I think No Man’s Sky is also in the same boat.
I mean games which keep releasing further content over long periods without charging extra for it. Surely the amount of new sales eventually dwindles considerably. Is the cost of new content once you have the core game this low or…?
I think it’s a combination of low development cost (so a single update can bring in enough income to last at least several months to a year), and the fact that they target a particular audience which constantly has an influx of new players.
Minecraft is a good example - they primarily target the younger demographic, and as long as people are born, there will always be new young people who haven’t bought Minecraft yet. And every update will be talked about on media and on YouTube, and that’ll convince those new young people to buy Minecraft.
We see the opposite side of the same coin with Pokemon, where there will always be people willing to buy the new Pokemon game, even if it’s essentially just the same thing as the previous games. It’s not because the new game is good, it’s just because there’s always going to be children who want to experience Pokemon for the first time