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[JEMC]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

JEMC said:

Monday gaming news, part two:

'The industry's in a really horrible place,' Brenda Romero says: 'We were there in the '80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-industrys-in-a-really-horrible-place-brenda-romero-says-we-were-there-in-the-80s-for-the-crash-and-this-is-definitely-crashier/
Things are not great in the videogame industry right now. It seems like no matter what you do—make a hit, make a flop, don't make anything at all—there's a good likelihood that you're going to end up out of work. For people who've been around long enough, it brings back memories of the game industry crash of the early 1980s, when the fledgling business suffered a massive contraction driven by oversaturation, external competition, and executive mismanagement. But industry veterans Brenda and John Romero, who were there for that very rough patch, told GamesIndustry that the current situation seems even worse.
>> Great news for a Monday, right?

As for the first post, Brenda was already active before the videogame crash of 83, so she definitely knows what she's talking about here, though to be fair at Sir-Tech at the time, she would have been relatively sheltered from the fallout at the time.

My feeling about what's happening in the industry right now is one of disappointment. We saw the mini-crash that happened when the HD consoles launched and many studios and publishers went down because of the ballooning development costs.

And yet, here we are, 20 years later, seeing how Sony wasted $400 millions on Concord, how Eidos has had to lay off people after the cancellation of a game they had spend also over $100 millions, Ubisoft lost who knows how much money in Skull & Bones or the cancelled Prince of Persia Remake, etc.

It feels like they learned nothing! Like they think that because they survived the last one, they can't fall and they'll also make big money. Ridiculous!

And then there's MSoft, with the news from last year that Sarah Bond wanted to treat the Xbox division like other industries with expected profit margins that aren't realistic. Who knows how many execs coming from other business see things the same way?

So yeah, I agree with her feeling that the industry is in deep sh*t, and it's all self-inflicted.