Xbox And PlayStation they navigate in bad waters, this should be clear to everyone by now. This does not mean that they are about to close up shop, but simply that they are facing a problematic phase of their existence, due to particularly unfavorable market conditions and choices that have not brought the hoped-for results made by the relevant managements over the last few years. The issues they have to face are well known: stagnant console market with lower than expected sales, increasingly high development costs, underestimation of the post-COVID undertow, subscription services that have not taken off, hardware sold with very low margins, if not in loss and more.
Now, the picture is clear and has been told many times. Now even many of the observers who hid their heads in the sand in recent years have had to change their minds. Of course the crisis of two of the largest hardware manufacturers has inevitably spilled over into the entire sector, with the main publishers having started to ask themselves questions and review their plans, based on the available numbers, which they certainly know better than us.
The Shogun knew it
Let's see: has Xbox bet everything on Game Pass, obtaining lower-than-expected results, while at the same time slowing down the traditional market (subscribers buy fewer games)? Faced with declining sales and an alternative that isn't taking off, how should a publisher behave? Should he continue to support a platform that doesn't guarantee him returns? Or look elsewhere?
For PlayStation the situation is better, but still not stable: PS5 sells, but not as well as Sony thought. The generation has not yet said anything, with many software houses, even leading ones, who have not managed to launch even a new game. So why PS5 Pro? Who is it for? How can you revive a market now at risk of asphyxiation?
These are the voices reported from behind the scenes of GDC 2024, rumors that come from high-level operators in the sector and which have been collected by highly reliable journalists such as Christoper Dring. A healthy sector would use them to reflect on its state and, if necessary, also do the healthy self-criticism that helps it grow. A healthy sector, indeed. Ours, on the other hand, is trying at all costs to find some sand in which to bury his head, because obviously it's very comfortable. In particular, some pockets of core players really don't accept the possibility that there is a crisis underway and that profound changes are needed to overcome it. So we still think about exclusives, about consoles that sell ten units more or ten units less and about arguments that made sense a few years ago, but which are no longer applicable to a market increasingly crushed by evils that come from unsuspected years and who have simply found an outlet in these, between layoffs, dozens of canceled projects in development and an atmosphere that is becoming increasingly less healthy for a certain way of understanding the medium.
After all Hiroshi Yamauchi, the historic president of Nintendo who led the company into the world of video games, had already predicted what would happen in an interview given in 2001: “Until now games have had nothing to do with films, as I continued saying all this time, but now people are saying that from now on every game will be like a movie. We've come this far, but somewhere along the way we forgot that we should be making games, not movies. Now, As a result, game development is becoming a circus, costs are skyrocketing, users are getting bored faster than ever, and the development of truly new games – that is, new ways to have fun – is at a virtual standstill.” What else to add?
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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