Not Crashier

Joost van Dreunen's April 2026 newsletter argues that the current games industry downturn is not "crashier" than the 1980s crash, as Brenda and John Romero recently claimed. He opens with a personal remembrance of his late mother-in-law and a game of Wii Tennis, then makes his case on historical and financial grounds. He notes that the Romeros weren't in the 1983 console crash at all. Their world was hit by the separate 1984 PC software shakeout, which came from overpredicted hardware adoption and software manufactured ahead of the installed base.

On the numbers, the North American industry lost roughly 90 percent of its value between 1983 and 1985, with consumer spending falling from about $2 billion to $200 million. Today's global market is around $200 billion and grew 4.5 percent year over year. A comparable collapse would require shedding $180 billion in spending, which he says is not happening. Only Ubisoft's own value destruction comes close.

His core thesis is that the 1980s crash was a demand problem driven by shovelware and eroded trust, whereas today's problem is a broken production model. He cites Call of Duty budgets rising from $80 million in 2009 to $638 million in 2024, Halo Infinite costing 8.5 times Halo 2, and The Last of Us Part II costing nearly four times its predecessor. He adds that Apple's App Tracking Transparency roughly tripled mobile user acquisition costs, with mobile marketing spend rising from about $6 billion to over $15 billion between 2015 and 2025. Venture funding rose from $3.4 billion in 2015 to $19.5 billion in 2021, then fell to $4.3 billion by 2025, a drop of nearly 80 percent. Anxiety and layoffs are real, he concludes, but players are fine while the business has lost the plot.

Shorter sections cover the Cyberpunk trading card game, which raised a record $27 million on Kickstarter from about 49,000 backers and which he reads as evidence of CD Projekt's restored trust and a licensing flywheel. He also offers brief Play recommendations and promotes an April 30 fireside with Reggie Fils-Aimé.