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On a positive note: What about the future of consolidation are you actually looking forward to?
- Thread starter Spring-Loaded
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Afaik I have only seen more jobs created so far.
Anyways any future we should hope for should have UBI so out of work devs can make indie studios of they want.
in the short term, maybe
in the long term, the heads of xbox/playstation/nintendo (or whoever are the companies that completely dominate 20 years from now) signing off on a combined total of 75% of project budgets, compared to a combined total of, idk 15% today is bad for diversity
2–4 giants dominating the industry also makes it more difficult for new developers to enter the industry. if 15 years from now, you need to be on either game pass / spartacus / amazon game subscription service to at all get your projects funded, that's a shift in power from independent actors, towards the giants, compared to to today's situation. long term, this is bad for diversity
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I find this hard to understand because gaming was never so diverse thanks to indies, the complete opposite of huge companies. I can't see a future where a huge company would publish Disco Elysium with the type of writing it has, let alone give it a AAA budget.
I don't like all the consolidation but to find some positives:
Sony investing in and boosting the quality of the games from their first party, Sony does seem to do a good job at making sure they have quality. Excited for Bluepoint and Housemarque's next games! And other way around, Bungie boosting Sony's multiplayer and live-service games. Mostly a single player gamer nowadays though.
Xbox letting their teams have more creative control like Call of Duty not being yearly and seeing other Activision IP's see the light of day. Also, since I just got a Series X, getting these games on Game Pass. Got 3 years of Game Pass for like $100.
For the love of God, nobody take this as "Microsoft doesn't have quality games??" or "Sony doesn't have creative freedom??." Thank you.
Sony investing in and boosting the quality of the games from their first party, Sony does seem to do a good job at making sure they have quality. Excited for Bluepoint and Housemarque's next games! And other way around, Bungie boosting Sony's multiplayer and live-service games. Mostly a single player gamer nowadays though.
Xbox letting their teams have more creative control like Call of Duty not being yearly and seeing other Activision IP's see the light of day. Also, since I just got a Series X, getting these games on Game Pass. Got 3 years of Game Pass for like $100.
For the love of God, nobody take this as "Microsoft doesn't have quality games??" or "Sony doesn't have creative freedom??." Thank you.
redundancies are always eliminated in mergers and acquisitions. jobs have been created because the trend in the industry is larger budgets. that increase in jobs is not related to consolidation. long term, more jobs will be eliminated due to consolidate than in a counterfactual scenario without consolidation
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A lot more studios have a lot more financial security now. That's always good.
Activision and Blizzard are likelier to become much better places for women too, depending on how well Microsoft cleans house.
Activision and Blizzard are likelier to become much better places for women too, depending on how well Microsoft cleans house.
The blizz acquisition specifically gives me hope that the studio can treat its employees at least marginally better (low bar I know) and the devs will feel empowered to create what they would like more.
Maybe even a small HOTS revival? plsssss
I'm curious where that perception comes from. I mean, I look at what Microsoft put out last year from their first parties (XBOX MS Flight Sim, Age of Empires IV, Psychonauts 2, Deathloop, Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5), and I really can't think of a single thing any of those games have in common, other than the name of the publisher. I think if anything, on Microsoft's end anyway, the "consolidation" has led so far to a more diverse lineup than they have probably ever had, and I'm guessing that is only going to get more diverse going forward.
But like you say, the upside to that upside is there being even more room for futher diversity and disruption among indie studios.
another issue i didn't bring up before, the higher percentage of the market is controlled by a small number of giants, the more difficult the bargaining position of employees who want to fight for better work conditions, or against toxic workplaces, because they'll have fewer other potential employers to go to.
More games in different subscriptions services, likely leading to me saving money. Not just Game Pass, I can see Embracer, Tencent and Sony going down a similar path as well.
Greater diversity of games. While this might be a weird one, I can't help but feel like the consolidated future of gaming will likely lead to more prominent figures creating their own independent studios as well as a continued growth of more indie games.
This one is iffy and more about the subscription future than the consolidation future but I feel they go hand in hand: greater security for more niche big budget games and studios. Games like Dishonored (all 3) and Prey are great but they failed to find commercial success despite being critically acclaimed, likely in large part due to the full asking price and them being more "niche" but Game Pass and other services lower the barrier of entry and may give those games a better chance to thrive.
Consolidation has definite downsides, but the way things are looking now I'm not sure it'll be all bad
Greater diversity of games. While this might be a weird one, I can't help but feel like the consolidated future of gaming will likely lead to more prominent figures creating their own independent studios as well as a continued growth of more indie games.
This one is iffy and more about the subscription future than the consolidation future but I feel they go hand in hand: greater security for more niche big budget games and studios. Games like Dishonored (all 3) and Prey are great but they failed to find commercial success despite being critically acclaimed, likely in large part due to the full asking price and them being more "niche" but Game Pass and other services lower the barrier of entry and may give those games a better chance to thrive.
Consolidation has definite downsides, but the way things are looking now I'm not sure it'll be all bad
I would love to see Konami picked up by Sony or Nintendo but I think Sony would do more with the catalog of IP's plus they could work with Kojima on a new Metal Gear if chooses.
I'm not looking forward to any of it long term, but maybe there's a 1% chance these large companies consolidating might have an interest and effectiveness in fighting against ISP data caps in an effort to push their game streaming platforms. At least the ones who aren't owned or own ISPs themselves. It would probably take that level of evil to defeat another evil. It still wouldn't be worth it in the end.
This is a tough one but I think I can explain what I am looking for. Diablo 3 seasons have been pretty interesting for a long time and you can tell that Bungie has been tweaking the D2 seasonal format for years. So I am hoping that Bungie and Blizzard can help the industry move away from the current microtransaction and loot focused GaaS/live services we see in other games.
The upside is that some of the super rich will become ultra rich. For consumers? A future where AAA games can never be owned, and unless you pay a steep price every month then you are denied access to any of them.
acti-blizzard games on gamepass and steam
clean out the management of their companies hopefully
less companies tied to CoD
clean out the management of their companies hopefully
less companies tied to CoD
I've always accepted that I may not have the hardware or money to be able to play every game out there, and that's always been okay. If it comes to pass that 3 or so big companies own the vast majority of studios (which, btw, I'm not fully on board with the premise yet), I'll know that whichever one, two, or all devices I own to play with these games, that studios will be producing good variety and hopefully good quality because the companies are competing hard with each other. I know that if one of them aren't producing the games I like, or are treating their employees abhorrently, then I can change to one of the others and still have a lot of good quality. Even if I don't get to play every game out there, that's fine, not like I have the time for all of them!
Larger budgets exist because of larger demand.
Consolidation = larger budgets because the ones buying have a lot of money. Obsidian had a 50/50 chance of folding, that would have been a lot of jobs in the wind.
Anyways, and I am talking from a utilitarian viewpoint here, if one person in one company can do the same job of 2 people when the companies are combined should we keep the 2 jobs available or just cut down to 1 job? If the unemployed person is not getting benefits than obviously you want to have as many jobs as possible just to help that person pay their bills, but if they are given good benefits until they can find another job that could help to grow the games industry overall or even just the economy more generally with no loss. That would require an improvement in the unemployment benefits compared to what the US and others have right now of course.
All of our jobs will be automated at some point anyways, we should probably move to having better benefits sooner than later.
These are good ones
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