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The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games | Jason Schreier
(www.bloomberg.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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But you still have to discover someone putting out the equivalent of Master of puppets. The issue isn't that too many games get released, the issue is that too many good games get released. When every year 15 master of puppets comes are you going to buy all 15? Are you even going to be aware of all 15 of them?
People will buy what they're aware of and the issue is that so much good stuff is coming out it's almost impossible to be aware of all the good stuff coming out. That's the issue here, great games falling through the cracks because other great games release around it.
Well, not everything has mass appeal. That's why I gave a metal album as an example. Despite it being a masterpiece, not everyone will listen to it because it's not for everyone. Same with games. Not every game will sell as much as it deserves, but I believe it's more because of it not being appealing enough and not because there's a discoverability issue
The closest I could find about games that are masterpieces that flopped are either old games, which is a different issue or stuff like prey (2017) or Titanfall 2. So pretty big games, just not huge.
But great things have mass appeal outside their niche. Metallica is an excellent example of that because it's not only metalheads who listen to Metallica. Same thing with games.
I think we can agree that soulslikes are not for everyone. Lies of p and Lords of the fallen give a rough estimate what the core audience for soulslike is, which is pretty small. But it didn't stop Elden Ring from being the biggest release of that year, because Elden Ring transcends the genre it's in. Great games will pull people from outside their niche the same way great songs, shows, movies, books and paintings can reach well outside the box people have put them in.
In gaming we've seen the same thing happen with Silksong. Same thing happened with Clair Obscur and the JRPG genre. Same thing happen with BL4 and the looter shooter genre. Hades 2 will most likely pull people outside the roguelite genre. Silent hill f will most likely pull people outside the horror genre. When you have so many great games pulling players from outside their niche and hogging all the limelight, how are you going to discover those other great games that don't get any of the limelight? You won't, which is why this is a discoverability issue.
But which are these undiscovered gems? Feels like we're talking hypotheticals because googling hasn't produced any examples. I feel like it's also very subjective because it's quite easy to really like a game and feel like it's a 10/10 for you even tho for most other people it's just a 6/10 or maybe worse.
I enjoy stuff like caves of qud or whatever but I understand why it's not more popular. It's not for everyone.
Of course you're going to have a hard time finding anything on Google because any game that fails to be a success also drops from search results. But to give an example, Arco. It's got positive reviews from pretty much everyone giving it a review and yet it didn't even get more than 200 concurrent players on Steam. I'm not saying it's some unbelievable gaming experience, but it is a good game. If there's nothing wrong with the game why was it a failure? Am I supposed to believe they made a game for nobody?
Dunno how accurate this is but it says they sold 46k units. Not quite for nobody, is it? Even if everyone got it at 50% off, that's still 322k after steam's cut.
Now factor publishers cut and the cost of development. At 50% they probably didn't even recoup their costs.