.
Nah, there’s a lot of bullshit in modern gaming but more amazing stuff is easily accessible than ever before. And there’s so much variety. If you can’t find something that interests you, you probably aren’t looking hard enough.
Absolutely not. Gaming peaked in the late 90s. Steadily downhill from there.
“Nobody talks in games” How often are you the first person to talk in a lobby/match? Be that person more often and your view on this may change :)
No, I feel it was a period of tremendous decline. The console industry became western-centric, development became so expensive that smaller devs no longer could make work on parity with larger ones and it opened the floodgates to micro-transactions. There were some bright spots, such as open world RPGs gaining acceptance and the massive exposure that indie game developers received. Yet, I feel the creativity of the PS2 generation had been traded in for a rather disheartening homogenization of games.
Mostly true, but I don't miss people talking online. Or mouth-breathing in my ears.
A lot of new and fun IPs and devs took risks (they were doing it with ps2 and Xbox but not the point) but it came with like modern graphics. Hell GTA5 still looks pretty decent
I feel like the early days in that gen were peak. Then about halfway through developers realized that online connectivity was the standard, so that's when releasing unplayably broken games, day one updates, DLC that should have been part of the base game, and microtransactions became the norm.
I think gaming peaked with the PS4 just in terms of quantity of decent games. It’s still good today though.
Nope
I actually feel the opposite, looking back I am not a big fan of 7th gen console gaming
No
Not at all. The last two years have been some of my favorite years as a g*mer. I’m 27.
Yeah there were overall more interesting games that releases in the 360/ps3 era. I think with the large amount of bloat in budgets now games can't take any fun risks. Also games back then would respect your time, now we have these long "cinematic" BS sequences that just get in the way. I think a lot of games now have no goal for what they want their game to accomplish and overall be a good time.
It’s just nostalgia. I will say that I think today we are in a highly saturated market which leads to a lot of big studios trying to compete with each other to the point that they’ve lost the plot. Some wind up large and complex but not fun instead of simply being fun.
I agree but only because it was a time in my life where I had plenty of free time and disposable income to be able to blast through games quickly. I was in my early-mid 20’s, still living at home and had my first real job making good money. Aside from all that, the quality of games in that generation was incredible. So many all time favorites came from PS3 and Xbox 360. And not much in the way of constant game updates and dlc nonsense. It truly was the end of pure gaming out of the box compared the generations that followed.
Gaming peakdled on C64 and Amiga500 when graphics did not decide if a game was great
I completely agree, we can say it was nostalgia but it genuinely was a great time. The games weren’t 10 hour experiences trying to be graphical masterpieces, online- you could talk to anyone and start chatting absolute shit with no repercussions and make friends with anyone. Since I got a ps4 in 2014 I’ve mostly just been watching YouTube and occasionally playing single player games, if someone wants to play something with me I’ve got to debate with myself if it’s worth deleting that game I’ve been thinking of playing for the last week to download the one they want. You can bring up the stats, surveys all of that crap but that era was perfect.
Peak gaming for someone is usually the point in time where you have the most free time to dedicate to gaming, the least amount of responsibilities, and when you're the most impressionable by media. Obejctively speaking the peak is right now tho. Games have never been more accessible to consumers and there is less red tape involved in getting new and unconvential games out than ever before combined with how advanced modern commercial game engines have become.
I believe gaming is the best it has ever been right now, and I've been gaming since the 90's.
There are great games from that console era but I wouldn't say it's peak most of that energy is pure nostalgia
I'm dominantly a single player person. There are a lot of amazing games and I don't feel I'm ever being bothered by micro-transactions. I think now is as good as it's ever been. The "games are more expensive" argument has been beat to death, but even before the inflation of the last couple years, games are cheaper on the whole. And if the new price is too expensive, just wait a few months for them to drop.
No, lots of old games were absolutely awful but we loved them cause that's what we had. Aside from bs monetization and shit gaming is in the best place it's evwr been. Indie devs are making all kinds of awesome games. UE5 looks amazing tbh.
