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3 days ago · According to DFC’s findings, the video games industry will return to growth in 2025, and in fact next year will be the beginning of a record period of growth. DFC predicts that gaming will ...
Jul 28, 2022 · The gaming industry is tipped to maintain its recent rapid growth, and could be worth $321 billion by 2026, a new PwC report says. Millions of new players splashed out on games and consoles during COVID-19 lockdowns. Some players said gaming during the pandemic helped with their mental health.
- Representatives from Xbox, Capcom, Blizzard, Rovio, Square Enix, SEGA and more peer into their crystal balls.
- Gaming Will Be Fundamentally Changed by New Tech and New People
- Streaming Games Will Be Mainstream
- VR Will Win the Day… Or Maybe Not
- We’ll See a Merging of the Real With the Virtual
- Mobile Gaming and the Cloud Will Have a Huge Influence
- The Console Wars May Be Over
- Home Hardware May Disappear
- We’ll Have a More Unified Ecosystem for Games
- Subscription Services Could Help Integrate Games Into Our Lives More
By Cam Shea
Updated: Jun 24, 2020 11:05 pm
Posted: Jun 24, 2020 1:38 am
Ten years ago, IGN asked a group of games industry members to predict what gaming might look like in 2020. We recently revisited those predictions to see how accurate they were. And now, we’ve assembled a new panel of more than 30 key figures in gaming to tell us about what they think the games industry and video games might be like in 2030. (Be sure to also check out what the panel thought were the biggest changes in gaming in the last decade and the best games of the last decade.)
Each respondent answered three questions:
What do you think the video game industry will look like in 2030?
Phil Harrison, Vice President and GM, Google (Stadia): I think the gaming industry will continue to grow even in 2030, led by the experiences that you get on mobile and PC and consoles, as they start to merge. This will mainly be powered by a few shifts in our industry.
Streaming will be the unifying technology that allows everybody to access all the content that they want on any screen that they want. I think it is clearly a direction of travel for the games industry powered by ubiquity of network connectivity. Whether it's 5G, ultra-wide band fiber, or satellite, there are going to be a number of enabling technologies that quickly make this a reality.
Ultimately, compute on-demand from a data center rather than the specific computers inside the box under your TV will dramatically change the way games are made and played. I think we will see some adjacent technologies like machine learning, AI, and natural language fuel game design tremendously. Imagine being able to walk into a world and have a truly believable conversation with a character, where it feels like you're talking to a real human being – they remember you, they remember your backstory. I think it will allow games to reach a new level of creativity, have even more richness and depth, creating a new medium beyond just the playing of games.
We'll continue to make significant strides in graphics. I think that there is an obvious direction of travel for GPUs. As gate density on a chip gets better we'll be able to process more and more. For example, we're starting to see the early hints of ray tracing, and we'll see much more complex 3D graphics and pixel processing techniques get embedded in hardware and that will continue to drive visual reality. And when you combine the ability to render pixels realistically with procedural generation, games will outperform movies in terms of visual performance.
"One of the most exciting things from a content perspective is the new generation coming into the workplace now that have played games all their life. Games for them are completely second-nature, not a strange career choice." - Phil Harrison, Google
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Gareth Wilson, Creative Director, Traveller's Tales (The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame): Streaming technology will become mainstream in the next 10 years. As network infrastructure catches up it’ll be commonplace to buy a game and immediately start playing it via streaming. We’ll still download games for some time to come, though, and the best experience in 2030 will still be on a standalone console or PC.
Real-time ray tracing is just around the corner as well. I’ve seen some fantastic demos of this in the past six months which will revolutionise how we build and light game assets.
Denby Grace, Executive Producer, 2K (Mafia III): I think the biggest advancement in gaming technology is already upon us, with cloud gaming. When it gets to a level where you’re truly no longer tethered to the hardware you have at your house – when you can take your gaming experiences wherever you are in the world, on whatever device you have – that’s when it will really open the doors to everyone and anyone being able to access to the content they want, whenever they want it.
