Cliff Notes – Why are fewer kids playing video game consoles?
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High Costs: The rising prices of consoles, such as the PlayStation 5, make them unaffordable for many families, limiting access for younger gamers.
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Lack of Family-Friendly Titles: Major publishers like Sony and Microsoft have shifted focus away from creating games for children, resulting in a scarcity of appealing options for younger audiences.
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Aging Demographics: As the gaming market caters more to adult players, the overall audience is aging, which may deter new, younger gamers from entering the space.
Why are fewer kids playing video game consoles?
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – Sony don’t make many family friendly games (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
The Monday letters page asks when GTA 6 pre-orders will start, as one reader tries to imagine the long-term future of the God Of War franchise.
Adults only
As much as I’d like to hope that publishers are suddenly going to start catering to me, as a middle-aged gamer, I don’t think that’s likely or even a good idea. We need new blood coming in all the time and if it’s not then it won’t be too long before triple-A console games just aren’t cost effective.
I put the problem down to two issues, the first simply being price. I paid for my Mega Drive with collected pocket money and a newspaper round and not only am I not sure either of those things still exist today I’m certain that I would’ve been an old man before I’d been able to afford a PlayStation 5. That £90 price cut only underlines how stupidly expensive these things are, to the point where parents can’t afford them for their kids, let alone kids buy them (or their games) for themselves.
The other issue is that Sony and Microsoft never make games for kids. They gave up in the Xbox 360 era and now even when Sony occasionally does it, with stuff like Astro Bot and Ratchet & Clank it basically hasn’t got an audience anymore. If you’re not playing Nintendo games it’s basically Lego tie-ins or nothing. So no wonder the audience is getting older.
Garrick
Clamshell 4 lyfe
I’m not very interested in a PlayStation 2 mini-console, since I know they’d never be able to license everything they need and a lot of it is easily available anyway, but what I would be interested in is a new model of DS/3DS.
Even if they put these games on the Virtual Console, which they have in the past, they just don’t play right without two screens and a touchscreen. Even the Switch would have to fudge it and that’s only in portable mode, there’s basically no way to play these games nicely on a TV.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
A console that looked like a 3DS and played all it and the DS’s games would be great. Throw in Game Boy support and you’ve got the ultimate Nintendo portable retro console. I’d buy it.
Taylor Moon
STARS power
I’m not sure why everyone is so keen to have Leon in Resident Evil Requiem, considering he’s had two good outings in recent years. Chris was in the last two games too (even though Chris is boring and I don’t care) and Claire was in Resident Evil 2. In my opinion, the only one of the big names that hasn’t had a quality outing recently is Jill.
Resident Evil 3 was easily the worst of the remakes and Jill was the best thing in it, so I think she’s definitely the one that should get the next starring or co-starring role. There’s so much talk of Leon I imagine he’s probably the one in the game, but I think it would be a bit of a shame.
Karl
Paper thin
While most people seem to think that Animal Crossing is going to be Nintendo’s next big game, and they’re probably not wrong, I wonder how long it’ll take them to get round to Paper Mario? Between the remakes of Super Mario RPG and The Thousand-Year Door it seems like they’ve really been wanting to emphasise the series’ role-playing roots lately, which is something fans have been wishing they’d do for years now.
Surely, they wouldn’t do both those remakes and then not follow it up with a new game? I know it’s Nintendo we’re talking about here but the one thing I don’t feel they do is waste money.
My personal hope is that they make a combination of the two games, with something that plays like Super Mario RPG but looks like Paper Mario. Really make it a proper role-player, where you need to grind and everything. But, most importantly, make it funny. The Origami King was a step back in the right direction, but it was still less funny than games 20 years older.
Gency
Nothing new under the sun
The Reader’s Feature on Sunday was wrong by saying Sony have been terrible for new IP.
Since 2013, when PlayStation 4 launched they’ve put out: Knack, Driveclub, Bloodborne, Tearaway, The Order: 1886, Helldivers, Horizon Zero Dawn, Astro Bot, Days Gone, Concrete Genie, Dreams, Blood And Truth, Ghosts Of Tsushima, Destruction All-Stars, Returnal and to be released Wolverine, Saros, and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
They also greenlit a bold and fresh take on one of their biggest IP in God of War 2018. Demonstrating, like Zelda: Breath Of The Wild a year earlier, fresh Ideas can easily come from existing IP.
Simundo
Pre-paid gaming
So we are officially almost seven months away from the release date of Grand Theft Auto 6 and I’ve been pondering a question that’s been on my mind. When will the pre-orders go live? So, in case anyone has been living in a bubble or under a rock. 007 First Light and Resident Evil Requiem are available to pre-order on Amazon. They both release in 2026. Same as GTA 6.
Since Capcom and IO Interactive have taken the step to open pre-orders, it is rather bizarre that Rockstar seem to be maintaining a sense of silence. We are three months away from January and the fact is we’ve seen two trailers, Jason speaking more than one word, and Lucia rocking a yellow dress. But we still don’t know when the Internet will break and pre-orders for GTA 6 will set records.
I’d like to think perhaps December will be the month. Because the first trailer released in the same month a few years ago. So, it’d make sense from that perspective. It would be five months from release date, so that’s my overall estimation. Unless it’s somehow delayed once more. You never know with Rockstar, because they love their radio silence. What are we saying GC? December is the month?
Shahzaib Sadiq
GC: We’re not sure why it matters. Are you worried they’ll run out of stock?
Free trial
To kind of reply to the ‘is EA Sports FC 26 a day one purchase?’. What I do every year is get one month sub to EA Play at £5.99, then I have access to a 10 hour game trial.
I think you might even get a month free if you are new subscriber? 10 hour demo lets you get a good feel if the latest FC is worth a punt.
NLPN2k
Somebody else’s problem
I love how we still don’t know where the next God Of War will be set because some YouTuber can’t be bothered to spend 30 seconds googling what Egyptian swords look like. It really annoys me that such people are the ones that have all the inside gossip.
It doesn’t really matter though, because most everyone has assumed Egypt would be the next setting because they have the most well-known and interesting set of gods, that hasn’t been done yet. But as a reader said before on this subject, what happens after that? After that you’re starting to get into more obscure religions and at that point it all starts to get a bit repetitive.
I’m fine with Egypt but I think the next setting after that has to be the modern day. Although I guess giving how long these games take to make, they’re just kicking the problem down the road. If Egypt is a minimum of two games, like the Norse games, then you’re talking 15 years before the next setting is released.
By that point most of the senior staff involved with the current games will probably have moved on and it all becomes somebody else’s problem. It’s a weird new reality, especially when you realise it only took five years for the original three games to be released, and that included the jump from PlayStation 2 to 3.
Things sure were simpler back then. A lot has improved but the rate at which things are being made is so slow now that it can’t be healthy.
Gamma
Inbox also-rans
Do you have to copy and paste every time you write Yōtei? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the letter on my English keyboard…
NatorDom
GC: No, we added it to our word processor dictionary, along with Ōkami. Although, if anyone does know how to get Japanese accents using an English keyboard we’d be very interested to hear about it.
I’m not going to lie, £90 is a lot to take off the price of the PlayStation 5. But why only for two weeks? If they can afford to cut the cost now, why not wait until I can actually afford it?
Camel
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