It might even be a good thing.
Cast your eyes across the2025 video game release scheduleand you might notice a bit of a trend.
There are triple-A games here.
In fact, there are alotof triple-A video games here.
It’s worth a quick runthrough here, just to take in the scale of it.
There’s the long-awaited Skate 4, and the equally long-awaited Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.
All these are just the real headlines, and just the ones we know about right now.
2024 was not an ordinary year, and nor was 2023 before it.
Dozens of studios have closed.
Entire publishing monoliths have all but collapsed.
The result has been a year-long existential crisis.
Microsoft (and plenty of others) thinks we need to grow the market.
Shawn Layden thinks we need more double-A games again.
Whatever the solution, the problem has to be recognised.
In reality it’s probably a bit more complex.
There’s a bit of a time lag at work here, I suspect.
And probably a very important one at that.
That the rising tide of these two big ships pulling into harbour helps lift all the other still-pretty-big boats.
Importantly: a renewed wave of lovely, low-interest investment.
If things go well, we might be looking at another uptick in the cycle.
And that the sure things of 2013 and 2017 might not be such sure things again here in 2025.
It’s not only the video games industry that’s changed since the 2010s.
It’s the whole ecosystem around it.
What if the worst were to happen, then?
That’s when we really do get into unknown territory.
It might be a slow trickle.
It might be a bloodbath.
Or it might, even, mean an eventual change for the better.