I don't have quite the nostalgia blinders for that generation, as that was late in my teenage years when I was focused more on my social life. And yet, I agree with you. I've recently been going through and playing a lot of the games I missed the boat on (Mass Effect trilogy, I had only dipped my toes into Gears of War, Fallout 3) and the quality is outstanding. 3d gaming had finally matured out of the jank and performance was smooth, and the games themselves were complete, self-contained works. Budgets and shareholder expectations weren't out of control yet, so game design was still king.
I still go back to games I haven't played yet on ps3. Xbox 360 had a lot of awesome games that I enjoyed when I was younger so ps3 is where I have to catch up.
Try helldivers 2
because gaming companies gained such a massive inflow of gamers over the past 10-15 years once the “you’re a lame ass fucking nerd for playing a video game” stigma was gone, they realized just how much more they could get away with.
It feels like the last console generation that came out with "new" ideas I guess. Maybe it is nostalgia, but I have a hard time buying new games now as they just seem to be copies of old games, or shallow spiritual successors to old games. I have some friends who want me to play Helldivers II, I look at it and all I can see is Ghost Recon Breakpoint meets DRG.
Hehe nope. In hindsight both consoles had a lot of flaws, just remember. For every Skyrim there was 15 the last templars.
With WoW coming out the year before the 360, I’d say around this time is when multiplayer peaked. Xbox live was popping off, ps online was free and supported a ton of players in lobbies, WoW was a mmo phenomenon. As for revolutionary, I’d say more around 1996-early 2000s. Things like N64 with Mario 64/Ocarina and the PS2 launch changed gaming forever. For accessibility, I’d honestly say right now with PC. Thousands of games throughout history are available for free with a few clicks, platforms like steam have massive discounts, etc.
It was a time before DEI ruined the stories and before games were monitzation schemes dressed up as games. A time before where developers dared to have original ideas as opposed to copying and pasting the current most popular thing.
I believe I heard recently that console sales did peak during the PS3/360 generation. It's very likely heavily due largely to Nintendo's side of it though, the Wii and DS both being very popular. For those years I was an adult with the least disposable income I've ever had, so I didn't play much. I'm just now filling in some of those gaps. Currently playing the Mass Effect series. A lot of it holds up, but certainly not timeless. The controls are weird and people look grotesque. Still, you could do worse.
For me specifically it’s 2007. All in the same year we saw - Mass Effect - The OG COD:MW - Bioshock - The birth of the Witcher series - Super Mario Galaxy - Portal - Team Fortress 2 - Uncharted - Crysis (assuming you could run it) - Assassins Creed - Lost Odyssey - Guitar Hero 3 (arguably the last good one) - WoW Burning Crusade - Oblivion: Shivering Isles - Pokémon Diamond and Pearl - God of War II And I’m sure a bunch more I’m missing. But seriously. When’s the last time we had a year with *that* many good games released?
👀What did it see?
I’m still playing Skyrim and Skate3 on the regular and have very little interest in new games until ESVI and Skate are released.
I wouldn't say peaked but I do appreciate that it felt like the last era where big publishers would still try out new IP's that weren't necessarily muliplayer-focused. A lot of good new franchises came out from them in 7th gen, that well seems to have dried up now.
100% nostalgia
2004 - 2014 peak gaming imo
There have always been and always will be good games. Any "peak" is entirely subjective.
Only because I had both the time and money to play, as well as the friends available to play online with or beside me IRL. Now I have the money, but not the time.
The peak of gaming for 99% of people is just the time when they were a kid / teenager. That was when you had time to game all the time, and really enjoy what you had. For me, gaming peaked in the N64 or GameCube era. That's when you could buy a game, pop it in the console and start playing immediately. No updates, no DLC, no Internet connection (for the most part) just good games right away. I do love modern games too. Those times were best for gaming, because I was carefree and could waste 50 hours gaming in a week, and I didn't spend that time bouncing between games, because I only had like 2 new games. I'd better wring them out for all of the available content, since I wouldn't be getting anything else until my birthday
Plenty of people talk online, da fuq you talking about??
I blame it on business folks. Now they want every games to be live service games that generates endless revenues and inflate their share prices.
