Last year was a major win for mainstream recognition of video games, with highly successful TV and film adaptations of “The Last of Us” and “Super Mario,” respectively, making strong cases for the medium.
As dramatic as layoffs were last month, much of it stems from the intense M&A activity that began in 2022. In January 2023,10,000 roles would be cut across the company, affecting Xbox and Bethesda teams in its gaming division a year after the $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard was Electronic Arts said it logged a record $1.7 billion from live-service net bookings in the last quarter of 2023, per last week’s. Much of that came from “EA Sports FC” and its latest release in September, which followed EA laying offas something that would “position the company for another extended period of success” — i.e., “Grand Theft Auto 6,” which is due in 2025 and is rumored to have costmobile games giant Zynga for $12.
Even if its newest game lost the No. 1 spot to “Hogwarts Legacy,” “Call of Duty” is the exact kind of property Spencer is referring to, and it was still technically No. 1 in 2023 by franchise sales, per