With recent news of massive Xbox layoffs and game cancellations, we can now officially call it, The SECOND video game crash of 2022-2025

Kotaro

Kotaro

Member
The first video game crash occurred in 1983-1985. Now 40 years later, we have officially got a second crash (to be more specific, it's only Western industry crashing, just like the first crash)

Since 2022, we got

- Tens of thousands of layoffs in studios and gaming media
- Many studios and gaming media shut down
- Many projects cancelled
- Many AA and AAA games underperformed if not completely bombed

2022–2025 video game industry layoffs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

NOTE:
This collapse affects predominantly Western industry.
- Japan games and studios seem to be doing just fine, if not better than 2010s. Even Konami is coming back. Nintendo is at their peak. From Soft is emerging to become one of the giant studio. Only Square Enix is struggling.
- Korea and China are actually on the rise with several successful games, and many more are coming

EDIT:
some of you think that I'm just referring the recent massive XBOX layoffs and game cancellations as the crash, NO, that's not what I'm saying. I'm referring to the on-going bad news in the industry in the last three years, including Sony's massive blunder in their GAAS ambition and culminating with the XBOX news, as the industry crash
 
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lol just because MS is a fuck up, doesn't mean the industry is crashing. Both Sony and Nintendo are fine ( Sony had some fuck ups because they wanted GaaS but now back on track). MS are just fucking idiots and run by clowns. Nothing new here

All that Western devs want is entitlement. Work from home, spend most of the day do fuck nothing but cry about anti woke shit.

No wonder they are failing. Good riddance to be honest too. Hope they go flip burgers after this. 7 years to make a game with MS funding and you still can't get a proper alpha game out, you fucking deserve to get clowned and fucked
 
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A real crash is when consumer confidence drops and they stop buying. Consumer expenditure is fine, it's just that companies overgrew during pandemic but they couldn't sustain that size.
 
This isnt a crash. Plenty of people are still making money hand over fist and there are still massively succesful games.
 
//DEVIL// said:
lol just because of MS is a fuck up, doesn't mean the industry is crashing . Both Sony and Nintendo are fine. MS are just fucking idiots and run by clowns . Nothing new here

All what Western devs want is entitlement . Work from home, spend most of the day do fuck nothing but cry about anti woke shit .

No wonder they are failing. Good riddance to be honest too. Hope they go flip burgers after this. 7 years to make a game with MS funding and you still can't get a proper alpha game out, you fucking deserve to get clowned and fucked
Click to expand...

MayauMiao said:
Oh the drama. Meanwhile Nintendo and Sony is raking in millions and while gacha games making billions.
Click to expand...

Sony is not fine, they're still trying to figure out how to move forward after 5 billion dollar failing attempt on GAAS
 
Kotaro said:
Sony is not fine, they're still trying to figure out how to move forward after 5 billion dollar failing attempt on GAAS
Click to expand...

Sony have yet to crash and even if they do, gaming industry does not revolve around Playstation. Mobile phone games is a huge platform, PC too more than ever.
 
This is no different than how the gaming industry has always operated.

For all the hate the publishers get, they allow most studios to weather a bad release that would close an independent studio. But this lets studios become walking dead where the rot just festers and eventually something needs to give.

The industry did mass hiring with Covid. But now it's time to right size and get rid of the non-performers or even people who have negative productivity. I'm hoping AI kills off the 500+ people games and lets smaller teams of 2-3 dozen people that share a vision make their dream games. We need fewer games that are created to appeal to the maximum number of people to have 15 million+ sales. And more unique risks pushing just what gaming can be.
 
So dramatic.

There might be a triple-A industry crash, but a total video game crash like the early 1980s? Nah. The '83 crash damn near obliterated the entire industry outside of arcade coin-ops. A crash like that will never happen again. The industry is too widespread and diversified for that kind of 'crash'.
 
Kotaro said:
This collapse affects predominantly Western industry.
- Japan games and studios seem to be doing just fine, if not better than 2010s. Even Konami is coming back. From Soft is emerging to become one of the giant studio. Only Square Enix is struggling.
Click to expand...

