What are the impediments to designing the ultimate game?

[Dzian]

I'd say the first and biggest one is Knowing who you want to build the ultimate game for. (know your audience).
Building the ultimate game for "everyone" is basically Impossible.
Building the ultimate game for lets say "Final Fantasy Fans" is easier.

Been a lot of articles around lately about how Elden Ring is teaching the industry this lesson... It doesn't try to cater to EVERYONE It just tries to be the best game it can for its target audience and it's success has not only smashed that but also spilled over into players who are new to that style of game.. It's not the only gsameto do this either. God of War did the same thing not so long ago and there's another big one I forget the name of as well.

SE's biggest problem is it tries to csater to everyone and thats disasterous in every aspect of life and business.

You would never open a restaurant that caters to everyone and has Chinese food, Indian food, Italian food, traditional English food, Steaks, Turkish food, Polish food etc etc
Having a menu of over 1,000 dishes but all pretty average. You'd go out of business very very quickly..

Open a restaurant that caters to a specific style of food though where you may have only 15-20 items on the menu but all of a super high quality and business will be booming...

SE is much the same with FFXIV in trying to cater to everyone it ends up boring and unimpressive. Which is why player retention is such a big issue.

The industry will learn eventually though, especially when basically every so called "mainstream" AAA franchise released recently flops and fails to hit sales targets but more "niche" titles like Elden Ring and God of War. blow away all expectations and are hugely popular..