Eutechnyx’s Darren Jobling is in fear. He is deeply worried that as the gaming industry becomes more and more dominated by US companies, it will spell the end of the industry altogether in Europe.

Jobling’s concerns spring from the recent wave of acquisitions that have swept over European publishers, cutting them down to nearly nothing. Jobling notes in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, "Obviously there’s only Ubisoft and Eidos of any size and I think that’s pretty much it. What concerns me, is that if you look at publishing what happened was Infogrames came in buying up Ocean, buying up Gremlin, and the whole thing collapsed..."

Jobling fears a similar situation will happen with development that an American company will "come in and buy somebody, it won’t work out and the whole thing will just collapse." He notes that currently the European gaming industry has been "decimated," and that he believes history will only repeat itself if developers go the same way as publishers.

While I can’t claim to be an expert on the European game industry, it’s fairly easy to see that most of the big games on the market come from either a US or Japanese publisher. Jobling’s notes that only Ubisoft and Eidos are left in Europe should set off warning alarms, because the number of American publishers of a similar size simply dwarfs that. If Jobling’s predictions come true, it will be a sad realization for Europe to see its games industry collapse just as consoles and handhelds are starting to really catch on.