Saber Interactive CEO Says “Middle Market” Titles Like ‘Space Marine 2’ Poised To Make A Comeback As Triple-A Development Becomes “Unsustainable”
In the opinion of Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, not only have ballooning budgets resulted in ‘Triple-A’ video game production becoming outright unsustainable, but the current ‘reckoning’ taking place across the industry is opening the door for a new era of “middle market” titles.
Karch weighed in on the current turmoil across his industry during a recent interview given to IGN‘s Rebekah Valentine.
Following a reflection on both Saber Interactive’s April 2024 decision to split-off from their former parent company Embracer Group as well as their ongoing financial struggles, the Saber Interactive CEO asserted, “In general, I would say that AAA development has become very risky.”
“And that’s where Saber is different,” he added. “Saber, I believe, can create AAA, but not at a AAA budget.”
From there, Karch then explained to Valentine that rather than aiming to make the next multi-million dollar franchise, Saber Interactive instead sees itself as a “middle market” publisher – and it is this niche that the CEO wants to focus his team’s attentions.
“I think that as games become more expensive to make, the $70 title is going to go the way of the dodo [bird],” he speculated. “I do. I just don’t think it’s sustainable…Look, you remember the hype for Cyberpunk [2077], which I think actually ultimately performed okay, but when the expectations are so high and so much money is put into one title, it’s hugely risky for the company that’s doing it.”
“What if it fails?” he asked. “You remember what happened when Ubisoft a couple of years ago, all their titles slipped out of the year, and then all of a sudden they were in an entirely different place? It’s hard to recover from that. I think the market is going to shift to development which is not necessarily lower quality, but there’s going to be an emphasis on trying to find ways to reduce costs.”
As his time with Valentine drew to a close, Karch ultimately predicted, “I think that there’s going to be a real shortage of game content over the coming few years.”
“You’ve seen how many layoffs there’s been, you see how many games have gotten killed,” he recalled to his host. “But we have a lot of good projects going on that I’m proud of and that I feel really, really strongly about.”
Notably, this is not the first time that Karch has offered a stark criticism of the current state of the Triple-A video game industry.
In a comment left under a recent Asmongold video on Space Marine 2 in which the streamer praised the game, Karch told the YouTuber and his followers, “Hey man. CEO of Saber here. I love your videos. When we signed the deal to make Space Marine 2, all I wanted was a throwback game.”
“We had the chance to work on something which by its nature was ‘old school’,” he explained via a YouTube account which he has all but outright confirmed belongs to him. “I can’t even comprehend many of the current games that we play these days. They are too complex and too much of an investment. We worked on Halo back in the day, and that game could be distilled down to the simplest of shooting loops, but it was entirely addicting. That is what we wanted to recapture.”
“I hope that games like Space Marine 2 and [Black Myth:] Wukong are the start of a reversion to a time when games were simply about fun and immersion,” he added. “I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers. We just want to do some glory kills and get the heart rate up a little. For me that is what games should be about.”
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