Is future of gaming in Gacha?

[Starbrow]

Spoiler: Picture

I used to think that MMO's were the future, considering how succesfull WoW was in keeping millions of players playing same game for 20 years.
But recently when looking at the MMO declining market, i noticed the success of Genshin Impact gacha game brought a storm of copycats sort of like it was with WoW.
And if you look at top picture ( it's too long, so i added spoilers), the earnings pr month are crazy high, and they don't need to make complicated content like in MMO's, it's just Anime girls doing combat.

Will future gaming market move to where the money are right now? Like gacha games? Or it's just a fling that will pass soon.

 

[FPAlpha]

Had to look it up and it sounds similar in principle to microtransactions for mobile games. You can play and earn in game currency but after a while it gets harder and harder, i.e. takes longer so if you want to progress faster it's easier to just buy stuff.

So it's been around for a while now but these just come at the customer from a different angle. It seems to be huge in Asia but so far i have not noticed it much in the West. Then again i don't play mobile games as much so i may miss out on some details. However everyone and their mother knows WoW at least, so brand recognition of gacha like games have a long way to go it seems.

 

[Rincewiend]

Genshin Impact was probably the 1st gacha game that made an impact on the western gaming world...
But you don't have to spend money on the gacha and you can play the game with the stuff you find in game...
You just have to grind a bit more as you said, @FPAlpha

 

[Owain Taggart]

Had to look it up and it sounds similar in principle to microtransactions for mobile games. You can play and earn in game currency but after a while it gets harder and harder, i.e. takes longer so if you want to progress faster it's easier to just buy stuff.

Yeah, seems like another way to make money, in other words. I think this method stems from FTP MMOs, especially Asian and Europeans ones, which were leaning heavily into it. I've seen plenty of MMOs that were basically handholding you towards the next objective. They felt less like games, and more of a way to engineer people to pay for things.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If the future of gaming is gacha it will be a future without me. I have a bucket full of every system I've owned since 1988 and enough games to play the rest of my life. If they never put out another game with a fulfilling story that doesn't bog you down in hundreds of hours of fetch quests and filler with combat that's fun, skill based and strategic, fine, I have plenty of old games that do those things.

But hopefully enough niche publishers will keep publishing complete, story focused, combat strategic games that I can continue to ignore the fetch quest gacha graphics over gameplay crap and still enjoy new games.

 

[carcinoGeneticist]

I wouldn't say it's the future of gaming. It's honestly probably just a fad with games, something that will make money for a little while but get old fast.