Big Baller
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Western population barely grows compared to Africa and Asia. Now where are these boxes sold...
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Game over? Industry suffers slowdown after decades-long winning streak — Financial Times
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
- Business Analysis
Western population barely grows compared to Africa and Asia. Now where are these boxes sold...
Little Chicken
Banned
Like any other business, the demand for non-stop gains will ruin the industry above anything else. Capitalism is unsustainable in the long run 
Klosshufvud
Member
It's funny how they also ignore every example of a smash hit, such as Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 etc etc. They will blame everything and everyone but lacking quality and quantity of games. These industry analysts are no better, constantly paying lip-service to big publishers who put gaming in this place in the first place. No sympathies here. I am convinced PC will slowly transform into the sole platform for dedicated players and consoles will just be reduced to FIFA/CoD/GTA machines.
IFireflyl
Gold Member
SegaSnatcher
Member
God I hate Doom & Gloom clickbait articles.
YeulEmeralda
Linux User
Game over man, GAME OVER.
bitbydeath
Member
Makes me wonder what other people do…
bitbydeath
Member
There’s about 260M Netflix users out there for comparison, which also sounds very low.
Bernardougf
Member
Agreed.
kittoo
Cretinously credulous
Days gone (assuming it cost no more than 100m), Uncharted lost legacy, Rift apart, Ghost of tsushima (again, assuming it didnt cost something like 150m), maybe Returnal (not sure about its sales).
Thats just historic though. In the leaked slides Insomniac themselves discuss if it would be better to have 2-3 cheaper to make AA games.
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SantaC
Member
Lol PS2 era was all about the AAA games.
FFX, FFXII, GTA series, Metal Gear games, God of war, Dragon Quest 8, Silent Hill 2 etc
March Climber
Member
Such a simple concept that so many people higher up in the industry just don't understand.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Industry is doing fine. It just looks bad lately due to COVID bump. A lot of companies (not just tech) have similar trends.
The key difference is tech companies amped up hiring people thinking the sales trends to the moon would keep going assuming wfh was permanent and everyone would still act like mask wearing bubble boys never leaving their house. Other industries didn’t build more factories or hire +30% more people.
Then you got companies like embracer buying up billions of dollars worth of game studios totalling 1000s of employees during COVID hoping buying low strategy like buying stocks would work. Very few companies went on corporate buying sprees. Most companies were sandbagging for risk management. Embracer does a 180 and basically goes to the casino with a wallet of cash. And it wasn’t even their cash. It was debt.
So when sales normalized starting in 2022 and really normalized in 2023, most other industries are just back to precovid employee count and sales with no need to mess around with firing all the over hiring they did. They just waited it out.
The key difference is tech companies amped up hiring people thinking the sales trends to the moon would keep going assuming wfh was permanent and everyone would still act like mask wearing bubble boys never leaving their house. Other industries didn’t build more factories or hire +30% more people.
Then you got companies like embracer buying up billions of dollars worth of game studios totalling 1000s of employees during COVID hoping buying low strategy like buying stocks would work. Very few companies went on corporate buying sprees. Most companies were sandbagging for risk management. Embracer does a 180 and basically goes to the casino with a wallet of cash. And it wasn’t even their cash. It was debt.
So when sales normalized starting in 2022 and really normalized in 2023, most other industries are just back to precovid employee count and sales with no need to mess around with firing all the over hiring they did. They just waited it out.
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NuclearDiarrhea
Member
This is what happens when you don't release a Bloodborne remaster. The industry goes to shit.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Global population is an extraordinarily poor thing to measure against! First of all that doesn't factor in obviously critical factors like age demographics, economic development, trends (inflation, average income levels), etc. But mostly its down to lifestyle and consumption.
When smartphones exploded in popularity there was a huge surge in demand because these are personal devices, whereas a computer or console is able and likely to support multiple individual users per hardware unit. These products were traditionally aimed at families as opposed to individuals like TV's and stereo systems.
Obviously most people in the developed world own smartphones because its borderline impossible to live a "normal" life without one anymore. Now if you consider that a viable alternative to owning a console for light gaming usage, its pretty obvious why install-base sizes of such devices have been stable for so long.
