What’s with weak AAA sales?

Recently there have been several reports about some AAA titles under performing in what considered to be a traditionally good season for big games. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Watch Dogs 2 are two prime examples, although people seem to forget about Battlefield 1 that got double the audience of Battlefield 4 at launch.

Sergiy Galyonkin
Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog
5 min readNov 28, 2016

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Rob Fahey wrote an interesting article at GamesIndustry.biz about the transition our industry is going through, but his version of the future seems to be focused exclusively on console and maybe PC titles without taking into account all other gaming platforms and niches.

Who is a gamer anyway?

What’s going on, in my opinion, is a further fragmentation of audience where more people now have a better selection of games tailored specifically for their needs. Not everyone, mind you, we still have a long way to go (and a tremendous opportunity to grow). What we see now is a result of the change our industry welcomed first around 15 years ago.

Remember all those articles about how everyone is a gamer now? Well, they finally came true. That’s the good news. What might be surprising is that while everyone is a gamer, not everyone is an 18–35 male born in the US or certain countries of Western Europe.

Another surprise, even those 18–35 aren’t a homogeneous mass of brodudes that would jump from AAA shooter to AAA shooter blindly buying everything with guns on the cover. The culture of the lowest-common denominator that works well in mass products doesn’t work in the market where there is more than one good game per week.

That’s where Overwatch, League of Legends, Destiny and even indie games come in. 15 years ago your average gamer had a little choice — he could buy the game of the month in a store nearby, or he could play whatever he bought before. The second one not being a valid option because old games were short and designed mostly for a single-player experience.

More options — more players

Now your average gamer is no longer “he” and they have a bigger selection: buy the game of the month or play one of the great online titles released in the past 10 years. They could even buy an indie game! And while the overall indie audience is somewhat small, all those hundreds of good indie games add up to a sizable number of people not playing AAA of the month.

Don’t forget: as selection grows people tend to prefer products better suited to their taste. Some (me included) used to buy Call of Duty every year because it was the only way to satisfy your “shooting itch”. Now I can shoot virtual people into the face without following a B-movie story about glorious adventures of foreign military forces. I mean, some people might like Call of Duty for its story, but those who don’t are playing Overwatch (or Paladins, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) now.

Some people used to play console or PC games at home or in computer clubs because they had no option of doing it somewhere else. You’ve heard about League of Legends and how it’s the most popular game in the world. But what you probably haven’t heard about is King of Glory, Tencent’s mobile MOBA that’s already bigger than League of Legends in China.

While one could argue that KoG is a complete LoL rip-off (it’s not), it fits the needs of a pretty sizable group of people that would like to play a MOBA game but don’t want to do it at home or at a PC cafe. The might not have a decent PC, or their apartment might be too small or crowded or they like to travel — whatever. A lot of them are new players, but some of them played LoL or Dota 2 before and now they don’t.

More players — fewer gamers

Yes, thanks to all those changes in the gaming industry we see more players — people enjoying mobile time-killers, indie titles, competitive online games. But while inviting the new audience to try our beloved hobby, those games also detract some of the existing “core” players from buying AAA titles. Because now they have games that are better suited to their tastes.

It’s not like the gaming industry is unique in facing this situation. You might not remember it, but there was a time where people read one of two major newspapers sold in a kiosk nearby instead of enjoying a diversity of (often fake) news sources. And well before that there used to be only a handful types of groceries in any given groceries store without all those “organic salt” and “free range radish” options.

What’s next?

As a person that isn’t an 18–35 US-born man, I consider it to be a good thing. Although I appreciate a good shooter about US military in the future, or a shooter about US hacker, or a shooter about US army at war between Germany, France, and Russia. But I like that if I want to play games, I’m no longer obliged to play games about Americans shooting people. Of course, the fact that gamers like me (and a lot of them are Americans) are no longer buying those titles is leading to decreasing sales of certain AAA games. But on the other hand, Overwatch, King of Glory and World of Tanks are doing pretty well.

Does it mean that your beloved AAA shooters are going away? Not at all. Some of them might not enjoy the sales they did before. But the US is the second biggest gaming market in the world and its 18–35 years old men have sizable disposable income, so gaming companies will continue to make US-centered shooters.

What’s going to happen (and what’s already happening) is those of us who aren’t US-born young men will get new games to call their own. Considering that a lot of those people haven’t played any games before, it’s a good thing for the gaming industry.

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