I dont what it is the last few years, but the giant covid spike was peak tech. Not just games, but Docusign, Zoom Media, Peloton etc.... Sales and stock prices went through the roof. All came falling down when things normalized a year later.
As for gaming, the pot of money is still there. Isnt the trend that the gaming industry is getting bigger and bigger? Seems so.
Problem is it's probably not being spliced out evenly, and companies amped up on too many tech workers the past 5 years years.... including Google, Meta etc....
So while super successful GAAS and mobile gaming (which I remember that giant pie chart Gaffers have posted over the years where mobile is growing the fastest and also 50% of gaming revenue while consoles and PC split the other half at shittier growth rates, it shows the money is there but be funneled to certain kinds of companies and games. And if that means Candy Crush and Clash of Clans are the kinds of games leading the charge, then it means that full budget full priced game we all are used to playing on consoles really needs to be successful as that other segment is the focus. Add in giant budgets and teams making games and it's really rolling the dice. To be at peak success, a game company making a traditional full priced half decent budget game has to be able to sell a game that gamers want in the millions, while also juggling the budget.
You never heard about this kind of thing way back when games were made by 50 people and a successful game sold 1M copies. At that time, that was good enough and high fives all around the office. Now, the sales expectations are big to cover big production costs.