As anyone who actually LIVES in the real-world should realize, the market's basically been saturated for years.
The good news is that the population* is aging, and once gaming has become normalized as a regular form of recreation the market isn't likely to go away either.
*Again in the DEVELOPED world, the primary markets for these products.
Mibu no ookami
Banned
Hilarious that you think Day's Gone was AA.
Uncharted Lost Legacy was also AAA, it was just a glorified DLC, but this is what Insomniac discussed as ways of making more money. You have to factor in the cost of developing Uncharted 4 when you consider Lost Legacy, and the same will be true of the Venom game and Spider-Man 2. If you look at the cost of Spider-Man 2 + Venom, the risk/roi calculations change.
Ghost of Tsushima is also AAA.
Rift Apart was probably the cheapest game on the list and it barely sold two million copies.
Returnal sold less than a million.
What you fail to realize is that Spider-Man 2 was still wildly profitable despite the inherit risk involved and the cost. It'll go on to sell for years and even more when it reaches PC.
Even if you combined every game you listed, Spider-Man 2 will still have outsold them when all is said and done.
NoLootBoxDev
Member
This one with FF7 and Dragon Dogma 2 will be all I get during this year, other than that, I'm not sure if anything else will have my attention.
ManaByte
Gold Member
Look at the success of Helldivers II. It's a AA GaaS that's extremely simple. No $300M 15-hour cinematic campaign signed off on by Sweet Baby. Just a pure 4-player multiplayer mode and it's insanely popular.
You're going to see more games like this and fewer games spending $300M to try to make an interactive movie.
You're going to see more games like this and fewer games spending $300M to try to make an interactive movie.
But the budgets of those games were much lower than modern AAA games (even considering inflation etc) and the studios were for the most part able to produce quality sequels or spinoffs in a short amount of time thereafter. By today's standards these would be AA games.
SantaC
Member
Yes but the point is that they were AAA at the time
SkylineRKR
Member
There are still good games coming out but there certainly is stagnation going on. They try to push for the next golden goose but in return a lot of projects fail in trying to do so with Suicide Squad, and Rocksteady with it, being the latest.
Meanwhile I feel everything seems to follow a certain formula or an agenda. Which is why I stopped buying many games. Last year I only bought SF6, FFXVI, Ishin and both RE4 and Dead space on sale. And the brilliant remake of Star Ocean 2.
For this year, I probably only get Like a Dragon (I bought it), DD2 and FFVII. Perhaps Visions of Mana and some other classics.
On much shorter dev cycles and lower costs which means higher rate of output than what happens now. So they were cheaper to create, and also completed in a smaller window. So, if that was AAA also, then something went wrong with this era.
Meanwhile I feel everything seems to follow a certain formula or an agenda. Which is why I stopped buying many games. Last year I only bought SF6, FFXVI, Ishin and both RE4 and Dead space on sale. And the brilliant remake of Star Ocean 2.
For this year, I probably only get Like a Dragon (I bought it), DD2 and FFVII. Perhaps Visions of Mana and some other classics.
On much shorter dev cycles and lower costs which means higher rate of output than what happens now. So they were cheaper to create, and also completed in a smaller window. So, if that was AAA also, then something went wrong with this era.
Killer8
Member
From the chart it just looks like it's returning to pre-pandemic levels. Hardly alarming. But hey, time for the media to write articles titled "Game over?" and prematurely call the death of an industry. Retards.
We're also going through global financial pains. Many countries are experiencing a cost of living crisis and teetering on the edge of recession. Of course entertainment is going to be one of the first things on the chopping block when you don't have any money.
We're also going through global financial pains. Many countries are experiencing a cost of living crisis and teetering on the edge of recession. Of course entertainment is going to be one of the first things on the chopping block when you don't have any money.
kittoo
Cretinously credulous
Spiderman 2 cost seems so egregious because the game uses the same world, broadly, as Spiderman 1. It also has the gameplay foundation and a lot of tools etc set. So 300m seems all the more outrageous. Its almost the same thing as Uncharted and Lost legacy like you mentioned (though lost legacy wasnt as long a game).
