2024 may not be kind for game developers.

Scott_Arm said:
This isn't helping with the framing of that headline. I'll help you out. "Capitalism" doesn't come out of Phil Spencer's mouth, but "growth" does. He talks of getting the industry back to growth to minimize the human cost, not switching economic systems. The pcgamer writer places the blame at capitalism, and the headline makes it sound like Phil Spencer did too. Again, I'm not going to get into an argument about capitalism in this thread, but the headline is completely dishonest.
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Phil the Red, I thought I'd never say it
 
It's not greed. It's more money in people's 401ks.

It saddens me that you guys don't think businesses should maximize profits for shareholders, but I'll leave it at that and move on.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
It's not greed. The big publishers have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. Sometimes that means layoffs happen, as regrettable as that is.
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You're basically arguing that 'corporate greed' is literally not a thing. Ever. In any situation. That literally any practice any business ever does to make more money, no matter how obviously scummy, is not 'greed' and is in fact always justified.

Basically, the term 'greed' shouldn't even exist.

I still think you're missing that the Covid gaming boom was a temporary thing, and was clearly not sustainable. And if they continue to try and chase that level of rapid growth forever, they will sever their own arms and limbs trying to do so. It's complete absurdity. They will be forced back to normalization whether they like it or not, and any sensible companies will simply absorb the hit and make sure they're as prepared to continue successful operations in the future as possible. But greedy companies will grab the saw and start going at their limb to try and shed weight in a desperate bid to keep the share price growth going, even though they'll realize in due time that they actually need that limb to function in the first place.

It's especially ridiculous because share price doesn't dictate financial health of a company, at least not when we're talking the difference between a mere healthy stock price and an inflated/ATH one. It's not as if a healthy company being sensible is going to have their stock crash to the bottom. You lose the stock hype and some benefits from that, but it doesn't mean the balance sheet is gonna hurt because of it. Health and sustainability should always be #1 priority, and frankly, anybody who suggests that any healthy company has an obligation to shareholders over their own employees is gonna get a giant middle finger from me.
 
It's impossible to know whether any given layoffs are a good move. The "greed" argument is a simplistic one. In the long run, share prices reflect value. Not all employees are of equal value to an enterprise and sometimes trimming is necessary. Sometimes the knife is cutting off a limb, but most of the time it's cutting fat and on rare occasions, cancer.

That's how efficiency happens. One cut of the knife at a time.

I'm not saying every dev getting cut right now deserves it, but it's extremely naive to assume that Sony, MS etc.... aren't weighing everything and doing what they think is best for the continued success of their enterprises, including the 85% of their employees they retained.
 
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Johnny Awesome said:
It's impossible to know whether any given layoffs are a good move. The "greed" argument is a simplistic one. In the long run, share prices reflect value. Not all employees are of equal value to an enterprise and sometimes trimming is necessary. Sometimes the knife is cutting off a limb, but most of the time it's cutting fat and on rare occasions, cancer.

That's how efficiency happens. One cut of the knife at a time.

I'm not saying every dev getting cut right now deserves it, but it's extremely naive to assume that Sony, MS etc.... aren't weighing everything and doing what they think is best for the continued success of their enterprises, including the 85% of their employees they retained.
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You are doing again what @Seanspeed said. You are excusing the inexcusable and pretend greed doesn't exist, because every measure a company does has to be rationalized as a "strategy".

All these layoffs are the result of companies trying to appease the continuous growth/profit expectations of the shareholders. They always want to see their profits increase. Businesses saw larger profits and bigger growth due to the COVID pandemic. Since shareholders (and CEOs) always want growth and more profits, they overinvested, expecting to see growth from the unsustainable performance caused from the pandemic period.

When the market started settling down and back to normal, the growth started to show as a negative. To appease the shareholders and CEO bonuses, those that had to pay the price were the people who actually worked hard, as a cost cutting measure. Hence the massive layouts.
 
It's not "appeasing" shareholders as much as it's delivering return on investment. That's how capital gets efficiently allocated. Protecting ineffiencies is a surefire route to lower economic growth and standards of living.

If you don't believe in that like I do it's fine. We'll leave it at that.
 
If 9-figure budgets are necessary to produce AAA games, then the only publishers and developers who can finance such games are huge public corporations and they will always be at the whims and demands of the market and Wall Street.
 
Has anyone seen those Microsoft Copilot ads which appear in certain apps, mainly word games?

It's odd, it's images of animals playing basketball.

So Copilot has some image-generation capabilities, I'm assuming.

But those images look like the modern version of those old cheesy paintings of dogs playing poker.

So is MS trying to say this AI image-generator can create anything, including images which maybe few people would want?
 
AI is coming. People can put their heads in the sand all they want.

Now: Dogs playing poker.
Soon: As good as the Mona Lisa.
Later: Better than the best painting you've ever seen or imagined.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
This isn't going to make anyone around here feel any better, but AI creators are likely the long term solution to ballooning game budgets
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I'm not so sure at least in the sense it's going to drop game budgets across the board.

Regardless of how much AI poentially lowers costs you're going to likely have some properties that can justify a high budget (and the associated risk/reward). That budget might be just directed into other areas. I mean if we just look into games that use licensed IP for example any freed up budget directly for development may just be used to bid for said IP.

What AI can do, and what I have the most optimism for, is that it can especially raise the floor quality (or at least potential) of games and especially be a big boost to indie/more niche targetted games. Or at least the middle upwards, since AI also has the potential for new extremes of the amount of shovelware.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
AI is coming. People can put their heads in the sand all they want.

Now: Dogs playing poker.
Soon: As good as the Mona Lisa.
Later: Better than the best painting you've ever seen or imagined.
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I don't get what is the point you are trying to make
 
milk said:
What was there not to understand? He is saying the quality of AI output will improve and become more useful.
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Which argument is he addressing? Was there an argument regarding weather AI is going to improve or if it's going to stay?
 
Nesh said:
Which argument is he addressing? Was there an argument regarding weather AI is going to improve or if it's going to stay?
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Mybe you missed a couple posts, but Johnny said generarive AI tools are likely to enable a lowering of production costs.

Random Guy countered that he thinks AI is not good enough for AAA, might at most be useful for low budget productions. His example was AI is producing dogs playing poker paintings.

To that Johnny said those dogs will eventually become mona lisa.

/shifty.mode.off
 
My take: I'm ine of those hipsters that enjoys cheesy kitsch art and decor ironically, and as such I love dogs playing poker paintings. And, uhhhh. something AI game productions.
 
milk said:
Mybe you missed a couple posts, but Johnny said generarive AI tools are likely to enable a lowering of production costs.

Random Guy countered that he thinks AI is not good enough for AAA, might at most be useful for low budget productions. His example was AI is producing dogs playing poker paintings.

To that Johnny said those dogs will eventually become mona lisa.
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So there's a missing quote from Jonny who he's replying to? I thought he was just running on from his previous AI comment and didn't see context either.

milk said:
/shifty.mode.off
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:mrgreen:
 
IMO, a good article discussing the difficulties of modern AAA game publishing and how the market, especially the "core" console makers (Sony and Microsoft are adjusting).

www.ign.com

Xbox Isn't The Only One Rethinking Console Exclusives - IGN

With the turmoil in the games industry Xbox, but also PlayStation and Nintendo, are looking beyond the bastion of hardware exclusives to grow their brand.
www.ign.com www.ign.com

2024 is predicted to continue to filled with bad news and more layoffs for the gaming industry.

Regards,
SB
 
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