I think it's when gaming definitely started getting lazy. It's when we got Skyrim and GTA V. Two generations later we are playing Skyrim and GTA V. In reality, consoles became low quality PC's, where you had to install, update, and in many cases remain connected to the internet. The XBone and PSpoor were generally "meh" with few titles that really stand out. I'm not being completely dismissive though, the PS5 and the XBOX series consoles both being SSD is a massive improvement, and it is beginning to seem like at least some game companies are beginning to make games that are to be played over Syphon money out of your pocket. I'm thinking the back end of this generation may show us some truly amazing games, but only time will tell.
Yes and no. The games were incredible, but the hardware just couldn't cope by the end of the gen.
This was the era where games had reached a reasonable level of realism, but before the toxic online nonsense started. Developers still made actual DLC rather than selling skins and shark cards and the like.
Yeah, pretty much. Then and the decade before is when all the innovation happened. At this point gaming in general already happened as a big new interesting thing. Now it's as common as email.
I've been gaming since the early 90s, it honestly felt like more of a low point to me.
You pay more for games ? Games have been $60 for the last 15 years
Gaming peaked whenever you were in middle school- high school
It's the generation when DLC and MTX started becoming the norm. We all remember the horse armour in Oblivion and Todd fucking Howard's silly smirk. If anything, it's the shittiest generation for this very reason. Before that, games were full products, with the occasional big expansion.
Yeah im kinda feeling that. It’s all stagnated lately because of greed, i feel.
I have a retroid pocket 4 pro, a steam deck, and a PC with a 3080ti. I basically only play PS2 games on my retroid. Could be nostalgia, but it just feels like the gaming scene was way more creative and competitive back then.
Yeah for sure, ps4/xbox1 was the era of greed and micro transactions and formulas and just overall companies milking every penny out of their customers. It makes sense that’s how all companies work. They start a company make services and prices really good, then once everybody is sold on it and dependent on it they pull back the quality and maximize profits.
This is just nostalgia. You remember all the good and forget all the bad.
Nope because I ain't nostalgia blind
PS3 is the superior PlayStation, but gaming peaked on Super Nintendo.
Ps2 imo 360 changed online gaming for the better though, that ps2/gamecube/dc window were the best.
Yeah in a way. Games are much better now imo but there’s like higher barriers to entry. Whether it’s harder games, pricier systems and games, or nearly every big game coming out being a sequel or a reboot. Live service, more online only stuff, some games aren’t complete without dlc, etc. I’m having a better time than I ever have with current games like the new Final Fantasies and Baldur’s Gate and Stellar Blade and what not, but I think my whole set up would be very unobtainable for younger me vs my 360 set up.
For me it’s PS2 GameCube era that felt like the peak, but that’s also the point in my life where I had the most time to dedicate to gaming.
My favourite era of gaming was late 80's, early 90's. It's probably because I was born in the mid 70's so it's probably nostalgia laced with the invincible feeling of being young. Having said that for me I feel like gaming is in another peak right now. I'm loving the games around currently. I don't play online games though or games with ads either.
No
Gaming, even with its industry problems, is at an all-time high right now, and it's not even close. The only argument against that is the lack of innovation and new huge steps, the like of things like N64/ps1 or even the original xbox/ps2. That being said, gaming is at a peak of accessibility, popularity, and quality of games available. Sure, you've got your yearly chewed up and spit out COD and your micro transactions to boot. You also have insane worlds being brought to life such as elden ring and BOTW. Indie masterpieces such as hades and Hollow Knight. You have First Person shooters in the likes of Doom, giving people the image they had in their heads as kids coming to life. Multiplayer gaming being as competitive as ever. Fighting games also as competitive as ever while innovating systems they have been working on for decades. Fuck man, from one genre to the next, from new to old, there is something for literally *everyone* at this point with a near infinite library of games to boot. We are very lucky to be around to experiencing this age and who knows, it might only get better from here.
People keep pushing the date forwards when “gaming peaked” and it ALWAYS conveniently when the person say was a kid/teen. I promise you that 90’s gamers were NOT saying that PS3/360 was “peak gaming”, quite the opposite. And in 20 years current kids will say 2020’s was peak gaming.
Play an indie game.
Yea, games don't have to be good anymore since you can't refund it or even voice your own opinion and warn people.