Konami are starting to excite me again

Silent Hill F and Metal Gear Delta are day 1 for me

You're right about the rest of Japan too

We back baby

k4iH5NefVLQ8rOJi.png
 
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USA added 147,000 new jobs this June under Pres Trump. Well now we have to subtract this 9,000 job loses because of MS blunder in Xbox gaming division.
 
Kotaro said:
Sony is not fine, they're still trying to figure out how to move forward after 5 billion dollar failing attempt on GAAS
Click to expand...


8SFh4YE.jpeg








Here for you, the same thing that was said to Jez and Kubrilha applies to you too. One of the reasons why Xbox is going bankrupt is because of what you, Jez and Kubrilha, do on the internet.

Always saying

"Sony too, NOTHING IS EVER MICROSOFT'S FAULT"

The only thing you achieve with this is to keep Phil Spencer and his "yes man" jobs.



ARUHda7.jpeg




The more people defend the Xbox LYING "Sony too", the deeper the Xbox sinks.
 
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I'm inclined to think the industry crashes if Sony and/or Nintendo burnout, and that's not the case. We need to distinguish what are actual industry problems and what are Microsoft's own shoot themselves in the foot fuck-ups. Xbox isn't really adding anything creatively to gaming at this point, just swallowing up studios, mismanaging them and subsequently closing them while the corporate fat-cats eat at the trough and the line goes up. None of the major stakeholders are innocent, there's fair critique for all to go around, but the way Microsoft has gone about their business is by far the most parasitic entity in gaming.
 
Well no this isn't a crash. The first "crash" happened when games stopped selling and the market was flooded with inventory that was going nowhere. Today's market is making money hand over fist but for the wrong reasons
 
Anyone talking about a video game crash gets some evil side eyes from me.
As I keep saying, the old crash was because the American money people thought computers and games was a passing fad to be replaced with the next big trend. Elsewhere everyone else dabbled in micro computers and consoles.

If we are generous, we could call this the second American video game DEI crash. But the only way we'll get an actual worldwide video game crash today is if China attempts to invade Taiwan. But it's going to be bad news for everything, your phone and smart fridge too and it'll last for years.
 
//DEVIL// said:
lol just because of MS is a fuck up, doesn't mean the industry is crashing . Both Sony and Nintendo are fine. MS are just fucking idiots and run by clowns . Nothing new here

All what Western devs want is entitlement . Work from home, spend most of the day do fuck nothing but cry about anti woke shit .

No wonder they are failing. Good riddance to be honest too. Hope they go flip burgers after this. 7 years to make a game with MS funding and you still can't get a proper alpha game out, you fucking deserve to get clowned and fucked
Click to expand...
??????? Sony is cancelling games left, right, and center and if it weren't for Fortnite, COD and GTA money they would be hemorrhaging off the back of their studios.
 
FoxMcChief said:
Right? Just seems like the hyperbole has taken hold of some. I'm not downplaying the huge hit that MS did to themselves, but they're just a small fraction of the huge industry.
Click to expand...

And the thing is Microsoft ain't even laying people off because of financial issues. This ain't a crash. It isn't even a gaming recession. Baseless thread.
 
poppabk said:
Thats because ARM is limited by its licensing structure. Activision was making 5 times as much profit as ARM before they were bought.
Click to expand...
the point I'm making is that ARM is far more important and critical to the industry, that's why the acquisition was blocked. Microsoft clearly overpaid for ABK amidst market speculation during the COVID bubble, which also includes the ballooning budgets and woke games ( trying to reach new and diverse markets aka the modern audience)

so, ABK, ambracer, Bungie, Ubisoft (just to name a few), the push for Gaas Reflect something akin to a crash... the crash of massive growth expectations
 
Lmfao even the 1st crash was limited to the US market, JPN and EU markets were going along great.

There won't be another crash like that again, even regionally like what happened the 1st time. Bubbles bursting is not a crash, it's just a large market correction.
 
Tbh Microsoft was kind of always the fuck up of the gaming industry. They have been incompetent since the later half of the 360 it was inevitable for what's happening to them in the gaming space right now.
 
They went crazy hiring because everybody was playing pandemic, for which none of the people complaining about the layoffs praised those companies for being noble (which they aren't). That has to come back down to reality.
 
