I'm pretty sure they could, if you asked them.

As an example, I am confident that a true successor to Battlefield 3/4, unencumbered by EA's often terrible decisions, would sell very well. The problem is, it probably wouldn't make the same money as some microtransaction-ridden free-to-play dopamine factory, and so management wouldn't actually _want_ to make the game that the gamers want. (Though supposedly there is a game like that in the making -- I just don't want to get my hopes up because I've been fooled too many times.)

sure, I could, you could, every commenter on HN in the last 24 hours could.

Put them all together and we'd probably get a mess of genres with little overlap, or "worse": probably some already existing popular game that is hated by the gaming enthusiasts. Because we've long left this monoculture where any one game is the talk of the town for years to come. Or because the businesspeople actually are serving what people want.

You're also right that what enthusiasts want are rarely the most profitable. Blizzard can make 5 HD games and even MTX them up to high hell. Candy Crush is probably still making more than any of them. Just another example of how utterly diverse gaming has become (or perhaps, full circle where bejeweled on steroids still can make so much money).

Gocha games are an example of "games gamers actually want". You don't need to ask people define what they want, you need to see what's selling and just do that, because sales and profits are something you can measure.

But I doubt the DEI departments at Sony, EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft will let them release games with waifus and jiggle physics so they'll have to keep saying no to money to die on a hill.

A lot of developers don't want to make those games regardless of petty social politics. It's not productive to imply that teams working in creative mediums should optimize for profit to the exclusion of what they want to make or are good at making. There is a lot of room between the scattered financial flops of big producers and gacha waifus. Great things are in that space.

1. gacha, not gocha

2. Ubisoft is large, it does both. it has several mobile games. No gacha models, AFAIK.

3. "You don't need to ask people define what they want". If someone is going to assert "make good games", then yes. I may as well just simply ask them. Alternatively: do you really think I'll make Genshin Money if I just copy Genshin? a dozen studios already beat me to it.

4. "I doubt the DEI departments at Sony, EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft will let them release games with waifus and jiggle physics so they'll have to keep saying no to money to die on a hill." Those aren't the only ways to make money. Not even in Asia. And this is an odd statement given Sony did publish Stellar Blade this year. Its wishy washy but it's not like there's some hidden cabal banning this stuff. It really comes down to a mix of culture, PR, and sales. Dead or Alive's newest dating sim isn't releasing in NA just because of "DEI"

Gacha + waifus is definitely a huge hit. Especially because it also capture the female audience. Also cosplays on conventions do free advertising. (see Genshin Impact)

Never seen a eastern studio release a game of this genre.

It's a mixed bag. Like any other live service game, you'll see 1-2 breakout hits and then 100 more that can't even last a year. Sex can't magically sell everything.

relying on organic advertising is even harder than making a good game. Some things are just in a snug little corner and never truly break out to that mainstream.

Is it really a "want" if it's an addiction?

Are attractive female features an addiction or natural reaction to biology?

Depends on if they're actual female features or something that doesn't exist in nature.

EDIT:

I was referring more to the addictive nature of gacha games.

Games aren't addictive because you can see under a girl's skirt, as that gets old pretty quick. They're addictive because they're fun to play. The waifus are to draw players interest.

They're not addictive because they're fun to play; they're addictive because they activate certain parts of your brain in a certain way.

A dude staring at a screen just clicking buttons with no expression on his face for hours on end might say he's having fun, but that's gonna be hard to sell me on.

You know Stellar Blade, a game you used as an example in your first comment, was published by Sony, right?

Free market is not a metric. It's just natural selection. No one needs to understand it for it to run its course.

you need to understand it if you think you can just "make good games" like a switch.

I guess you can by the number of units sold on certain games. GTA 6 looks to be a blockbuster once it's released.

I mean it's pretty straightforward, hard shift in the opposite direction of what HR wants/is demanding. Don't add microtransactions, make it compelling in game and out of game, aka things like guilds in WoW where there's a meta human interaction element overlaid on top.

sounds like a great way to make a game people wanted 30 years ago but would fail today. You're basically describing a modern mobile game without the main monetization.

People want services, but don't want to continuously pay for a continous service. well, that's why MTX work. For every 100, 1000 people playing for free, you got some whale amortizing the cost for them.

> don't want to continously pay for a continuous service

Uhh... people do all the time, we invented a word for it, subscriptions. It's like the main form of non-ordinary expense people pay, the issue is that the product has to worth it, MTX focused games are so geared to the lowest common denominator they aren't fun (usually)