Like others said, it's not just Gen-Z.

Funny enough, the main reason I'm spending far less is not the shitty economy, but rather the gaming industry's push to kill physical copies.

I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but if I'm forced to go with a digital copy this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until they're massively discounted.

I hope they make it abnormal to own a $3000 gaming pc in middleschool again.

people are cutting back on purchases period.

has little to do with culture, quality of games, etc. A lot more to do with the fact that inflation has gone fucking insane.

Yeah, I remember being in my 20s too. Too bad they are going through the same shit we did. are we getting another "this is a trauma response" generation?

Games were once created by gamers, who had a clear vision. It since became a soulless business and people notice. I think twice before opening my wallet now. I don't pre-order, don't spend more on digital gimmick editions and wait for reviews, first. Usually I can wait for sales. The industry's problems are homemade. But once in a while I find rare gems like Forgive me Father. And I'm happy with that.

Maybe on bad triple A games

Steam's indie games tho, gen Z are spending a shit ton there

I do buy games from time to time, but 2 of my most played games on Steam are just free games. OpenTTD and vivid/stasis.

even milleneals arnt paying it, like myself. not paying for things like switch, or swsh, because they decided to enshittify the console or games, and gouge prices.

Why buy new when I have a backlog, the PS1/2 catalog emulated, and can wait 6+ months for a sale

Just to add a contrasting perspective I feel like it's been an absolute golden age of gaming for me lately personally:

No Man's Sky still getting relatively fun updates. Cyberpunk 2077 was great on launch and arguably much better now.

The Last Of Us Part 2 on PC is incredible and I'm happy that the port exists so I could experience it. You haven't really played the game till you replay it with both protagonists wearing their Hotline Miami shirts in all the cutscenes. PS4 Spider-Man on PC was prolly the best superhero game I've played.

MSFS2020 opened a whole new world of flight sims to me, especially when it comes to doing fun VOR2VOR navigation with littlenavmap charts printed to PDFs and attached in VR, and Assetto Corsa did the same for racing sims.

Speaking of VR, H3VR is stronger than ever. I have many fond memories of VRChat just a few years back.

Victoria 3 has a really fun thriving modding scene. Indie games like Sea Power, Flight of Nova, Stray, Ultrakill, World of Horror, Nuclear Option, Descenders and Crisis In The Kremlin: The Cold War have been a big timesink for me lately as well as classics of indie like Suzerain and actual art masterpiece DEFCON.

It's also been great to go back and play old classics and PS3 emulation now that PC hardware is much cheaper after the crypto/scalper crises circa 2018.

Also, with Steam play and the steam deck, PC Gaming is easier than ever and just hassle-free.

I never played the popular junk so ig to me all this gacha mtx horse armor crap just doesn't really relate.

I keep buying games on sale but I'm just not playing much of my backlog.

I keep going back to a few strategy games and putting even more hours in. The vast majority of my gaming in the past 2 years has been between 3 games.

Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought - Janky, and I have problems with how HE shells are handled in the main mod I play, keep booting it up. 850 hours played.

Star Wars Empire At War. So many amazing mods.

Wartales - game gets stale after a while but it's good enough that after a bit I go back to it to put even more hours in.

I have so many amazing games that when I do play them I love them, but I keep going back to these strategy games. Oh, and a bunch of time on Need For Speed Heat.

I've been spending a bunch on other games, but I'm just not playing them.

My son stopped playing some of the latest stuff because of the crazy levels of anti cheating intrusionware. Better mental health not playing competitive multiplayer too.

Gen X, can't actually remember the last time I bought a game.

Suikoden 1 & 2 on PS5? I think that was it.

I used to buy games all the time, but I won't pay for a digital release I don't own. Avowed? Digital only. Looked for Expedition 33, couldn't find it on physical.

I'm not leaving gaming, gaming is leaving me.

Then who is? Millions of people are gonna buy the new Call of Duty on release. Who are they?

Its not that we cant afford them necessarily, its that we cant justify them. The main reason you needed to get the new game was because all your friends were getting it. Only nerds and dweebs and losers play single player games. CoD is where its at bro. When everyone moves to the new game you can lose social time with friends or you can spend another £50. Now that everyone is poor, enough people aren't migrating to the newest shiniest edition immediately and people are playing games they already have.

Couple that with desperately working every opportunity you can every hour and adults just don't game together any more.

Tl;dr they are not feeling the social pressure to buy any more.

Live service on console was obvious on the way for every genre back on the 360/PS3 era with FIFA ultimate team and publishers also having that period of time when they were trying to kill used games with that single account multiplayer access code

Then it became super obvious because of PC from the super success of TF2 hats and eventually CSGO skins by like 2015. Trying to compete with WoW was an ocean of dead video game studios. Fortnite perfected live service on consoles and CoD adapted and went just as wild with it

Single player games, my hot take is Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Assassin's Creed killed AAA single player narrative games by succeeding so well to making future games mediocre. Mass Effect had interesting alien species dynamics but never took them with much of any depth. They were Star Wars movies rather than the wild Star Wars EU. Uncharted was a hyper popular Hollywood blockbuster where the emotional highlight being the beginning of Uncharted 4 with Nate and Elena being a cute couple.

Assassin's Creed stories kept going deeper and deeper into name dropping famous figures/mythology that it became parody. Historical clout chasing wrapped together in a nonsense overarching plot that should have had some satisfying ending back in 2012 but instead is effectively spin-offs the series

So Mass Effect hints at interesting politics but plays things safe and gives you none but Hollywood space opera in video games with solid animations and facial animations were fresh in the 360 era. Uncharted was even more extreme in that regards than Mass Effect where there was still novelty in Hollywood mimicry with even better graphics and even more scripted for explosive set pieces. Assassin's Creed and eventually Far Cry and Watch Dogs are bottom feeders. Chase trends, name drop - shotgun approach for trailer fodder. They are sadly the standards of AAA single player narrative

Also live service single player games are competitive. Stories are just as shallow but frequent in release and graphics at a level good enough now. Talking like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves

Buy Indies. Fuck AAA

Aren't we all, fam?

The economy is terrible with both hardware and software becoming more expensive, theres a good selection of free and long-lifetime games (be it live-service or just very long and replayable), and a lot of the newer paid games have become worse.

I'd be significantly more suprised if this wasn't the case.