X86 and the Atari-killing low bar syndrome

https://xboxera.com/2024/12/17/2d-metroidvania-blade-chimera-gets-new-steam-demo/

The news cycle for video games should be relatively dead for a healthy market. It isn't a major release window. The two largest shopping periods for the North American and European markets are over and we are entering the new calendar year. 

Websites need clicks and thus websites will scour for anything remotely engaging. Normally this would mean editorials, lists, predictions. What some sites grasp onto, because of it's plethora of content, is digital releases of indies on X86 platforms. 

This plethora of digital content is because of a low-bar problem. Publishing an indie to Steam is the video game version of publishing a podcast. From Steam it can go to Xbox and PSN and reach a gigantic market.

This is where the quantity of content starts to become a problem instead of a solution. This doesn't mean it is all shovelware. The lovingly-made Shovel Knight is of the quality as many direct-to-digital indie games are. The difference was the much smaller Wii Ware marketplace and the focus from Nintendo. It felt curated. Most of the direct-to-digital indies do not have those luxuries.

It would be like going out to get food and instead of having a well-curated mix of food options in an easily accessible stretch of road, there is a nightmare of city block after city block where the prices range wildly and there are a lot of burger restaurants that make the same burger with different wrappers.

This overabundance problem leads to lower consumer engagement as it becomes more and more work to find content that satisfies the consumer. As the consumer experiences more content, each individual piece of content becomes less impactful. As content starts to feel too similar, the consumer may begin to see the problem as a market problem instead of a product problem. The consumer may then exit the market completely.

We see this most often in cuisine and fashion. The Pumpkin Spice Latte and Ugg boots were a cultural phenomenon for a time, but then they decline in popularity as their vendors struggle with decreased sales. Once something becomes consumed too often by too many people, those products lose their sense of novelty and become bland.

Pair the overabundance with the inconvenience of digital market platforms that are driven by arbitrary tags and easily manipulated indicators (review bombs, easy achievements, etc) and the whole process may alienate consumers to the point of abandoning the market.

The answer to why consumers haven't done so already is most likely that there isn't a great alternative, yet. That is always the problem with a crash. Nobody sees the crash coming with enough time to avoid it. We have a bad habit of referring to our crashes as accidents. We say they are unavoidable or cyclical when these crashes are really the result of negligence.