Look, I am not here to argue. Insomniac themselves are wondering if making 2-3 smaller games would be more profitable (look at their leaked slides), so there is something to it of course. I will not mind 3 8-10 hours long short'ish' games in place of 1 hugely expensive game. And I do believe it will be a better financial call for the company also. This is just my opinion.
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Morrie’s wig shop
Banned
Came in here just to make sure some form of Hudson saying game over man
Wulfer
Member
Just a guess but; people are tired of paying for political commercials, instead of entertainment they can relax to after a day of work. When I watched Star Wars for the first time, I wasn't worried about the sex's on screen. I didn't think about agendas being pushed on screen and wasn't worried about whether the projector was energy efficient or not for the film. It's almost like were bad for enjoying the screen or game for how we want to play now. It's really not a shock why people don't want to watch or play anymore. When Mario 64 came out we just picked up a controller and started playing. Games now days need to have a keyboard just to get access to all the features available. I think that's why Hogwarts has done so well It's a pick and play game. It reminds me of Elder Scrolls Oblivion game play (it just worked).The movie and game industry is in a downward spiral.
I wonder why
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Topher
Identifies as young
Agree. Seems like these corporations are not even making games anymore. They are making business models.
Right on cue
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
The GAAS tsunami is just reaching shores. Revenue will pick up considerably over the next couple of years.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
thanks michael pachter
Mibu no ookami
Banned
The argument for making shorter games isn't the same argument as making AA games, which is why you're offbase.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Doubt me at your own peril.
Wulfer
Member
Or it will accelerate a bigger crash/reset.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Nature is growth + death simultaneously. We see that the strongest segment of the market is GAAS while expensive AAA games are headed in the wrong trajectory in terms of profits. PlayStation predicted this years ago. Y'all just didn't listen.
(Look at graph on the left)
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24677519/Screenshot_2023_05_23_at_5.28.54_PM.png)
GAAS is the hero you deserve. Not the hero you need.
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angrod14
Member
Greed can, unfortunately.
Complistic
Member
I feel bad for the loss of jobs, but the market is so bloated and filled with garbage, this isn't really a bad thing.
Porcile
Member
This was inevitably going to happen in the 360/PS3 era but DLC and microtransactions saved the day (for game companies.) Then that stagnated and GaaS and subscriptions services were the next thing but now those are stagnating too (in terms of profits.) So what's next? It's gonna be brutal times ahead even if let's say GTA 6 and Switch 2 can buck the trend, because not every company can produce their own version of those.
P:axMagellanic
Member
An industry that gets kids hooked on gambling. Let it burn.
Immortals of Aveum and Callisto Protocol were made by these veterans you cite. Deviation games is filled with COD devs and their game was iced by Sony.
Most of these end in failure.
Numerous industries are facing a post-pandemic contraction due to inflationary costs. Gaming is no exception. If people are being laid off, wages are stagnant, or people are struggling with rent and food, then your entertainment based industry is going to struggle.
Expecting booms to continue through tough times is absurd.
Expecting booms to continue through tough times is absurd.
DaleinCalgary
Member
Bullshit, we are going through a glut of good games.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
The slowdown in the console gaming market has very little to do with mobile and much more to do with price inelasticity.
The semiconductor industry has reached a peak in process technology improvements that halve chip costs every two years, i.e. Moore's Law is dead.
Also, TSMC now having no competition from Global Foundries, Samsung or even Intel at the bleeding edge nodes, is now a monopoly and instead of pricing the latest most advanced process nodes more competitively, they're pricing to maximize profits, abusing their market position (because, fuck it, they can).
There are also other considerations, like EUV requiring ever increasing numbers of process steps, ballooning engineering and fabrication costs which counteracts any cost benefits smaller die sizes typically have on the latest most advanced nodes.
As such, die shrinks are no longer economical, so console have far less opportunity to drive down costs on the back end to access the more price conscious consumers in the primary markets as well as entire markets worth of secondary users in the developing world.
So unless, some new paradigm shift in transistor technology like graphene, spintronics, or photon-based chips can swoop in and reset Moore's Law, the future of affordable personal computing hardware for gaming is pretty bleak.
DaciaJC
Gold Member
We tried to tell them, to warn them, for years even! But would they listen? Nooooooo.
Well, let them reap what they've sown. I'll be sitting here next to my Eileen doll watching smugly.
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