After a week of bad news for games companies, a reader worries that Western publishers are too far gone for any kind of recovery to be possible.
From about a year into the current generation, basically as soon as Covid ended and we could see how things were shaking out, it’s been obvious that the games industry is in serious trouble. Or at least it was obvious to anyone that was paying attention to the gaming news, which is going to be the minority, because, quite rightly, what does someone who only buys Call Of Duty or EA Sports FC care about all that?
But if you do care about gaming, if playing video games is more than just something you do for half an hour every other week, then things have got so worrying that I’ve begun to question whether there’s even a future for triple-A games.
Just this week we’ve had stories of Xbox sales tanking, Ubisoft collapsing, and GAME going under. Some of these problems have been brewing for years, but one of the points I’m going to try and make here is that not only was nothing done about them, but too many people are just straight up ignoring them.
Call Of Duty is now on the rocks, which puts Activision in immediate trouble because, moronically, it’s the only game they make; Ubisoft has one foot in the grave; EA has saddled itself with $20 billion of debt just so its execs can buy themselves an extra yacht; and Take-Two still hasn’t managed to get Rockstar to release GTA 6.
It’s a conspiracy of stupidity and incompetence that is made wore because nobody in charge of any games publisher in the West seems to care about gaming in the slightest. They could be in charge of selling cars or running a fast food chain for all they care, gaming means nothing to them. None of these people were programmers or developers or artists in any way and have no interest in the future of the art form.
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Not only do they not care about gaming they don’t even care about their own companies. As long as they get a golden parachute they couldn’t care less – just look at what’s happening with EA. They’re not doing anything about games being too expensive or falling console sales because they don’t care enough. Once an exec, always an exec. Do you think Phil Spencer or whoever’s in charge of Take-Two would be hurting for money if they get laid off tomorrow?
I haven’t got a solution to this, by the way. It’s pointless saying the people in charge should be actual gamers because we all know that’s not going to happen. It’s already clear they’re not going to lower budgets and they won’t learn a thing from the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or indie gaming in general.
It’ll all just be run into the ground, and things will get worse and worse, until there’s another industry crash. The only thing that gives me hope is that Japanese companies continue to be in a much better place. I look at all the praise for Resident Evil Requiem, and all the cool and obscure games Capcom is making with their money, and it makes me wish Western companies worked the same way.
Even Square Enix seems to be sorting themselves out lately, and actually getting better, while I saw in the news that Konami’s great work with games like Silent Hill f has paid dividends for them. With China and South Korea getting into consoles too (weirdly lately, but better late than never) almost everything that excites me in gaming at the moment is made in Asia or by indie devs.
Big name, Western publishers have nothing going for them except their marketing budgets. That’ll allow them to hide the damage for a while longer but I think the self-inflicted wounds that Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, and the rest have inflicted on themselves are terminal and, to be honest, I’m having increasingly hard trouble feeling bad about it.
By reader Doshin
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