When COD Mobile (both Global and Garena) released in October 2019 - less than 4 years ago - it had 50 Tiers in the battle pass. I came back and it's 200 tiers now, which is insane.
It's especially shocking to see as one of the OG players of CODM - I played it since launch - to see firsthand just how desperate capitalism has become at squeezing the proles of as much money as possible at every possible level including something as mundane as gaming.
I wrote more in my other comment, but I don't think we are at the end of gaming. I think we have simultaneously some of the best and some of the worst practices in gaming right now.
You can buy a game for $100 and spend $20 to buy a fucking pixel hat, but you can also spend $10 and get an amazing experience that a guy put together in his spare time over the past 12 years. There's been multiple game releases this year alone that would probably make my top 10 of all time list, none of which are ridldles with microtransactions.
I wish I could say that the exploitative business practices would go away, but we know they won't. I just hope the good practices don't go away as well.
Well yes there are many 10$ good indie games but mostly are an hour experience. So still an expansive way to gaming that only millionaire streamers can enjoy. Should be exist a minimum longevity for games to exist and most indie fail on this.
To begin with I think breaking entertainment down into hours per dollar is a bad idea, I have had a fantastic time with one-two hour game "experiences". Even if we accepted that I don't think that's being fair at all however.
Rimworld is my favourite game of all time (I am hovering around 2000 hours at the moment), and was made by a very small indie studio. Like, I am getting close to 100 hours of entertainment per dollar I spent on that, and the number keeps increasing. Stardew Valley is probably my third most played game and was made almost in its entirety by a single guy. Supergiant Games (Hades, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre) makes consistently some of the highest quality games on the market that will all last you a long time. Dyson Sphere Program is made by a tiny Chinese studio and they do phenomenal work. None of those games are "full" AAA priced games and can last you hundreds of hours if not more.
In all honesty I only play a couple of the big AAA studio games per year, and the ones I play have fairly "classic" business models. I don't play anything that subsists on microtransactions or battle passes or anything like that, and I have no lack of things to play.