@Pete Woah, hold the phone. Did you just accuse me of not reading the article and then you totally failed to read my comment? Good one. I gave a clear set of simplified answers as to why there are so many lay offs happening, it’s a net effect of capitalism, I won’t rehash it since it’s a small paragraph you can just read.
I did actually read the article, and my comment is based on A) the above commenter lumping MS into the group of those having trouble and B) the irony of Phil Spencer commenting on this, which the article itself points out on more than one occasion. Clearly you didn’t read it either. There’s even a joke about “don’t hate the player.”
So again I come back to, the industry cutting jobs is not exactly a cause for widespread panic. Bigger, better, more, and aging/bloated workforces eventually isn’t sustainable as at some point growth will plateau or decline for a period. What WOULD be a cause for concern, as I clearly mentioned, is if triple A games were deemed failures due to unsustainable budgets or sales projections. Yet, the major players continue to make extremely profitable games.
Dead Space perfectly encapsulates this. Dead Space 1 was a success, but Dead Space 2 and 3 subsequently declined and then failed because EA upped the budget, costs and advertising expenses, overestimating how many copies would sell and failing to understand the games target audience. That’s a capitalism fail story.
Sony buying Insomniac, providing them resources, investing in their studio and giving them creative freedom led the developer to transform from the Ratchet and Clank guys to one of the best in the industry creating Sony’s best selling blockbuster series and GOTY material. Capitalism success story.
Microsoft spending almost hundred billion to effectively do nothing for the industry or its own developers or promote growth whatsoever, merely to eat into profits via ownership and multi platform releases – smart capitalism move, good for their profits, terrible for the industry and gamers and quality of games.
So, Phil talking about this is ironic.
He’s trying to push the agenda that the model of make good product –> sell good product is dying, but this is a falsehood as Balders Gate 3 and The Witcher 3 and God of War and Spider-Man and Elden Ring and Nintendo’s library and countless others prove. The problem is and has always been bloat and excess and unrealistic sales projections and mediocrity – all to convince you that microtransactions, deluxe editions, mobile monetisation methods, Games Pass are “needed” interventions to survive….then God of War Ragnarok gets a free Valhalla DLC and Balders Gate 3 doesn’t do any of those predatory practices and you start to wonder.
