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With what we saw cancelled today, it does seem like they had fever dreams of all these "verticals" becoming successful. They likely required staffing and product development all of their own, despite being on UEFN. They were probably given their own budgets and allowances, and section leads were likely allowed to handle the process.

@GameOverThirty I'd guess having too many non-product platform technology verticals lets you expand w/o employee ROI concerns, exacerbated by Fortnite's runaway success.

When I say that staffing numbers in the games industry make absolutely no sense, Epic Games is a prime example. While perfect numbers are hard to find, staff count looks something like this: 2019 ~ 2000 employees 2021 ~ over 4000 2022 ~ over 5000 2023 (layoffs) 2023 ~ over 4000 2026 (layoffs) 2026 ~ Somewhere between 3000-4000 I don't care how successful #Fortnite is, this kind of hiring is just completely overboard. Very few companies in other sectors would EVER greenlight this type of hiring ramp. Who's looking at the numbers in 2021 and 2022 and saying "Yeah, this is fine." How do people miss the obvious end state? I've spent my entire career in fortune 500 companies, and I cannot answer this question: Why is the games industry, and technology in general, so utterly terrible at controlling their hiring?

Meanwhile... Valve only employs about 350 people despite printing money with Steam. 150 are dedicated to development. The remaining 200 live as staff on Gaben's yacht.

@MrWhimsical25 None of it matters. They sold a piece of hardware. My plastic box outsold your plastic box this month. 4D chess. Boom.

@GameOverThirty Any moment now someone gonna post a pic or say “Their doing fine because the console is selling” Didn’t knew that a console being sold is keeping Media Molecule alive or Bend Studio Or Bluepoint… oh wait

Layoffs and financial mismanagement at every other video game company not named Sony? -- Grab your pitchforks. We're going to burn it all down. Layoffs and financial mismanagement at PlayStation? -- Sony is doing the right thing and cleaning up after the Jim Ryan era. It's unfortunate, but it must be done. Sony is clearly a step ahead of the game here. 😆

@Shp_Mastr445 I believe Marathon will survive, and be supported by an organization called "Bungie." However, Bungie will continue to be folded into PlayStation. Where do you draw the line? What is Bungie?

@GameOverThirty You think bungie could be shut down especially now since marsthon isn’t the major hit they thought it would be?

@HazzadorGamin I'm a devout capitalist, and I well understand the current games industry layoffs, and what's actually causing them... But I do just have to laugh a bit when people somehow twist Sony's over-ramp and poor financial discipline into some kind of genius level 4D chess maneuver. 😆

As much as shutting down Studios is really Bad, sony/playstation is correcting the wrong path they took with Live service & Jim Ryan they understand importance of their Hardware, people generally associate console wars with such news but this more of reboot for next gen.

The @NHL has absolutely no idea how goaltender interference works and is just making it up as they go along. They will reference rules that literally contradict what happened on the ice, or in some cases, completely ignore rules that would have changed the outcome.

When Sony was handing out live service money, it was possible to put together a pitch and get a studio funded (or you needed to know the right people in the right places). Deviation Games was one of the "winners" of that process. The Deviation deal fell apart. Instead of just letting it die, Sony tried to salvage some of it by bringing them in and calling it Dark Outlaw. Now we're seeing the big publishers come to grips with the fact that they have a massive cost base with little to show for it. Everyone is trimming, again. Just like we saw in 2025, 2024, 2023, etc., if a studio hasn't pushed their project into full production, or an concept was restarted several times, they are a prime target for cutbacks. Everyone is cutting back cost base.

This isn't that clear, and in most cases won't actually play out in any noticeable way. The general rule of thumb, even when using CPU bound games, is that rendering ANYTHING at a lower resolution should be easier on the machine as a whole, even the CPU. A game would have be hitting the CPU so intensely that the game is barely operating as-is to be truly CPU bound. An example might be playing something like Teardown and blowing up every square inch of terrain at the same time. That would render the game so slow that no amount of DLSS upscaling would help. It's unplayable. In most games, CPU bound just means the CPU is being hit the hardest in processing and that by reducing internal resolution, you should relieve some stress on the CPU as well. In the vast majority of cases, using DLSS to reduce the internal resolution and just upscale to the desired output will result in better performance and input.

