PlayStation Veteran Blames Gaming Industry Slump on Pandemic Overexpansion 58
Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has attributed the current wave of video game industry layoffs and slowdown to companies overextending during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I think it's an overreaction to the COVID situation. Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments," Yoshida told VentureBeat in an interview.
Yoshida, who left Sony in January after 31 years at PlayStation, suggested the industry's growth would have been more stable without the pandemic-driven surge. "If you take out the COVID years you'd have smoother growth over the years," he said. Yoshida's comments come amid widespread job cuts across the gaming sector, including at Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, and other major publishers following a post-pandemic decline in gaming engagement.
Yoshida, who left Sony in January after 31 years at PlayStation, suggested the industry's growth would have been more stable without the pandemic-driven surge. "If you take out the COVID years you'd have smoother growth over the years," he said. Yoshida's comments come amid widespread job cuts across the gaming sector, including at Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, and other major publishers following a post-pandemic decline in gaming engagement.
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
The hiring of people without a shred of passion for the fun the end product could provide is the issue.
It's not even just the prioritization of an ideology. If they gave a damn that their message came across in a positive light, the gaming world would be a whole lot different today.
Re: (Score:3)
Dunno, but I feel like the gaming industry, the movie industry, and the music industry all going to shit at roughly the same time isn't a coincident. Overall human artistic talent is dropping at an astounding rate. I blame it on cultural components that seem to be manually and purposely adjusted recently. It's as if true talent is being disregarded as being culturally distasteful or something. Almost as if people are starting to care too much about what others say.
Re: No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Every generation says the next generation of movies and music and games suck. It repeats forever.
No, this time it's different, because blah blah blah Star Wars blah blah not my Ninja Turtles etc. Sure bud.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You named two hit movie series from the 80s and 90s. Now, can you name two from the last 10 years? Can you name ONE in the last 5 years? Sure, kid.
Re: (Score:2)
Year : Number of Movies Made in America
1975 : 379 movies made
1976 : 414 movies made
1977 : 372 movies made
1978 : 370 movies made
1979 : 390 movies made
1980 : 366 movies made
1981 : 383 movies made
1982 : 396 movies made
1983 : 394 movies made
1984 : 464 movies made
1985 : 495 movies made
1986 : 524 movies made
1987 : 629 movies made
1988 : 709 movies made
1989 : 726 movies made
1990 : 681 movies made
1991 : 728 movies made
1992 : 751 movies made
1993 : 818 movies made
1994 : 936 movies made
1995 : 1,048 movies made
1996 : 1,
Re: No. (Score:3)
No, there was massive over expansion during Covid, period. You cannot deny it. Every single time layoffs are announced, go look up estimated headcount for that company from 2018 to present.
This delusion that gaming companies hired "the wrong people", or whatever the fuck you're actually trying to imply, they hired girls??, or that the entire tech sector, and government did is stupid. Unfounded, and fucking stupid.
The facts are clear as day. Pick a company and look at their change in headcount year over year
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about? I've been in the games industry over 20 years, I've never known a single person who would willingly overcome all of the obstacles to getting into this profession if they weren't passionate about what they do.
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like a programmer. That's not who the OP is talking about. The OP is talking about artistic directors, strategic directors, chief monetisation officers.
Programmers doing the work are passionate about gaming. The people telling them what to program in many cases are not and you can clearly see the difference between companies who want to make a compelling game and companies who are chasing a trend or worse game-milling.
That said your "never known a single person" just means you've been working at t
Re: (Score:2)
I've worked up, down and across organizations in my career, from mid-size to AAA studios. I've worked with PMs and artists and musicians and designers and directors and CVPs and the money people and the business people. I've been at the IC level, manager level, and director level myself. In my experience nobody, in any field, gets into games if they don't love working on games. And they don't stay if they don't want to be there. The technical and organizational complexity is an order of magnitude more chall
Re: (Score:2)
I KNOW I will get way downvoted for this, but I think the influence of the infamous Sweet Baby Inc. with their emphasis on "woke" content hurt most AAA games in recent years.
