Sacred Symbols+, Episode 391 | Moriarty x Jaffe: Slow Times Make Talkative Men (Patreon)

Please welcome storied game designer David Jaffe back to Sacred Symbols+ for another rousing rendition of Moriarty x Jaffe. For today's show, I (Colin) emailed Jaffe four different topics I thought we could discuss, a necessary step considering how slow things have been in our space as of late. But as we often do on this show, we talked so damn much that we only got through the first two topics and figured we'd leave the other two for another time. The first half (or so) of our chat revolves around PlayStation 5 Pro, the still-hypothetical (but obviously quite real) iteration on the standard PS5 that's due to be revealed and released later in 2024. What are our expectations of how Sony will choose to roll the console out? What price can we expect? Do we think new games will be revealed as well? Heck, is console gaming even in a healthy position at all? The second half of our talk veers into games industry minutiae, specifically concerning the mass layoffs that have entire studios (and even publishers) in the grasp of deep uncertainty. Do you know that some 30,000 people have lost their jobs in development and publishing in the last two and a half years? Many of them will never get back in, because there's no room or demand for more dev. As such, in an economic space with so many losers and so few winners, do we need to embrace a smaller development structure in order to get back to full health? Does pain now equate to security later on?