The non-endemics trying to break into games | This Week In Business

gamesindustry.biz:

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

During last week's GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit in Seattle, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden cited "the entry of non-endemics" as one of his three biggest concerns about the future of the video games industry, jokingly referring to them as the "barbarians at the gate."

The other two, if you're interested, were consolidation's impact on creativity and rising costs. But today, we'd like to dig a little deeper into the non-endemics. Who are they? What are they doing in the games space? And how might they disrupt the status quo?

To answer the first, we can hand that over to Layden, who named four prime candidates while on stage.

QUOTE | "Right now we see all the big players going, 'Oh, gaming? It's bringing in billions of dollars a year? I want a piece of that.' And so we have Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon wanting to get a piece and trying to disrupt out industry" - Shawn Layden listing the companies he believes have the largest dollar signs in their metaphorical eyes.

So, two mobile platform holders, one retail giant that basically has its fingers in almost every other pie, and the second biggest video streaming service (dethroned last year by Disney). Let's dive into their video games efforts, shall we?

The prime example of a non-endemic struggling to enter the traditional video games space, thanks to the failure of cloud gaming service Stadia.

Announced in 2019 with no small amount of pomp and circumstance (we still remember the GDC street display putting