I have been gaming for many years. I have/had many nintendo consoles when I was younger:
SNES
Gameboy
Gamecube
N64
Wii
Wii U
Switch.
I loved all of them and I played the hell out of all of them. I also had my share of xbox consoles and sony playstation consoles. I have played many many games across many different genres.
Video Games have always been there for me no matter what happens in my life
However today in 2026 we are at a place in gaming that I never thought I would see. Giant AAA studios are struggling to make money with their block buster games!
Recently The Wolverine game came out on PS5. It cost 305 MILLION DOLLARS! Basically what that means is they need to sell AT LEAST 5 million copies just to break even! Wolverine is a popular character and I am sure they will rack up at least 2 million copies. However gaming has lost it's way and there are 3 main reasons for that.
Over Bloated Budgets
Woke Messaging
Over Saturated Market
Over Bloated Budgets
10 years ago the video game industry surpassed Hollywood in profitability. Today I think the gaming industry is 2-3x bigger. The PROBLEM with that is companies are trying to be like Hollywood. Game developers see themselves as movie stars and think they should be paid accordingly. There are so many over paid people in the industry driving up the cost of production it is ridiculous.
Production budget for 2018 Spider-man was 90 million which is ALOT. Spider-man was a huge open world game with many many things to do. Honestly it is one of the best games I have ever played and you should check it out. Spider-man sold 21million and counting copies.
Spider-man Miles Morales cost 156million for some reason I cannot fathom because it was the exact same city and environment as Spider-man. It was initially supposed to be DLC for 2018 Spider-man.
Spider-man 2 more than TRIPLED in price which is insane. The game has sold much less than 10 million copies.
Then we come to Wolverine which is a very linear gaming experience and in no way should have cost 305million dollars to produce.
There is an old investment saying, "When the tide goes out you see who is swimming naked."
These companies have been spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave and it is finally time to face the numbers.
Woke Messaging
For the last 10 years a parasitic group of activists have attached themselves to the gaming industry. Their only goal is to push their Marxist / communist ideals to the detriment of actually making good games.
What this basically means is that these activists are attempting to social engineer normal gamers into becoming the fabled "modern audience" that they so hope will buy their badly made games.
The good news is that normal people are rejecting the programming and these studios are failing. The problem is that studios don't seem to be learning their lesson.
Over Saturated Market
There were OVER 20000 games released in 2025 alone. We are spoiled for choice for games to play. This is another big reason AAA gaming is collapsing in on itself.
Forget 2025, how many games were released in the last 40 years?!
There has been this interesting phenomenon I have noticed with young people. I am talking ages 12+. I see little girls walking around with FRIENDS t-shirts. I see kids walking around with old rock band t-shirts like Motley Crew and Iron Maiden. Anytime I get a chance I compliment their shirt and ask them if they have watched that show or listen to that band. They always, enthusiastically say YES.
When I was a teenager I was really only interested in the current pop culture because it was so good at the time. 90s and 2000s were a great time to grow up.
It seems younger generations are embracing older shows and media because the current generation just isn't very good. I worked with this 20 year old guy who was into all kinds of video games and movies. He would watch old black and white samurai movies from the 1950s.
It seems that younger generation is not into current thing and that is DANGEROUS for modern companies.
Retro is Back
I don't own a PS5 or XBOX Series X. I saw the writing on the wall and rejected those consoles. Instead I have older consoles, PC, and Android emulation.
My AYN THOR with OLED screen, 512GB storage and 16GB of RAM is a beast!
It plays everything up to Nintendo Switch games. However I have been mainly exploring DS, PSP, and PS2 games. These three systems alone have THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of incredible games that worth playing.
Not to mention the games are all up scaled running @ 4x resolution. They look incredible on the OLED screen. Most even feel like modern games.
My point is I don't need to spend $80 on modern day AAA slop when I have SO. MANY. AMAZING. games to play already. I dropped $500 USD on my THOR which is as much as a Switch 2. I weighed the pros and cons and decided to jump into older games for the next number of years.
Many others are following suit, older and younger gamers are rejecting the woke modern era. It's quite refreshing to see people take a stand and vote with their wallets.
Technology is at a point where ONE GUY with an idea can create something amazing with enough time and effort using computers and AI.
These huge AAA studios should be very worried because soon we will be crowdfunding big block buster games and movies made by fans for fans.
Meanwhile the big studios will languish and wonder what happened.
The future is looking bright fellow gamers!
Until Next Time.
/Ethan Caine