If there was a crash there wouldn't be price increases. It's the opposite if anything. This is the opposite of a crash. Let's raise the prices because these fools will still buy it.
 
yeah these morons will take out half of the industry they gobbled up,
hurray for the rats that were cheerleading the consolidation i guess
 
Steam/valve(western) seem to be doing rather well atm.
So I wouldn't call it a crash.
It seems mostly the companies that went too woke are suffering the most, and didn't anticipate the level of market correction we are now experiencing.
 
Nah stop it. Platforms come and go, doesn't mean the whole industry is crashing. And Xbox isn't even gone, things may look dark but they have a new console coming and supposedly 40 games in the pipeline. It ain't over till the fat lady sings.
 
Nah we ain't there yet. Honestly looking at as an industry wide thing, I think this is all a case of growing pains.

Perfect dark looked good. And maybe everwild would have been something special. Guess we will never know now.


As for Forza motorsport. I'm gonna be sad to see it go but the series hasn't been great since FM4 meanwhile GT got its mojo back after a slump that was GT5 and GT sport. As a fan of multiple sim/ sim-Cade racers it's sad to see one less on the market. It's bad enough we lost pcars and codemasters is gonna be out of the game too.


Deffo some big changes that we don't understand going on inside the gaming biz. No doubt forced by changes in consumer habits if you get generations of gamers. But also probably for sure by industry itself chasing the wrong things instead of just focusing on making good games. Everything has to be either fortnight or that rare AAA game that does COD numbers.


Just a sad state of affairs all round never mind the loss of jobs and the death of games that had potential, that is all just a symptom of some serious problems with the gaming business model in 2025.


Layoffs are happening industry wide. Just seems to be a thing right now. L but I don't think the industry is dying. Just going through some rough changes.
 
Kotaro said:
The first video game crash occurred in 1983-1985. Now 40 years later, we have officially got a second crash (to be more specific, it's only Western industry crashing, just like the first crash)

Since 2022, we got

- Tens of thousands of layoffs in studios and gaming media
- Many studios and gaming media shut down
- Many projects cancelled
- Many AA and AAA games underperformed if not completely bombed

2022–2025 video game industry layoffs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

NOTE:
This collapse affects predominantly Western industry.
- Japan games and studios seem to be doing just fine, if not better than 2010s. Even Konami is coming back. From Soft is emerging to become one of the giant studio. Only Square Enix is struggling.
- Korea and China are actually on the rise with several successful games, and many more are coming
Click to expand...

There is an onQ thread for that



O

Business  Thread 'Activision becoming a 3rd party sparked the Video Game Crash of 1983'

Loss of publishing control[edit]

Prior to 1979, there were no third-party developers, with console manufacturers like Atari publishing all the games for their respective platforms. This changed with the formation of Activision in 1979. Activision was founded by four Atari programmers who left the company because they felt that Atari's developers should receive the same recognition and accolades (specifically in the form of sales-based royalties and public-facing credits) as the actors, directors, and musicians working for other subsidiaries of Warner...
Click to expand...
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Too many investors, too much money brought to an unreasonable ammount of greenlit new projects, most of them with no hope. Cash is over, time to really work for lot of people who lived in this marketing dream
 
onQ123 said:
There is an onQ thread for that



O

Business  Thread 'Activision becoming a 3rd party sparked the Video Game Crash of 1983'

Loss of publishing control[edit]

Prior to 1979, there were no third-party developers, with console manufacturers like Atari publishing all the games for their respective platforms. This changed with the formation of Activision in 1979. Activision was founded by four Atari programmers who left the company because they felt that Atari's developers should receive the same recognition and accolades (specifically in the form of sales-based royalties and public-facing credits) as the actors, directors, and musicians working for other subsidiaries of Warner...
Click to expand...
  • Like
  • Thoughtful
  • Fire
  • Love
  • LOL
  • Surprised
Click to expand...
Why are you so desperate to seek approval from these forums. You must have countless bookmarks for your all-consuming obsession to make NeoGAF believe you're some kind of gaming news prophet.

How many hours a week do you spend on this crusade?
 
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