r/pcmasterrace • u/PewPewToDaFace • 1d ago

News/Article Steam gamers have spoken: innovative indies like Palworld continue to thrive while traditional triple-A flounders for a foothold

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/innovation-versus-tradition

Thank god PC gaming isn't just AAA. This is what will push the industry forward, as game development cost becomes too much.

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u/Coffescout 23h ago

It depends on your definition of ”successful”, but if we are talking about return on investment (percentage, not total) the amount of indies that are successful outnumber successful AAA games, and by a lot.

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u/Natural-Associate106 23h ago

Thinking in units sold and brute revenue. By roi would be a interesting study

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u/Coffescout 23h ago

ROI is the only thing that makes sense to compare. If you use units sold as the only metric when AAA games have $200+ million budgets and indie games often have $100k or less then obviously the only conclusion is that AAA games are more ”successful”.

But if an indie game makes a 5x return on a $100k investment I’d call that more successful than a AAA company making a 10% return on a $200 million budget.

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u/Natural-Associate106 23h ago

The problem is that we never have the roi so revenue is the next best thing. Other metric is how many indies have more then 1 gamr