Harvey Smith, the Dishonored director who recently launched a new studio dedicated to immersive sims, has pushed back against the recurring question of whether the genre is dying, suggesting the very act of asking risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Speaking to The Game Business alongside fellow studio leads Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare, Smith argued that immersive sims retain lasting cultural relevance and that some, including BioShock, Deus Ex and Dishonored, have also proven commercially successful. The comments come amid wider industry debate about the genre's viability at large scale, following a former Thief designer's recent scepticism about big-budget imsim development.

Smith also recalled being told over the years by senior industry figures that "first-person games don't sell", RPGs are niche, and that free-to-play or motion-capture-heavy titles were the inevitable future — predictions he said were sometimes right but often not. Horne added that with such varied audience tastes, chasing trends is unreliable, and the studio's best strategy is to commit to a creative vision it believes in. The discussion follows Smith's new studio announcement and broader upheaval at Xbox, which is parting ways with several studios, including Arkane, amid recent layoffs.