@PeterP_1985 No he's right depending on the game. The only time you should use DLSS/FSR is if you're gpu bound CPU bound games wont benefit from it and will actually increase frametimes.

This is absolute nonsense

Coming out of the 2010s, and into the early 2020s, every video game company was saying the same thing about mobile: "We need a mobile offering." That strategy is quietly being cancelled, as more people realize that succeeding in mobile is now much more complicated, and challenging, than it was 5-10 years ago. A company can succeed in mobile, but it doesn't look like the traditional model. If a company didn't buy in, or be lucky enough to already have a hit, the chance of success is now significantly lower than it used to be. The cost base that was set up to support mobile development will be slashed, or moved into something else.

@PeterP_1985 Just using DLSS (without any of the other enhancements like frame gen) arguably makes response time better if you're generating more real frames. It's only when injecting Nvidia's other enhancements does the system introduce lag to handle that processing.

This is at Epic, where they print #Fortnite money. It brings home a harsh reality that I've been talking about even prior to COVID over-hiring. The numbers in the games industry don't make any sense to me. The industry over-hired for certain business models, and just in general, if I'm being honest. Now layer on the strategy of making fewer games (because they need to stop flooding the market) and you're going to see layoffs. Now, TBF to Epic, this is a very healthy severance package. This will put someone on their feet for several months, hopefully long enough to find work. epicgames.com/site/en-US/new…

The "exclusive" thing is fair debate. I don't even know what it really means for them anymore, especially since MSFT isn't ever going to go back to a hardware exclusive game (it would kill their new strategy). That leaves PlayStation and Switch 2. If we remove obvious multi-plats like CoD, does it help or hurt MSFT to hold certain brands on Xbox + PC for some time? I genuinely don't know the answer, but I generally don't follow the sentiment of social media. It's the real market, outside of this hellsite, that matters.

I think history will be kinda to him especially when details come out in relation to what went on during the Xbox Series Era (Margins/Gamepass/Console price increase - Microsoft) If Forza, Gears & Halo do well it won't have technically released under him, but it was more or less completed under him. In relation to their current strategy I do like it... But I do think it would be more effective with exclusives. The PC market (Prebuilt) has good potential of market properly and the more unique selling points you have the better.

Phil Spencer deserves a lot of credit for revamping #Xbox after MSFT took their eye off the ball during the Xbox One launch. He fought for Xbox to remain a consumer facing brand, especially with MSFT having failed in numerous other consumer product lines. He completed the acquisition of ABK despite numerous roadblocks (some of which were hilariously off base). However, given the updates over the past month, it's starting to make logical sense that he already had one foot out the door. Even from the outside you can tell that new leadership at Xbox is using a revamped consumer approach to the product. I'd also argue that what we saw at GDC was good for developers, though that was set in motion years ago, during Spencer's watch. You can tell there are two parallel, but complementary strategies at Xbox right now: Consumer AND Developer. How do we sell it? How do we make it easier to develop on the platform? Does this work over the next decade? I don't know, and neither do you. I like what I'm seeing, but my personal view doesn't mean market success. That's a much more complicated answer, especially when a company sees a mix of results.

I believe it's also important to call out the elephant in the room here. Scopely spent hundreds of millions of dollars on user acquisition. They essentially entrenched themselves by risking hundreds of millions of dollars on UA. Did it work? Yes. Is that a viable strategy for everyone? Absolutely not.

The mobile games marketplace is now in the midst of a very similar problem compared to their desktop / living room counterparts: Entrenched consumers and saturation. The CEO is Scopely is correct. 6-10 years ago, there was a "need" for new experiences. End point consumers were bouncing around and trying new things. That isn't the case today. Entrenchment has set in (Monopoly GO is a prime example) and people generally stick with their comfortable games. New games today need to be less expensive, nimble in development, and exceptional to the end consumer. The only way you can move people today is with the exception, not the norm. thegamebusiness.com/p/scopely-ceo-…