The Death of Triple-A Gaming

The death of Triple-A has something that has been prophesied by many outlets and publications, for every game made by one of the big gaming company that inevitably doesn’t meet the expectations set by a company and for each studio bought and immediately closed, many have cried wolf for the so called “inevitable total collapse of the industry”. Truth is, in its current state, if Triple-A gaming ever reaches a downturn, it’ll be a slow and temporary death. To explain why, I will make a somewhat odd comparison. I believe the current state of the gaming industry is quite similar to the early years of the Golden Age of Hollywood, specifically the Hollywood that had until then been dominated under the studio system. 

I believe the entertainment industry, be it movies, books or every other form of media, has three main drivers: their control of known intellectual property; their ability to regularly appease and renew their creative talent; and primarily, their ability to successfully market and distribute a product. The studio system had not only access to all of the distribution systems, they had full control. Complete vertical integration, a complete control of the supply chain, from the monopolization of all talent in the industry to the acquisition of most cinemas in the country, if you wanted a movie to succeed you had to go through them.

Through this complete control, the studios remained complacent, with a constant release of creatively bankrupt movies, like the dozens of Universal Monsters movies, which ultimately led to intervention from the supreme court, which would forcefully dismantle the studio system. This would lead the entertainment system to not be stuck to its complacency but rather relegated to various cycles of  downturn and inevitable replacement by other newer artists and creators. Many studios would inevitably fall into irrelevancy, like MGM now an Amazon subsidiary, or be forced to adapt and actively keep up with the times.

So how does the current Gaming Industry even compare to this? Well, Sony; Xbox and Nintendo, three of the main players in the current Triple-A scene, have complete vertical integration, and arguably have an oligopoly of their own only halted by the existence of the PC industry. The big three, as I will refer to them from now on, have: the ability to regularly renew their talent, through studio acquisition and creation; ownership of hundreds of known Intellectual Property; and a complete vertical ownership of their production and distribution, with game creation, console ecosystems and online store control. The only thing stopping the expansion of the Big Three is each other, until now.

The current era of gaming has been characterized by the affirmation of Sony as the main and singular player in the console market, with its main competitor Xbox seemingly moving its efforts into game-making and its own channel of distribution in the “Game Pass”, and Nintendo arguably never intruding in the same market as PlayStation, choosing to focus on its niche consumers.

Undoubtedly this is a bad thing for gaming, being quite explicit in a product like Concord, a signal of absolute complacency within the market, and the utter confidence that Sony displays. It showcased that no matter how aimless and dumb a concept is, Sony had full belief that its resources and control of its distribution would somehow save it. Ultimately, the game was not only a failure, but a 400$ million failure, and that despite that will not affect Sony’s bottom line. PlayStation is a monolithic brand that is arguably the center of the market, most gamers will play their games through a PlayStation system, and buy their games through the PlayStation store, especially now with the disappearance of the physical games market. Truth is, Sony can and will bet on possibly failed concepts just at the chance of obtaining another franchise they can sell to the consumer for millions, in fact right after Concord died, they successfully cemented AstroBot as their great platformer, and suddenly their stock is back to normal and their public perception as well. 

Concord was a failure, sure, but it was primarily a warning of market complacency and what Triple-A will be if there is no regulatory influence. Complete Vertical Integration in any form of the entertainment industry is ultimately something that will allow companies to remain stagnant and uncreative.