I think most publishers, bar embracer who was banking on Saudi VC money that fell through, saw the market trend relatively well. They reduced output and took less projects to the dismay of people asking for more games and complaining about their output. This doesn't help the studios and devs though who end up with less money and work while the VCs and publishers kept their money in the bank or invested in less pandemic bubble industries for better growth.Publishers responded to COVID by funding unsuccessful games which are now - two to three years later - saturating the market. In response they are cutting back on investment and shutting down studios so that in the next two years they will have less output. The pattern is the same in both cases - failing to predict the market correctly.
It's not like no games were hugely successful this year. I follow mainly Nintendo games so the easiest examples I can site are TotK and Mario Wonder which sold 20 million and 10 million, respectively, during this year. Then you have games like Palworld which are also massively successful, and I'm sure there are plenty more.
The smart thing to do during 2020 and 2021 was to realize that gaming couldn't possibly continue to keep up those years' numbers, and invest some of the extra profit in other businesses or assets. Which is what publishers are supposedly doing now, only they're two to three years behind the curve.
In addition, if they're not capable of telling the difference between games that end up sitting on shelves and games that sell in the tens of millions, perhaps they should have invested some of their extra profits in better market research rather than in publishing so many games.
Sorry to be harsh, but I don't think it's just Embracer that is the problem, it seems like a wider issue with executives failing to understand their own market. There are people earning top salaries to make sound financial decisions and they do not appear to be pulling their own weight.
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