General Gaming 2024 will be the year of closures.

[Remarkableriots]

Games industry leaders braced 'for up to two years of pain'

WWW.GAMESINDUSTRY.BIZ

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Games industry bosses thing 2024 will be 'the year of closures'

 

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Speaking to us privately, publishing, development and investment heads have said that continued high interest rates, oversaturated video game stores and cautious investors will result in more restructures, layoffs and closures.

 

One CEO of a public company told us: "If 2023 was the year of layoffs, 2024 will be the year of closures. Not just developers, but publishers, media, service companies... There are just too many unprofitable businesses in video games. We're looking at up to two years of pain."

 

Some investors we spoke to expect interest rates to come down, which will likely stimulate more investment, but not until later this year. Until then, there are simply "far safer ways to invest your money than video games. Although it's not the only industry facing this issue," said one angel investor.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Unfortunately, I have zero doubt that this will absolutely be the case, especially with Embracer seemingly picking up right where it left off in 2023.

[XxEvil AshxX]

This industry was set to implode eventually anyway. It needs a hard reset. Go back to simpler games.

 

Love or hate Game Pass, I kinda like what MS is going for. They know they can't spend years and years on giant expansive games and sustain that model, and even though they're still trying to get those inital projects out the door, they look to be focusing on shorter more digestible experiences that they can (hopefully) get done quicker. 

 

I actually like the idea of Hellblade 2 being a short experience. I'd prefer most of MS's games to be in the 10-15 hour range. Games like Hi-Fi Rush used to be the norm back in the day, but now it's like this novel thing that you can get a short, good experience for a decent price.

 

I completely expect Gears 6 to be relatively short, as well. And that Indiana Jones game I'd be willing to bet is less than 20 hours long.

 

Also, I get that indie devs basically fill that gap, but indie devs are small studios that aren't keeping hundreds or thousands of people employed. Not like Ubisoft and EA used to do back in the day by cranking out hundreds of licensed shovelware every year. They might have been crap, but they made money and kept people's jobs intact.