Top 10 of 2009: News
What were the key stories running through the past year? Find out here
Number 2: Cuts and Closures
It's sadly undeniable that 2009 will be remembered as one of the worst years in the industry's history in terms of job losses and studio closures.
Certainly, for the first few months of the year it seemed as if pretty much every part of the value chain was being hit with the likes of Zavvi (in the High Street, at least) turning to dust and almost every major publisher streamlining in some manner.
Microsoft confirmed the loss of 5000 jobs in January and closed the Aces Game Studio - the team behind Flight Simulator - while more jobs went at the company's in-game ads business Massive in May.
Sony started the year putting into effect the plan announced in 2008 to cut 8000 jobs, and subsequently slashed dividends and froze staff wages in a bid to save USD 2.8 billion by April 2010, announcing a USD 1 billion loss in its year end accounts in May.
Third party publishers faced a torrid time too, with a flurry of reports in January pointing to job losses for EA staff at Pandemic Brisbane, Mythic, Tiburon and Black Box, while the company announced in February it would close 12 facilities and last month detailed plans to significantly trim the main Pandemic studio to just a core team.
THQ's year was arguably worse, with 600 posts cut in February, along with the entire International office in Europe, while Big Huge Games was also identified as a casualty along the way.
SEGA cut 560 jobs in February as the market hit its darkest point, while Midway basically fell away completely and Atari's all-star management team departed only a year after being installed.
Developers, too, were hit hard with the likes of GRiN and Transmission closing their doors in a twelve month period that also saw other coal face posts shed across the board too numerous to list comprehensively.
So ultimately, then, a year of failure for the games industry - a point at which the 'unassailable' strength of videogames was brought to its knees?
Actually, no. While this will be of no consolation to those that did suffer this year - and all of us here at GamesIndustry.biz have the greatest sympathy for anybody affected - in reality it could have been a lot worse.
Standing back a little way and looking objectively, what we saw was a shift in the business - but not a demise. One of the advantages that the games industry has always had during its rise to prominence is the ability to change and innovate, and that's really what we've seen happen, just on a larger scale than we're used to.
Most of these bad news stories happened before the end of May, and while that doesn't mean that the rest of the year was rosy by comparison, we'll only know the real results of 2009 when the year ends roll around in the first half of 2010 - but while job cuts and studio closures have been a big story this year, we should all be grateful that it wasn't the only story this year.