Re: (Score:2)
You should get downmodded. You're confusing "woke" with "crap". The industry has had inclusivity and what a lot of people called "woke" since it's inception. The only difference is you don't notice it when it's in a good game.
When you're unable to define what makes a game good / bad, compelling or not, what mechanics are properly engaging, you just fall back to the basic instinct of what you don't like. E.g. "female model ugly", or "omg black skin", "WOKENEESSSS!!!!111"
Learn what makes a game good or bad an
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
They made massive investments in DEI programs. DEI people are net negative productivity, as their primary purpose as activists is to hound specialists who really focus on their job and not social issues, and kicking them out of the company so they can be replaced with their fellow DEI activists.
When you have this sort of sand in the gears, you'll need a lot more brute force to get them to turn. Hence prices rapidly going up as inefficiencies within companies skyrocket with activist employees replacing skill
Re: (Score:2)
Sony's showcase has always sucked. Not to mention more and more games are being produced every year meaning more and more variety is going to pop up. 2022: 12,000+. 2023: 14,000+. 2024: 20,000+.
Re: Maybe it's just their extreme greed? (Score:2)
I feel mostly the opposite. What has taken me away from mainstream gaming for years is their rush to copy all their previous games with better graphics. If gaming companies would hire some people with different ideas, they might make something I want to play.
Re: (Score:3)
All of this discussion about DEI is irrelevant. Sony is not an American company.
Re: (Score:3)
Does a day go by where you don't blame something on DEI or trans people?
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The punchline being that most DEI activists are of European ancestry and very much straight.
Re: (Score:2)
The claim that blaming DEI equals blaming trans people is absurd on merits.
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Since Sony isn't an American company, so DEI programs have nothing to do with it. Sony made bad decisions (they do that a lot). They wanted to create 12 successful live service games in 3 years. That plan alone isn't possible. They don't have the development talent to pull it off. Live service games are expensive to keep going, almost as much as MMOs.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong Sony. Playstation and gaming are under Sony Entertainment inc, not Sony Group.
Sony Entertainment inc is managed from California and headquartered in New York.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean Sony Interactive Entertainment, and they are fully headquartered and managed in California. The CEO and other key leadership are all Japanese, not American, with several also in key leadership positions at Sony Group. Plus, SIE is still a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation; thus, Sony Group still has ultimate control over the decisions of SIE. SIE only makes moves that Sony Group agrees with. SIE wasn't forced or coerced (by a government) to have more DEI. And DEI is not responsible for their fai
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yes, that merger failed, didn't it? The point stands on even better merit though with this correction. Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ in California, not just management.
I enjoy sparring with people who spin it into "yes, all operational control is in US, leadership is in US, studios in question are from Western countries, but the top leadership that has no operational control, merely ultimate oversight is Japanese. Therefore it's a Japanese company".
Granted, law doesn't see it this way. Taxman doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
Your point is irrelevant. Because the laws didn't force them to spend a ton of money of DEI programs. The only thing they were forced to do under law was prohibit discrimination and force anti-discrimination training - which is a drop in the bucket. Anything else DEI is their own doing, and also not a reason they lost so much money.
DEI didn't force them to invest in creating Concord. DEI isn't why Concord failed. You cannot create a game in a mostly free to play genre that costs $40 upfront and expect it to
Re: (Score:2)
>Because the laws
Red herring denied. I don't really care Margaret.
>DEI didn't force them to invest in creating Concord.
That would be because DEI is a destructive force, not a creative one. Its specialty is infiltration and destruction from within. Concord had a chance of being what Sony set it up to be, quoting PlayStation exec: "future of PlayStation brand".
And then DEI infiltrated it and devoured it from within. As DEI does to everything it touches. The only thing you can affect once the cancer is i
Re: (Score:2)
Concord had a chance of being what Sony set it up to be, quoting PlayStation exec: "future of PlayStation brand".
