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To perceive the crisis in the video game industry you have to look closely at Spider-Man’s spandex.
For decades, companies like Sony and Microsoft have bet that realistic graphics were the key to attracting bigger audiences. By investing in technology, they have elevated flat pixelated worlds into experiences that often feel like stepping into a movie.
Designers of last year’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 used the processing power of the PlayStation 5 so Peter Parker’s outfits would be rendered with realistic textures and skyscraper windows could reflect rays of sunlight.
This detail was not cheap.
Sony-owned Insomniac Games spent around $300 million on Spider-Man 2, according to leaked documents, more than triple the budget of the first game in the series, released five years earlier. Hollywood’s pursuit of realism demands Hollywood budgets, and although Spider-Man 2 sold more than 11 million copies, several members of Insomniac lost their jobs when Sony announced 900 layoffs in February.
Cinematic games are so expensive and time-consuming to manufacture that the video game industry is beginning to recognize that investing in graphics yields low monetary returns.
“It’s very evident that high-fidelity images are shaking things up for the vocal elegance of gamers in their 40s and 50s,” said Jacob Navok, a former Square Enix executive who left that studio, known for the Final Fantasy series, in 2016. to start his own media company. ” But what is my 7-year-old doing?Minecraft. Roblox. Fortnite”.
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