There is a youtuber who teaches people programming and computer stuff that I've seen in my youtube shorts feed. He used to work for Blizzard and he said that when he worked at Blizzard he worked on Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty which was the first game in the SC2 trilogy. That game made LESS money than the first store mount in WoW. The stupid $15 horse that started the whole in-game store for WoW made more money than the first new Starcraft game in like 15 years.If we start at three years into the 7th gen they’ve released LA Noire, Max Payne 3, GTAV and two Red Dead’s. Yeah Rockstar’s been been shitty the last few years but I’m pretty sure most of that stems from their overlord Take 2. That said, historically one thing even they’ve seemed to understand, at least with flagship releases, is the importance of timing and not announcing or showing something off before it’s ready, even if it takes a generation. They can of course afford to do that with the cash cow V’s huge supply of milk, but it’s also what makes them stand out next to most other big AAA pubs that will shit out sequels every other year.
As much as we hate it, the reason why microtransactions have taken over so much of the industry is people buy them, and they buy that at ridiculous profit levels. Shark cards, skins, ultimate team, it's insane the amount of spending people will do. And there isn't much we can do to stop it than not support games we feel are unfair in that regard. But we are a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of normie dipshits who throw money at games without regard for anything.