Tim Heaton, Studio Director, Creative Assembly and EVP Studios (Total War: Three Kingdoms): My guess is streaming will be the primary method of distribution. 5G should enable it, and the infrastructures for streaming allow the next great leap forward – distributed, scalable power to enable games of incredible sophistication that single boxes simply could not manage.
Procedural content creation and machine learned solutions will help ameliorate the growing cost and complexity of development, but it’s hard to see the trend not continuing towards bigger and more complex development team structures.
"Will VR or AR win the day and allow truly immersive gameplay for the mainstream? The tech should certainly be there by 2030..." - Tim Heaton, Creative Assembly
Viktor Bocan, Design Director, Warhorse Studios (Kingdom Come: Deliverance): I believe VR and streaming will be the most defining technologies in the next ten years in gaming. Virtual reality is the way forward: headsets need to be light, user-friendly, and affordable, but they will be quite soon. Other than that, I think streaming will help a lot; there’ll be no need for every player to have to have a beast computer under his desk.
I think the games will be quite similar, with the only exception that virtual reality will be a much more common component even of non-VR games. There is already almost no reason – aside from technical difficulties – not to include [a] VR mode in many genres like strategy games or platformers. New control possibilities, free independently handled camera and other advantages are far too good and far too interesting to be omitted. Once these systems are more accessible, the games will just support it. You will play StarCraft III the same way you play StarCraft II, but you will look around freely or even walk over the battlefield. Because why not?
Takashi Iizuka, Head of Sonic Team, SEGA (Sonic Forces): I think it’s fair to expect that by 2030, game graphics will be on par with the best CG movies we see now. I also would like to see VR technology become more widespread in video games. Everyone knows that there are some amazing and unique VR games out there today, but they require an initial hardware investment and are still very solitary experiences. These factors have created a barrier to entry for mainstream audiences. I hope that with advances in technology, many of the current hurdles with VR will be overcome. I’m not sure if this can be accomplished ten years from now, but I think that someday people will be able to enjoy a VR experience with their friends and family that is on par with going to an amusement park from the comfort of their homes.
Greg Street, VP of IP and Entertainment, Riot Games (League of Legends): I’m not a huge evangelist for VR and I don’t know if 2030 will really be enough time for it to be something in which a majority of gamers can participate. I still find audio and video communication with other players to be woefully inadequate across a couple of dimensions, so hopefully that experience is technically seamless and player behavior problems are less of an issue by 2030.
Andy Sum, Director, Hipster Whale (Crossy Road): I would expect to see a big tech disruption in either AR, VR, or Deep Learning. Maybe this is the decade that someone invents a wearable that people actually want to wear. If there's a headset or sci-fi contact lens that's as ubiquitous as mobile phones are now, then there will be games for it.
Lars Janssen, Director of Studio Relations, Koch Media: At some point in the next decade, mixed reality will make its mark. I’m looking forward to smart contact lenses that are able to seamlessly blend the real and the virtual. It might be more to the end of the decade but this will be the next major step, not only for games.
Marc Merrill, Co-Founder, Riot Games (League of Legends): I think it is possible that we will move away from mouse and keyboard as the primary input devices for PCs in ten years and the implications of this would be profound and far reaching. It is also likely that graphics processing will continue to shift more and more to the server which will continue to make gaming more mobile than ever. This will hopefully manifest in great wearables that enable better Augmented Reality gameplay experiences that we have only begun to scratch the surface on. I for one would love to play virtual paintball in a live arena.
"I think it is possible that we will move away from mouse and keyboard as the primary input devices for PCs in ten years and the implications of this would be profound and far reaching." - Marc Merrill, Riot Games
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Kellee Santiago, Head of Developer Relations, Niantic, Inc. (Pokemon GO): I think a big addition will be technology enabling the merge of digital and real-world games, so that there might even be esports that are both digital and physical, like football – with dragons!
J. Allen Brack, President, Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft): The phone that I have in 2030 will be more powerful than my 2020 desktop PC – what will that enable creators to build?
I’ve been a lifelong PC gamer. When you think about the future, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that there are literally billions of gamers who will never have a PC or console and can only play on their mobile device. That’s an amazing shift in how games might be made and how we think about the future gaming audience.
