Is the video game industry in a good place right now? It depends on who you ask. After all, if you ask gamers, they might look at things solely from the gaming standpoint and what titles they’ve played recently that have been good. If you ask a developer, you’re likely going to hear about the various layoffs that have gripped the industry and the fear amongst certain devs that they could be next. Or, if you ask publishers like Microsoft, Sony, and even Nintendo, they’ll tell you that they feel the gaming industry is doing great overall. However, just because it’s “doing great” in their minds doesn’t mean it’s growing.
Those “in the know” understand that while we may be in the “greatest generation” of gaming in the hardware sense, especially on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S side, the sales of those same consoles aren’t the same as they were in the previous generation. Microsoft is seriously struggling with its console sales, and even Sony feels that PS5 sales will hit a slump in the current fiscal year due to a lack of games.
Enter Shawn Layden, former leader of Sony, who talked with IGN and noted that he feels there’s a mini-crisis going on in the form of trying to grow the console player base in the world:
“If you look at the history of consoles, from PS1 to PS5 and everything associated in those verticals, the global install base in any one of those generations never got over about 250 million. No matter how you rack it up. There’s at one point in time when the Wii came out, and thanks to Wii Fit, an extra like 20 million units got sold because everyone thought they could lose weight. But that wasn’t sustainable, and that came crashing down. And we’re still kind of in the 250 million overall install base of active consoles. I think that’s a challenge. We’ve managed to do a lot over time, and during the pandemic, revenues went up 20-25%, but it was still just getting more money from the same people. It wasn’t necessarily bringing new people into the console gaming world.”
That’s a lot to process, and Layden is right about certain things, such as the fact that the overall user base of consoles hasn’t grown in recent generations. The biggest reasons for that might simply be age, money, and the arrival of good games on mobile devices.
Obviously, the gaming space isn’t dying, but it isn’t growing as some feel it should. Thus, it’s something to keep an eye on.
