All things considered, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't been significantly felt by gamers. Several games have been delayed and retail copies of games can be challenging to get ahold of, but digital access to games has made things remarkably smooth. Most of the difficulties surrounding COVID-19 have been behind the scenes. Xbox boss Phil Spencer says that only temporary, however. He believes that the true effects of COVID-19 on the industry will arrive, but probably not until 2021.
Spencer says that he's currently feeling "pretty good" about games that will be releasing through the summer and early fall. Oddly, that may or may not cover Xbox Series X games. "Games that were targeting a year from now or beyond? There'll be some impact," admits Spencer, though he does say that developers will, "be able to react." To be fair, virtually none of those games have been revealed and those that have likely don't have release windows, so the public may never realize what's being delayed.
While developers working from home is potentially going to have a negative impact, Spencer's focus is on areas of game development that are much more heavily affected. "Mocap is just something that's basically stopped," is one example provided by Spencer. Games that haven't done their mocap are blocked from progressing in terms of animation.
Spencer only touches on motion capture, but it's not hard to imagine other areas of game development that could be affected. Voice recording requires voice actors to travel, so that's challenging to complete. Guild Wars 2 is even delaying the voice work for some of its upcoming DLC due to COVID-19.
Example games that Spencer believes could be hurt the most include annual sports games like Madden and FIFA. These games are heavily reliant on art production year-to-year. It'll be interesting to see what the next year's iterations of those game franchises do to make up for the potentially lost time.
Ultimately, Spencer still says that he's "confident in the industry's ability to continue a steady flow of games coming out." Gamers may not even notice the lull that COVID-19 causes. But if Spencer says it's there, then it's likely already happening. And reading between his words, the game delays are already hitting behind the scenes. The PS5 and Xbox Series X launch may be awesome, but it's also likely less than it could have been — the same for the launch window in the year after. Such is the nature of the times we live in.
Source: Business Insider