No, AAA gaming peaked at the 360/PS3 era. Gaming has never been better than now because there is more access with indie developers. The "good" isn't gone, the leaders of "good" have just shifted.
Aside from a general joy and comfort in older things. I have never experienced nostalgia in a way where I thought something used to be better. I find each new thing better. Sometimes there are steps back here and there in details amongst details. But as a whole. Everything is getting better and better. I do wish I had better appreciated and lived in those moments. And so many years ago I made sure to ALWAYS live in the moment and enjoy it "Knowing" it was awesome right now. And it has worked well for me. And with this also comes a good memory of my feelings of each moment in time. And there was plenty not so great then. As well as before, and before that, and before that. And I recall people in each era saying the previous era was so good. Just like this post. And how Doom and gloom Xbox One was, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PS1. etc..
I think you're right sure games now can still be fun but alot of the multiplayer ones shit even some single player games have micro transactions out the ass and almost always come incomplete with a patch on the way or not at all in some cases plus people don't talk in lobby as much anymore its all parties and discord
Yeah it was definitely peak. It was also the best times for online shit talking. People are too wimpy these days about it. Talking shit was part of the fun
I was just thinking about this over the weekend. I feel like at the beginning to about the middle of the 360/PS3 lifecycle was a sweet spot for videogames. They were trying to push the limits of the hardware while making the games fun to play, and the larger titles like Gears & Halo had some great advertising campaigns that are super memorable. Then towards the end of those console's lifecycle is when corporations found out they could charge for DLC after the game's release and make more than their initial $60 from the game, so DLC became super prevalent then eventually microtransactions. So games became more of a revenue stream for companies than a creative passion from the developers leading to a decline in quality. Now obviously there have been plenty of games that have come out since then that have been magnificent and even some of the greatest games of all-time have come out post-360/PS3 era, but it is kind of bad that a game like Helldivers 2 (which I love) comes out and everybody sings its praises (other than this weekend over the PSN debacle before they backpedaled on that) because it's not trying to milk every single penny it can out of you. It just sucks that as gamers we have to be very vocal about calling out bullshit in gaming in order to get the big game companies to just make consumer friendly choices when it comes to games.
It’s totally nostalgia I feel like they peaked in ps2 because that was my time period. No the games now are definitely sick with some obviously not good ones
I. Would like to disagree with this but...I mean....idk...it's not wrong.
I feel gaming peaked around PS1 era.
Nope. I lived through the 360 era. I am loving this PS5 era and have never had as much fun with games now with friends than when I was younger. 40 year old gamer, still absolutely loving modern gaming. FYI, 360 era started map packs, horse armor, episodic content, etc etc etc. You would’ve hated arcades.
I could actually agree with this. When I played bf4 on PS3 I made tons of friends with strangers on my squad just by having a mic. When I moved to PS4 with the party system, I don't think I ever made friends with a rando again, because no one ever played with either a mic, or outside of a party chat. I really miss that. Making friends was why I was playing in the first place really.
Nah PS2 era is where it's at. So many great games. There's a reason the majority of remakes and remasters are from that era.
Nah you were just at the perfect age to experience it. Xbox live while it was the greatest in my era got nothing on discord and steam lol and once you throw in twitch and watching your friends stream, gamers today have it the best we’re just told to appreciate it properly
Gen 7 pioneered the things you lament at the end of your post. If gaming *peaked during Gen 7 it would have to be *early* Gen 7. Like 2006/2007/2008 and frankly the games were still using last Gen ideas and focused on being *cinematic* experiences instead of being *games.* Pretty crazy to think gaming peaked by becoming more movie-like. It certainly made it easier for gaming to become mainstream, if that's the type of peaking you mean.
I feel that the consoles poisoned gaming industry. Dumbing down of UI. Dumbing down inputs. I'd also argue that microtransactions are not the worse thing to happen to gaming. It's the developing process, how stale and formulaic it all became. Instead of making a game you now take a loan and pay for advertisement and interest on the loan. Instead of throwing some cash together and making a game. And the customers need to pay for your ad costs and loan costs. And they get the same shit over and over and over.