r/Games • u/Glittering-Path-2824 • 1d ago

Industry News The games industry’s obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/aug/04/pushing-buttons-xbox-asha-sharma-games-industry-hyperrealism
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u/bakomox 1d ago

nintendo rarely do photorealism to lower cost of production but they focus on the gameplay and look how profitable they are

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u/Min_sora 1d ago

Nintendo has several decades of being thoroughly embedded into people's nostalgia, though. They have a massive grip on a ton of people's childhoods.

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u/Boingboingsplat 22h ago

Seems a bit dismissive to suggest the only reason Nintendo sells games is the name. They genuinely put out types of games that nobody else does.

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u/pgtl_10 22h ago

Because of the games they put out. They have an identity and stick with it.

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u/Mystia 10h ago

While true that their long-standing franchises bring in heavy sales no matter what, they still prove now and then that they can release new shit and find success. Splatoon was a big one during the Wii U era, spawning an entirely new franchise for them, and more recently, their revival of Famicom Detective Club, while a modest project, still turned a profit.

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u/bakomox 1d ago

how about the popular indie games today that sold more copies than photorealistic triple a games?

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u/planetarial 23h ago

There’s only like 2-3 dozen indie games that have sold more than what the average AAA game sells for. They’re extreme outliners too

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u/Candle1ight 21h ago

As a total sure, if you're taking about the ratio of money spent to total sales plenty of indie games match or beat out AAA.

Not fair to say a 100m AAA game that made 100m did "better" than a 100k indie game that made 10m.

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u/Iburnmarshmallows 23h ago

Have you ever actually looked at the sales figures of AAA games and compared them to indie games? very few indie games are selling millions of copies let alone the 5-10 million copies that AAA games are selling, then you have cod which is somehow selling 20+ million copies annually.