Posted by: Drew Sikora at January 29, 2009 8:26:32 AM
The layoffs reports keep rolling in. 2009 seems to be off to a great start in terms of games industry unemployment, unfortunately. We're not even out of month one and already thousands of jobs, if not tens of thousands, have been cut. In addition to last week's cuts/closures reported on by myself and Trent, this past week says good bye to Humanature Studios, Designers Republic, Ensemble Studios (official now that Halo Wars is gold), Rockpool Games, and Microsoft has announced further layoffs to several divisions as well. Folks in at least two EA studios, however, can breath a sigh of relief as both Criterion and Bright Light have been given immunity. If you think you have a chance of losing your job to layoffs and cutbacks, then Marc Mencher from GameRecruiter.com has 10 tips to prepare for a layoff. I really look forward to the day I can stop reporting on this stuff.
The US games industry topping $20 billion. And to polarize the previous story, several reports have come out this week addressing the industry's income over the past year. While an analyst weighed in with predictions of the US industry topping $20 billion in 2009, NPD also released a report stating that in 2008 alone the industry pulled down $21 billion in software sales. The discrepancy is thought to come from different data sets but the end result is pretty clear: the games industry itself is booming, despite all the economic doom and gloom.
Since I'm totally on a Zelda kick right now playing through Twilight Princess, I have to point you all to this awesome indie game called Legend of Princess, which just so happens to look like... well you can guess. Does anyone else think that's a caricature of Miyamoto with pink hair?
TacoGrandeMember since: 4/9/2007 From: San Clemente, United States
Posted - 1/29/2009 9:21:11 AM
Quote:
Original post by BLiTZWiNG
The games industry is booming. Game development studios are being closed all over the place and devs losing their jobs.
I should leave it at that, but dare I ask... wtf are the profits going? well ok, I know where they're not going...
Thats what i thought as well, i havnt changed in my spendings, only when gas became super high this last summer is when i stopped driving alot. I really do not get why the game industry is struggling so much, games are selling and their income on a game is about a mill + depending how awesome it is.
It's quite possible for an industry to be booming without making money...
Just having a high turnover means that some of what you are shipping is selling, not that it pays enough to cover all those other titles that are postponed, canceled, dropped, don't sell...
Or you know, a few big players are rolling in dough (Blizzard, Nintendo) and the rest are loosing their shirts. Industry aggregate total != nice even distribution of wealth.
I guess I should have elaborated. Despite all the layoffs and closures to studios you have to remember that the games those studios had made are still flying off shelves in retail outlets. That sales power is in turn giving laid-off developers the chance to gain funding to open new studios either independently or with new publishers - because games are selling. It also means other companies are hiring as well because they want to make more games. So on a whole the industry is chugging along rather well. However job-wise things are still very tough as the industry's popularity has created a huge pool of human resources and technology is allowing companies to get by with fewer people in many areas. It's tough for people to find jobs because they're not able to relocate to the areas where they would find gainful employment and there are so many other people looking that it's easier for employers to discriminate between applicants and find that perfect match.
Hopefully though this means we see a lot more indie studios popping up staffed with veteran developers, and innovation could see a big boost this year.
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BLiTZWiNG
Member since: 4/10/2006 From: Brisbane, Queensland
Posted - 1/29/2009 9:04:41 AM
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