I'd like to agree with you that 'the problem of discoverability will be solved', but history doesn't bear that out. Discoverability has been utter horseshit for PC games, iOS games and Android games... forever. And it's not improved at all, and no new players are improving it, because Steam, the iOS App Store, and Play Store all have customers 99% locked in. You can't force those big players to innovate unless they find a good reason to do it, because there's no way you're ever going to steal those customers away from them just by offering a better search tool. They want the convenience and safety and integration they get from the big player's storefront app.
The low barrier to entry for game development is actually not a new thing. The barrier has been low since the introduction of XBox Live Indie Games, perhaps even a couple years before then - that was just the visible point where a bunch of new developers started building and shipping games on a small budget.
The huge glut of samey titles releasing and squeezing each other out of the market is a relatively new occurrence. The stats he provided for Steam releases are a very new trend and concerning to anyone who wants to find good games to play, or build good games to sell. I can say for a fact that the clickthrough rates and conversion rates for Steam front page placement are much worse than they have ever been, even for high-scoring, well-reviewed titles with PR buzz.
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I'd like to agree with you that 'the problem of discoverability will be solved', but history doesn't bear that out. Discoverability has been utter horseshit for PC games, iOS games and Android games... forever. And it's not improved at all, and no new players are improving it, because Steam, the iOS App Store, and Play Store all have customers 99% locked in. You can't force those big players to innovate unless they find a good reason to do it, because there's no way you're ever going to steal those customers away from them just by offering a better search tool. They want the convenience and safety and integration they get from the big player's storefront app.
The low barrier to entry for game development is actually not a new thing. The barrier has been low since the introduction of XBox Live Indie Games, perhaps even a couple years before then - that was just the visible point where a bunch of new developers started building and shipping games on a small budget.
The huge glut of samey titles releasing and squeezing each other out of the market is a relatively new occurrence. The stats he provided for Steam releases are a very new trend and concerning to anyone who wants to find good games to play, or build good games to sell. I can say for a fact that the clickthrough rates and conversion rates for Steam front page placement are much worse than they have ever been, even for high-scoring, well-reviewed titles with PR buzz.