With all the doom and gloom that has been going on whenever the state of the gaming industry is discussed, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s VP and Head of 2nd/3rd party Content Ventures and Strategy Initiatives, Christian Svensson, has expressed optimism about the future. In an interview with The Game Business, Svensson spoke about how the next few years will be “even better” for games, and how the whole industry should be more optimistic despite what news headlines might say.
“Personally, I’m super excited,” said Svensson. “I’m in an incredibly privileged position in the industry to have amazing visibility into what games will be for the next three, four, five years, as we’re aware of our partners’ roadmaps. I literally cannot explain to you, like… Last year was an amazing year for games. This year will be an even better year for games. Next year will be an even better year for games. So, like, the trajectory of content is unbelievably positive, and we as an industry should be super optimistic about where we’re going to go in spite of the headlines.”
However, when it comes to providing reasons for this optimism, Svensson isn’t really able to go into too much detail, since companies tend to have development and product cycles to follow. He said that decisions are being made today that will likely end up helping the industry as a whole in the future.
“What we or other publishers or developers can’t talk about is, when you think about a product cycle – two years at the low end, five, six years at the higher end – the decisions we’re making now will affect where we’re going to be in five or six years. And obviously, the decisions we’re making now take into account where we are at this moment, right? And anticipating where we’re going to be over the next couple. So, the industry — there are no dire times for the industry ahead as far as I’m concerned. Very smart decisions are being made by our partners. Very smart decisions are being made by platforms. Be more comfortable than you think you should be,” he continued.
While Svensson likely meant to express optimism, his words can be difficult to take seriously these days when you simply take a look at all of the layoffs across the gaming industry that have taken place this year alone. Studios of all sizes have been facing problems, from Iron Galaxy Studios to the team behind Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and even VR developers like Polyarc Games. Even giants don’t seem to be immune, with Fortnite developer Epic Games having laid off over thousand of its employees back in March.
Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida believes that these layoffs may simply be the result of companies over-hiring during COVID-19 when they experienced growth, and now find themselves overstaffed.
“I think it was super optimism of the time during Covid-19,” he explained. “The industry grew so much because [people] had to stay at home, and video games were the easiest and cheaper way to be entertained. So they saw this huge increase in growth of the industry, and many investors poured money into the sector, so these publishers over-hired, over-invested. They hired too many people. They invested in projects that they shouldn’t have.”
“And when that additional demand subsided after Covid, the people running these companies saw the reality, that the industry went back to the original steady growth cog, that means that the growth became flat after a couple of years.”