The Video Game Industry

to make a guess I'll answer with a question of my own. Why do people go to casinos? burning money is more quicker than getting into a car and driving to a slot machine.

Before you get the impression that the comparison to gambling is mere facetiousness, I shall argue that its effectively how the stock exchange and investment in general work.

Well, burning money is illegal in a lot of places.

With WB, I'd imagine there's some variation of Sunk Cost Fallacy at work, as well as...reputational damage control?

I feel confident enough to say that Suicide Squad was probably the result of "Investorism". The game seems more like it was made to appeal to investors than it was to customers. This is true of a lot of really big AAA-games (especially Live Service ones), they exist essentially to make the company look successful.

Basically two possibilities I can imagine are (and the two aren't mutually exclusive):

• The game was the investor's idea, they basically told WB "Hey, Live Service games make money, make one of these!"

• The game was WB's idea, they basically said "Hey, let's put these things in the game to make investors throw money at us!"

In the first scenario, admitting the game is a trainwreck would be basically telling shareholders "You guys are idiots!", and in the second scenario it'd be saying "We pretty much scammed you".

In either scenario admitting the game is a trainwreck is admitting that you are not succeeding.

So, from their perspective, it might feel like their best course of action is to downplay how un-successful the game is as much as they can. Basically, they want to give the impression that the game is "prosaically successful", "has unrealized potential" or is "sort of mid".

Once again I wonder what it takes to actually kill a big media company.

Obviously it can and does happen. MGM went bankrupt and got its assets bought by Amazon.

Bankruptcy.

so probably bigger companies choking out their niche or them fumbling their own niche or their niche just being outdated.

Generally, they aren't "killed," they're bought out in some form - which is just as likely to happen because the company is doing well and the board decides to get out while the getting's good than because the company is bankrupt and holding a fire sale.

I mean, Interplay Entertainment still exists as an independent company despite being one of the most well-known collapses in the video game industry - they just shut down Black Isle and sold Fallout to Bethesda to get the cash they needed to keep operating after their financial crisis. And interestingly, Blizzard, Xatrix, Obsidian and InXile were all spinoffs from Interplay at some point...and are now owned by Microsoft.

Edited by Ramidel on May 13th 2024 at 7:52:01 AM

WBD is in a lot of debt iirc and have been making a ton of dumb decisions recently. I don't know if they're on the brink or anything, but if they filed for bankruptcy within the next 5 years I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

Edited by Karxrida on May 13th 2024 at 9:42:04 AM

> Once again I wonder what it takes to actually kill a big media company.

a lot of it is sheer incompetence and not reading the room when it comes to trends,a remaining relevant

Yeah, WBD has been on the decline ever since they started writing off too many movies for taxes.

Square Enix said they will aggressively pursue multiplatform during their latest abysmal earnings report.

Square Enix told their US and EU divisions that they will be suffering from layoffs with their publishing, IT, and their Collective Indie label being singled out.

Edited by tclittle on May 13th 2024 at 1:43:35 PM

With how SE’s exclusivity deal clearly factored into their bad earnings, Sony’s mishandling of Helldivers, and Microsoft not managing what they buy then showing up to shut them down, I wonder if exclusivity will be discouraged from second parties

Wonder how this effects KH's exclusivity deal with Epic.

I don't think it world that is only for the PC market and I think they were referring to consoles when they mentioned multiplatform

Oh no, FF 7 Remake Cloud Edition

Most confusing edition title ever

Mooooooom! Why does Sony Interactive Entertainment get two CEOs!?

Sony splits up SIE: one unit focused on their studios headed by Play Station boss Hermen Holst, and one unit focused on platforms headed by Hideki Nishimura, SVP of Platform Experiences.

Edited by tclittle on May 13th 2024 at 7:22:58 AM

Having someone from Japan work with Third Party's might actually help get more of the smaller Japanese third parties back on Sony again without their weird censorship of them (Third Party games are notoriously censored in bizarre ways on Sony Platforms over the past few years or so while their Western 1st party games remain untouched only to get censored in Japan anyway. Its known as the Sony Check with Japanese gamers.)

I never understood why Sony decided to take a page out of early Nintendo's book with censorship.

Some weird notion of superiority and arrogance. Maybe? They're beating Microsoft and don't view Nintendo as competition, so they feel like they can get away with weird crap I guess.

TBF, Nintendo doesn't seem to view them as competition either. They both seem content to stay in their own lanes.

Edit:

On a tangent, I'm reminded of ye olde Console Wars. It occurs to me that the only one who ever really treated the Console Wars as "wars" was the companies besides Nintendo. Nintendo's advertising never really went after its competitors, preferring to, well, advertise their own stuff. By contrast, Sega had "Nintendon't" crap. And the ill fated Atari Jaguar had the whole "Do the Math" ad campaign.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2024 at 11:49:05 PM

Nintendo was the one everyone was trying to beat back in the day, and now with Sony and Microsoft, they are more content with leaving the others to do whatever their nonsense is and do their own thing, which gets them a lot of money, anyway.

Do you feel that discourages competition and allows three companies to monopolize in their own niches? A question I asked myself sometimes but I look at their niches’ competition.

Nintendo on portable-console hybrids being competed by Sony and Steam and insert company with switch like device. As underpowered as the Switch is, it is an innovative product and the cheapness leads to its accessibility. Sony’s weirdass cloud streaming device, I dont know if it was cheap to make to get a profit already. Steam deck set a wave of PC-games on the go but its expensive, and selling it to PC audiences who are probably satisfied with their setups already.

Sony has nobody in the current gen consoles (yes the Switch isnt part of that fight me) that could potentially take their crown . For as much as news like to paint the playstation 5 as an underperforming poo-poo loser from Sony’s own mouth it has the games and the strong processing power. Xbox doesnt seem to be pushing the Xbox as a rival to Sony anymore, which leaves PC as Sony’s biggest competitor and PC is its own lane, I’m sure nobody will be a contrarian to deny. Sony weirdly is sabotaging themselves after recent events on PC is trying to make people tether on the Playstation brand still on another platform. Maybe they want to make Playstation-centered PC at some point if the Playstation 5 engineering is somehow replicated on PC.

Microsoft probably has the biggest competition in their niche of streaming games service to the point of sabotaging their studios by cannibalizing their sales. Playstation has one, EA has one, Ubisoft has one. Though what makes Game Pass the best one is that its price is good for how much it offers and also being easily accessible, compared to everything else. That might change with the rumored price hike, allowing other people to offer cheaper alternatives if Microsoft stagnates on their lineup and others match the availability. Unlikely as companies see it as a supplement than the goal Microsoft has.

Anything missing?

fwiw Nintendo did take a potshot at Sega and their 32X when advertising the original Donkey Kong Country.

This isn't an "um actually" so much as an excuse to remind people the 32X exists.

Edited by Karxrida on May 13th 2024 at 9:56:06 AM

To my understanding, a common strategy for dealing with competition is to change slightly so that you're technically in a different niche.

In fact, at least according to my ecology class I took in College long ago, this actually even happens in biological competition. If one species doesn't drive the other to extinction, what often happens is they'll adapt slightly to use different resources so their competition is more manageable.

This is because competition is often not a zero-sum game so much as it is a negative-sum game, where both sides will lose to some degree and the competition is simply to cut your losses compared to your opponent.