Octopath Traveler 0 Has You Covered for 100 Hours of JRPG Action

100 hours is the opposite of a selling point for me.

I like what Expedition 33, Sea of Stars & Chained Echoes all did making the main campaign around 25 - 30 hours. If you really wanted to go deep on those games you could stretch it to 50+, but 100+ is just too much. No sale.

@SeaDaVie This is precisely what the industry is banking on these days. Matt Piscatella revealed some interesting stats on player behavior, revealing that most gamers purchase only a few titles every year (on average 2). We know from Sony’s mouth that most of their income comes from microtransactions rather than new software sales as well. The 100+ hour game is a disconnect from us on this site because we were active gamers during a different era and are a different demographic than the majority of consumers as a result.

The powers that be prefer longer games that can add additional content over time because it continues the investment. Square may be able to add more characters, town builder mechanics, etc over time and that works out for them. Let’s not forget the majority of gamers may be purchasing CoD or an EA sports title and one other title. Being 100+ hours is a selling point to that segment of the population. That segment’s likely not even planning on finishing the game if they pick it up either, but will likely play casually instead and would rather have continuous content.

Octopath looks to be aiming to tap into the portion of that market that is nostalgic toward vintage RPGs. I suspect they’ll be successful with this one. There’s a lot of people that fall into this category.

@somnambulance Not sure where you are getting 2 games a quarter last gen from… the attachment rate for PS4 was an average of 9.6 and 13.8 games per console according to all the metrics I’ve seen. That’s lifetime of the console not 8 per year. That number just sounds wrong.

@themightyant Read it in an article back in the Covid era. Sounds like it may have been wrong info. I’ll see if I can dig it up.

If that’s true, crazy to know I typically double the average user’s generational attachment on a yearly basis. Yikes! 😅

@somnambulance I don’t know how many games I buy anymore. I don’t keep track. But it’s a lot less than I used to when I would buy anything on my wish list if it was on sale. 4-5 games a month easy. Nowadays with a huge backlog + Game Pass I buy far less. But my attachment rate for the PS4 was hundreds of games, even before PS+.

But we’re enthusiasts and the minority. At the other end of the scale is the people that buy a sport game once a year + the occasional massive game like GTA, or people whose consoles are gathering dust.

I’d also suspect that the metric isn’t as useful anymore as a lot of popular games are F2P, which won’t count as a sale, but users may spend far more on MTX.

@themightyant Adjusted my previous comment for non-journalistic integrity.

I’ve started purchasing less, but that’s because I tightened my budget back to what it was circa 2019 this year of $100 a month in spend. As of right now, even with the Switch 2 purchase, I’m looking to stay on budget, though it’ll be close! A solid Gamepass line up really helped that this year (and a slow release schedule outside Gamepass for basically the first half of the year).

Most people I know personally that I’d consider enthusiasts (or former enthusiasts) struggled trading top 10 lists last year, as my group typically does. I suspect Octopath 0 is basically designed for my personal friends and they’ll alternate between it and whatever is on the GotY menu and the live service game of choice.

It is sort of crazy that so many people don’t even buy games now, but rather linger in F2P and spend more on those than the cost of an actual game, huh?