Any info on why the industry is in this spot? Or links for more insight?
It seems like budgets are getting bigger, and development cycles are lasting longer. Which on a surface level would make you think that less staff doesn’t add up.
I'll spare you the long paragraphs for now and just give you the bullet points
-Hardware is more expensive to make, and Sony doesn't get the late-in-life cycle relief in component cost decreasing. Savings they could have used to decrease the console price to attract more consumers
-The console market is hardly growing at all now. So less consumers to support spending by Sony
-Development costs have increased a lot, for different reasons. Some good, some bad, some expected, some driven by consumer behavior.
-The consumers that are in the market behave in a way that tightens the squeeze. Mainly, they don't play a lot of games for a lot of hours. They play a few games for a lot of hours. So if you aren't making one of those selected games, your game has to be a hit. This is one of the reasons Sony has been chasing a game-as-a-service hit so hard.
-This day was coming for Sony. Them taking a bigger share of the console market kinda delayed it, but from leaks and the FTC trial it was clear they knew "winning the console war" was never gonna be enough to sustain the business.
All the moves you see MS and Sony making are just responses to tougher market conditions in the face of investors still wanting to see healthy margins.
For the status quo to continue either:
The console market has to start growing at a decent clip. Don't see this happening
-Consumer behavior has to change. Don't see this happening
-Development costs have to shrink. Hard to do, some stuff can be done, but it won't be popular with anyone besides investors