sensing in the air that as margins of return on video games continue to be razor-thin, we're seeing more and more of the squeeze on cost be shifted away from consumers and onto dev teams - via stagnant or even truncated production schedules despite increased scope/complexity...
perhaps there's a sense that the ways in which games were aggressively monetizing players - gacha, battle passes, subs, etc - are at saturation now that there's not really enough air in the room for more than 1 or 2 f2p/service games to breathe in a given player's time/budget...
and save a base MSRP increase, which we saw on the PS5/XBSX, the only viable option is to turn inward and start whittling away at production costs. less delays, shorter cycles, fast and loose qa/cert... it feels like it's mounting as "something's gotta give" on the bottom $$ line