Nope. The moment they decided it was $40 upfront; it was doomed. Everything else is made up nonsense from a complete retard.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure that's it, and hiring massive body of people who turned it into what it ended up as had no impact at all.
Best of luck.
Re: (Score:2)
The current costs for Playstation Plus range from 80 USD/year to 160 USD/year.
The lowest level includes three games a month, usually one "big name" game that's usually either microtransaction-based or older, and two independent games. The higher levels include access to back catalogs of games. I can't judge those personally because I only have the lowest level.
How about a decade of utterly SH|T games? (Score:1, Informative)
But ... (Score:1)
Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has attributed the current wave of video game industry layoffs and slowdown to companies overextending during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I think it's an overreaction to the COVID situation. Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments," Yoshida told VentureBeat in an interview.
I'm sorry, but that explanation just isn't going to cut it.
How can we get any panic porn out of that???
Re: (Score:2)
it's true that it's one of the reasons though. picture this:
it's the spring of 2020, the new reality is setting in, the shutdowns are starting.. and the online spending skyrockets. (a similar thing, on a smaller scale, already happened back in 2008). now, the BRILLIANT investors are looking at these numbers and are like shutupandtakemymoney.png. most games have a production cycle from 12 to 18 months.. so by the times the games made with these investments are out, guess what? there are no shutdowns anymore
The problem is live services (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem as the Jimquisition show over on YouTube has repeatedly pointed out is that live services games are designed from the get-go to monopolize your time. All of your time. In order for you to properly play the games you have to constantly log in and spend a bunch of time playing them. They are f
Re: (Score:3)
Instead of trying something new or supporting different ideas they wanted to capture someone else audience by copying what they did... poorly. It doesn't work like that even if you do it well, let alone when you do it badly.
The problem with console gaming is not the quality of the games... I mean that is a problem but it's not Sony's and Microsoft's specific problem. The problem they have is that they'
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is it costs to much to buy in (Score:2)
The problem is 'gaming' has gotten to expensive.
There are a lot of reasons for the price of hardware but big boom in gaming happened in the later 90s - early 2010s era, when I think if you look at the price tag of the hardware needed to have a good experience and even to play competitively you'd find after some inflation adjustments it cost about 1/2 of what it does today.
The price of the games themselves though again with some inflation adjustment has actually come down. There was some Gillette model goin
Incorrect (Score:1)
Make better games (Score:2)
When Sony invests massive amounts of money into a live service game that no one asked for like Concord, it has a negative impact on the platform. Think about what could have been achieved had they made that investment in Play Station's strength: single player games. Instead, they want to cash in on recurring revenue from live services. For a fraction of the money they've wasted, we could have had a Days Gone 2 and a number of other games that are begging to be made. Instead, we got a game that lasted a
Nothing's new and exciting (Score:3)
Something revolutionary comes out, people will pay out. A sequel or two to something revolutionary comes out, people will pay out for that too.
What's exciting right now? It's all shiner versions of the same thing at the top end, and an insurmountable mountain of garbage at the bottom that AI is growing exponentially... and all the AI-assist tech is gutting the bottom of the gaming industry so there are far fewer people to come up with the next revolutionary idea.
I'm not going to play my old Commodore 64 games except occasionally for nostalgia, but I have plenty of games that are 10-20 years old that are still very enjoyable today after having taken a break from them. Why would I fork out hundreds for new games, or for consoles (though I'm a PC guy regardless)? GTA VI? I mean, OK, but they want ludicrous amounts of money for it and it'll likely be mostly online with $$$ DLC. Single player GTA V with some mods does just fine, thanks. Fallout: New Vegas is the same deal - great game with some bugs and missing bits that mods more than make up for, and it's still very re-playable.
Stagnation and even shrinkage of the industry does not surprise me at in current circumstances.
Nope (Score:2)
in 2023 (post-COVID), your company made a plan to try and release *12 LIVE SERVICE GAMES* by 2026. That wasn't a good idea during COVID, it was never going to be good after. It is not possible to have 12 successful (by Sony's standards) live service games going simultaneously.