Apex Legends Is Pulling in Insane Revenue

As I've said live service games are the future it's hard to see developers spending hundreds of millions of pounds on single player story games when you can make a game for half the price & double the revenue. Games like red dead & last of us will soon feel like a distant memory.

@Ryany I think there’s room for both. For every great live service game, there are a hundred sh*te ones. Remember when the so called experts said mobile gaming would be the end of consoles lol

@Ryany In that case I'd consider myself to have lived through the golden years of gaming. Everything nowadays (not just games) seems to be leaning toward short attention spans and more of a distraction than fulfilling escapism. I've enjoyed a few live service games to be fair but it would be a shame to do away with all the other wonderful genres and types of games.

@BritneyfR_ee we will see both just alot less single player games. Nothing like we saw on ps4.

Really puts things into perspective, with gaming subscriptions, ads in free to play games, NFT's, Microsoft buying everyone, all streaming future on the horizon, live service games taking over everything, battle passes everywhere I look.

Man, gaming is going downhill fast and the quality of games in the next 10-15 years is going to deteriorate fast, everyone putting out quick crap cash grabs just for filler for their subscription services and MTX riddle games.

Looks like il need to find a new hobby by then.

In terms of live service though, I think we all know who to blame.... Fortnite

Ever since they were bringing in billions every month, every Studio under the sun wants to release a multiplayer game riddled with battle passes and MTX

@UltimateOtaku91 Fortnite definitely isn't the one to blame for this. There was tons of live service games before "Fortnite". As the "Fortnite" we got was a last ditch effort to save a failed ip so Epic jumped on BR live service train that had already left the station.

@TJ81
I was reading the other week that long intros in music are now a thing of the past. The hook has to be in the first 10 seconds for the Spotify generation, who will 'swipe left' if they don't like it within that time.
Short attention spans being catered for as you mentioned too.

Love the game, but the monetisation sucks big time.

It's all based on making maximum profit off of Whales (the 1% of players that will spend $1000's because of addiction) and having limited time FOMO items in the store.

@Futureshark

To be fair, a developer from the original Halo Combat Evolved said the exact same thing.

He talked about the “30 second window.” You have to get the gamer invested in the gameplay, story, or setting within 30 seconds. It’s better if it’s all three, but two hits will be fine. But the key is that the game needs the player invested.

After that initial window, you need to keep the player engaged in 30 second intervals throughout the game.

That talk was from 20 years ago.

@UltimateOtaku91

Thing is that Fortnite generally does GAAS the right way. It’s nowhere near as predatory as games like Apex or Destiny 2 with your money.

@Ryany I really hope not. That's all I want to play

@BritneyfR_ee HA! mobile gaming is the worst. I have no games on my cellphone

@OrtadragoonX yeah, plus with Fortnite, because it’s so popular, you know that whatever money you do spend In the store isn’t ‘wasted’. It’s unlikely that the game will be going away any time soon (like most of the other live service games do) so anything you buy on the store is protected for a few more years at least.

I’ve been playing Fortnite pretty much daily for the last 2 years and I can’t think of any other game that has ever kept me interested or invested for as long as Fortnite has. GTA V online is another big one but I’ve never played that.

@Ryany but there were less sp games on PS4 than there were on PS3. Less sp games on PS3 than there were on PS2. Gaming is constantly evolving. We can’t change it - we just have to go with the flow. We can choose to adapt or not - it doesn't really matter. It will keep going on with or without us, in one form or another. Personally I’m not too concerned about it at all right now.

Yea, but the point yall are missing is for every Apex Legends theirs ten Babylon's Falls. If you aren't one of the lucky few you lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

Live service games will not be the death of single player games. They will be the end of built-in multiplayer suites that are sold alongside/attached to single player titles.

@Ryany @BritneyfR_ee That’s why I think subscriptions services like gamepass are a bad idea in the long term. If you can’t get everyone to subscribe for some live service games and a couple big ones, what money do the other games contribute if people will subscribe regardless of whether they’ll play them too.

@UltimateOtaku91
Well said. I feel exactly the same way. That's why I bought a Vita to enjoy retro games and all I play on my PS5 lately is PS4 story-focused games. If things continue the way you described I can see myself only playing retro games.

@Ken_Kaniff no one is missing that. It's been discussed to death.
The point of the article is that it's not just Fortnite that is doing well.

@BritneyfR_ee 100% agree. Just look to Babylon's Fall as a failed live service game that has 1 active player after being out since February

The day all games go live service is the day i hang up my controller. Well, i wont. I will just stop buying future consoles and stick to the older stuff.

@Kidfunkadelic83 Right, with decades worth of single player games on older consoles we'll always have something to play even if we play every waking moment until we die

@Ryany And consoles are dead because of mobile. We're always going to have single-player games. Perhaps the scope will change, or maybe we'll have GTA-like games where a certain group just play through the story and another group just play online.

@Ryany If that will be the case then i probably will stop my hobby and start something else or go retro and probably wont spend a dime on the new generation developers.

love to see it

@Flaming_Kaiser devs make more bank off live service games , but the market for single player is bigger than multiplayer .

so if hypothetically single players were to faze out , it’s the devs fault . there’s always a demand for 1 player games or modes .

@BritneyfR_ee Guildwars i spend 5 years on that game with all expansions. All with singleplayer campaings and pvp chasing titles. And still i hate liveservice games with a passion somehow. 🤪

@nomither6 I agree but you know these developers mostly care about the cash. I dont really care about the best graphics on this age and if i g retro ill probably have years o games to play.

@OrtadragoonX is apex predatory? It's all just cosmetic. Most of the battle pass skins are hideous but the special events ones tend to be the best u can save up your crystals to buy those when they come around. I think destiny and warframe are more predatory as you have to pay for characters and weapons. Not many people have the Hema weapon still and that's been out for years.

Sony are developing 10 live service games so are watering down their own market or are they anticipating only a few will stick so are budgeting for that?
I can't see why people play the same games for so long or are the people who played these games at the start not the same one that are playing them now.

@Enigk some players jump back on when theres a major update.

@UltimateOtaku91 I mean EA recently have shown greater interest in developing single-player games with its revival of franchises such as Skate and Dead Space, but also it's focus on the EA Originals side of things, with them publishing Lost in Random and It Takes Two, one of which won game of the year.

I think what many people forget is that while $5 billion dollars in live service games certainly is nothing to sneeze at, $2 billion for single-player still is a large enough amount to make the business even more profitable and keep investors happy. With game companies starting to realise that there's a market for both, I think we can expect a greater quantity of single-player games from big publishers in the future.

Unfortunately the only way to halt this is for government to step in and ban the manipulation of addiction, gambling mechanics, and FOMO. At that point these social spaces masquerading as games will stop being anywhere near as profitable.

Now imagine if they could make a decent battle pass (they all sucked hard so far)!

@z0d15g0d Fair enough, although that wouldn't draw you in as much as the initial run I assume.

@naruball No its not. The article clearing states why Sony and every other publisher chases the unicorn. Stating that Sony is about to contribute to an already oversaturated market with 10 live service games of their own.

Would be interesting to see the revenue displayed by the region it came from, my personal experience in the UK is that apex legends isn't even on anyone's radar, let alone spending money on the microtransactions.