With the unprecedented failure of Concord we're almost there in the west. The last of ESG funds and government welfare needs to dry up. Just like in 1983 the video game industry crash mostly happened in the US. Japan's video game industry was still going at that time.
The industry won't go away but it'll shift. The game studios in the USA and western Europe will shut down. The AAA studios will rise in China and the indies will go to Eastern Europe. Nintendo will keep doing its own thing.
China now has a foothold in the AAA space thanks to Black Myth Wukong. This was helped by all the free marketing that was given by the game journals. I'm sure a bunch of people bought BM:W just to spite Kotaku and Sweet Baby Inc.
I'm actually happy the Western game industry is becoming radioactive. The woke shit they pushed is demonic. It's not just bad media, it was designed to actually make people hate it. I don't think that other points in history made culture that was as insufferable as the woke games of current year. The turd on top of this trash pile is our tax dollars went into making this woke shit.
Rest in radioactive piss, western game industry...
We could very well see a contraction. Maybe even a large one. But I don't think we can ever repeat the '83 crash. It's too mainstream now. The crash was a 97% drop.
Very rough math from random sources, but ballpark total video game revenue is about $180B. Around $30B of that is Tencent. You could loose every video game company besides Tencent and that would only be a 83% drop in the industry.
Even if a huge swath of AAA folds, the money is just going to move around to other games. No one is going to go, "Activision is gone. There's no new CoD to play. I think I'll take up fishing."
Excellent points; the other problem is that as some others commented above, the woke mind virus has metastasized throughout the industry from the moment they enter school to the moment they enter the work force. Even if there is a soft crash, there is still the problem of a bunch of converted artists, engineers, and designers who will still tow the line.