GAME OVER: October 2022

Earlier this year we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the machine that kickstarted the UK games industry.

Sinclair followed up the release of the Spectrum with the more serious Sinclair QL. It was an expensive misstep for a company keen to be taken more seriously, leading to it being acquired by UK competitor, Alan Sugar’s Amstrad.

October was the second anniversary of the release of the Quest 2, Meta’s VR headset that has kickstarted the VR games industry. It is estimated to have sold just as many units as the latest Xbox console in the same period.

It’s also the month that Meta launched the more serious and expensive Quest Pro, knowing that Reality Labs had burned through $9.4 billion in 2022 and that layoffs were days away from being announced. Xbox Quest 3, anyone?