Depending on what you actually count as a “video game” the industry is now generating somewhere between 200 and 350 billion dollars a year in annual revenue, making it by far the largest entertainment sector in the world regardless of whatever your exact definitions may be.
More people are playing video games than ever before, they are playing them for longer, and (the not so secret reality is that) video game companies have gotten a lot better at getting money out of them while they are.
Over what should have been the best half decade in the history of the industry, the overall market is down by as much as 30% from its peak, in the same time that the broader market has more than doubled.
Sooo how is it possible that even with record sales, record new revenue streams, record numbers of new players, and record new opportunities to monetize that new audience… video game companies have still managed to screw this up so badly?
Not quite just American studios. Ubi isn’t American and they’re closing studios in Europe and Canada. Pretty sure Tencent has pulled back a lot of their funding across the industry as well. Nintendo and Capcom are definitely on very firm ground right now thanks to their longer term outlook and solid bets paying off though, I agree.
I guess its really just the American Culture that has spread. What I mean by that is the burn and turn thats so prevalent. Nintendo seems to want to keep their Japanese developers, while the traditional west treats them like they treat literally every worker they have. Like the ideas are somehow completely disconnected from the people who made them. Then they wonder why their shit stinks when its produced by a bunch of junior devs sleeping on cots away from their families.
Japan has a standing culture on if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Added to a generally slow turn around for cultural shifts (for good and bad), they tend to be okay-ish on the not getting sucked into the next enshittification phase.
They also are ass backwards on some stuff for the same reason, so win some and lose some.
Plus we must be on the worst timeline when we are praising Nintendo…
I realize thats bad yeah, but average tenure in the US being like 5 years at most has me looking at places where people work for life and fit in feeling kinda left out. A lot of speculation there, I am 100% thinking like that because an axe is always over my head with private equity.