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The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024
If you’re a player or casual observer, the video game industry seems to have it all. Yet growth is now illusory, layoffs abundant, and game/studio shutdowns common. Why? And how might things change?
TheSuper Mario Bros. Movie grossed $1.4 billion worldwide, ranking second for all theatrical releases in 2023 and third among all animated films in history; it more than tripled the box office of 2019’s Detective Pikachu, which had held the record for a video game adaptation. But subscriptions, Covid, Metcalfe’s law, and IDFA are not sufficient explanations for why revenues are falling so short of economic averages, internal and external forecasts, and especially media comps (again, SVOD, movies, TV, books, music are all up, even with inflation). CD Projekt Red spent $436 million on Cyberpunk 2077 and its DLC expansion – a budget possible only because it followed up CDRP’s The Witcher III, the 8th best selling game of the last 25 years, and because CDPR is based in Poland, where developer salaries are roughly 50% cheaper in USD.
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