It seems like our industry is drastically changing right before our eyes. Gamestop is gobbling up EB in an effort to not get spanked by them in terms of sales anymore. On another front, Lorne Lanning, the genious behind Oddworld, has announced he is leaving the industry to pursue other opportunities in Hollywood and is taking the studio with him. What is going on this week?
I expect that things will probably get worse before they get better. With the high costs associated with publishing games these days there are only a few major players able to get it done. This poses a problem for us because now a few large companies determine which games actually reach the consumers. Despite Oddworld’s slamming success they had one hell of a time getting the newest game published. What does that say for unproven studios with fantastic yet zany ideas? It says they probably won’t get their game picked up. With this type of trend I expect there will be some sort of exodus of developers moving on to other industries. I can only hope there will be a paradigm shift where developers can self publish games in the future. Until then, I think things could get very rough around here.
