Patient Gamers

I do buy new games even full price on rare occasion. Regardless of that, there's nothing new games do much better than old games besides graphics and that mattering declined hard once league of legends, counter strike, fortnite, minecraft, roblox, etc became people's childhood to their ongoing adulthood games. I've met people that haven't spent a dime on genshin impact while having played for 5 years

No one is missing out on the best 2025 games if they're playing the best games of 2015. Time is finite and if it's filled with good, what difference does it make if it's new or old. You're not missing out if you're playing the best games of 2000-2014 in 2025.

I follow emulation on Android communities and people love playing the greatest hits of the PS2, Gamecube, DS, 3DS, PSP, Vita and it seems to mostly be teenagers. And now we're getting good PC emulation support and PS3 and X360 support is progressing. Switch on Android emulation is pretty good now. Android, Steam Machine, Steam Deck, Steam Frame, Legion Go, Rog Ally, GPD Win, Ayaneo. Even Switch 2. The relatively low power gaming scene is growing and that bodes well for "classic/retro/oldies" gaming.

It's been 12 years since the PS4 launched. Early PS4 games don't play much different than 2025 games. The classics oldie radio station of games are soon going to be very modern. 2007 Bioshock era games are already very modern and look pretty good too

According to Metacritic, there were only eight 9/10 or better games this year. Or two, if you ignore remakes, remasters, and sequels. Maybe the issue is a drop in quality this year...?

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/game/all/all/current-year/

There were a lot of great fucking indie games released this year, from the comments a bunch of people here have missed some great indie games.

Fourteen percent seems huge though, considering video games have technically been a thing since, what, the 70s or 50s.

The gaming industry for new games being released is brutal. The competition is sky high, and all you need to think about are games like Stardew Valley or Skyrim. There are so many options to choose from, a new young gamer has barely any reason to pay full price for any new games. We are entering the "Please play out game! It's free!" phase, and still no one will spend the time. Time and attention are the most valuable thing.

I kinda gave up buying new stuff because of all the editions bullshit. Complete, Deluxe, Gold, Ultimate, Season Pass, Whatever The Fuck Else Special Director's Cut - yeah, yo ho ho ho your capitalist ass straight to the fire sell.

It doesn't help also that new GPUs and now even disk drives and RAMs are ridiculously expensive.

I am sure the end goal of corpos is to turn this into another subscription service.

I have a gtx 1080. 2025 games are mostly written in unreal 5. Unreal 5 is designed such that not even the highest end gpus can actually run it without framegen. And now also with mandatory raytracing.

Older games still work, and they look and run better for me.

My method of patient gaming is to only buy games that are $10 or less

Just got subnautica, hades 1, disco Elysium, oxygen not included, hollow knight (I’m sad to learn I don’t like platformers that much…), kerbal space program.

Shit, I have so much to play for the next 5 years just there.

Factorio and Hades 2 were my exceptions, got them full price.

at least the legal playtime that is

Haven't played a single game from 2025. I don't even think I saw any that caught my eye tbh.

Oh no i lie - World of goo 2 is definitely on my wishlist. Maybe next year though, I'm still busy with Satisfactory at the moment

Which probably only proves that Steam Machines is going to be more than enough for everyone.

There were games released this year? Neat. I'll probably check them out. Right after another round of Tetris.

Makes sense, most games were released before 2025