På grund af coronakrisen er et væld af spil allerede blevet udskudt, og der har derfor været en generel bekymring om, hvor stor en påvirkning krisen vil have på årets spilproduktion. Men spørger man Xbox-chefen Phil Spencer, bør vi være mere bekymrede for næste års spiludgivelser.
Til Business Insider fortæller han, at spilbranchen først for alvor vil mærke krisens effekt i 2021:
"Through the summer, early fall? I feel pretty good about those games. Games that were targeting a year from now or beyond? There'll be some impact, but they'll be able to react."
Det er naturligvis hjemmearbejdspolitikken, der er en væsentlig årsag til disse problemer, hvor praksisser som motion capture og større musikindspilninger er nær umulige at udføre for tiden:
"Mocap is just something that's basically stopped. We're not going into mocap studios. If you had all your animation captured and you're doing touch up in more individual art production and in areas like textures and other things, you're in a better position. If you're waiting for a lot of either large audio work—when it's with symphonies and other things—or mocap, you're held up right now."
Spencer er dog stadig optimistisk for fremtiden og understreger, at spilindustrien nok skal klare sig:
"I'm pretty confident in the industry's ability to continue a steady flow of games coming out. There's just a lot of games in production across the industry right now, and I think we're going to be—as an industry—we're going to be fine."