Jeremiah Slaczka, Co-Founder and Creative Director, 5th Cell (Scribblenauts Unlimited): I’m not sure if the console wars will exist in another ten years. The barriers between the platform walled gardens are breaking down so much already, I don’t think they’ll exist in 2030.
Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director, Final Fantasy XIV: I think the console wars will have neared its end, and cloud gaming will have just been established as the mainstream. Technology will continue to advance, but I think that in ten years' time the limitations will no longer be on a hardware level and will have instead become a battle of the cloud servers. I'm sure ten years will fly by.
Lars Janssen, Director of Studio Relations, Koch Media: Local PCs and consoles will go away in the long run with the rise of gigabit and faster internet connections. I wouldn’t be surprised if hardware at home or on the go will be reduced to ultra-high-resolution portable screens and evolved input devices, where all content is coming from servers with minimal latency.
Greg Street, VP of IP and Entertainment, Riot Games (League of Legends): I’m imagining that hardware as a presence will almost disappear. We won’t have these bulky machines under our desks. We won’t have huge TVs on our walls. We won’t think about, 'I need to be in this room to play this particular game.'
Jodie Azhar, Game Director, Teazelcat Games: I imagine we’ll still be seeing gaming consoles in wide use for playing handheld and touchscreen experiences or those that require specialised controllers, but large consoles may be more integrated with other home technology. This could either go more towards home PCs focused on making it easy to view, download and stream games, or become more integrated with Smart TVs.
Phil Harrison, Vice President and GM, Google (Stadia): In the future, games will surpass the inherent bias where certain titles are only available to specific audiences based on hardware ownership. Content shouldn’t be limited to someone playing it only because they have a certain powerful machine. I think that by the time we get to 2030, we will see a democratization of access to content that is not determined by your ability to buy a hundreds or thousands of dollars box next to your TV or monitor, but by ubiquitous and easy access to the internet. And since more of the world will be connected in the future, I’m optimistic about the future of the games industry.
Ed Beach, Civilization Franchise Lead Designer, Firaxis: We’re seeing the initial move toward cloud-based gaming now and I’m confident it will be complete by 2030. Already we’ve moved away from physical media to digital distribution; by 2030 I doubt we’ll be spending much time worrying about what gaming platform we’re on. That will mean a bigger, more unified potential audience for every game and I’m sure it will be a very, very competitive environment. That will place the emphasis firmly on making sure developers are delivering the most compelling and innovative content.
Viktor Bocan, Design Director, Warhorse Studios (Kingdom Come: Deliverance): Hardware is going to be much more united; mobiles, handhelds, consoles, and PCs will be very similar and interchangeable. It’s possible that the mobile phone will work as a console and a handheld; it already can now, but the hassle involved is irritating. That means it will be a lot easier to make games for “different platforms” as there will be much fewer platforms. Plus, there will be streaming. A lot of streaming.
"Hardware is going to be much more united; mobiles, handhelds, consoles and PCs will be very similar and interchangeable." - Viktor Bocan, Warhorse Studios
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Jodie Azhar, Game Director, Teazelcat Games: By 2030 I think someone will have cracked “Games on Demand”, making it easy to pay a subscription, browse a library of games and try a game out immediately. There are services like this already, but they haven’t quite taken off. I think we’ll still see different games only being available from certain pr...
Jun 17, 2021 · We saw a 200% increase in the number of people aged over 60 searching for games on our platform, joining the 93% of under-18s who admitted to gaming regularly. While some lockdown trends such...
- Traditional platforms are bridging the gap between technologies. During the pandemic, many industry participants expected next-gen tech like game streaming and extended reality (XR) to overtake mobile, but lackluster consumer adoption has shown that we’re not quite ready to live in the metaverse.
- Platforms are aggressively pursuing IP, setting the stage for content silos. The gaming industry is in a late-stage gold rush for premium intellectual property.
- Publishers need to innovate on monetization for ARPU expansion. Today, publishers take home $136 billion of the $262 billion video game market, with PC and console capturing $48 billion and mobile capturing $87 billion.
- Gametech innovators help boost profitability and player experiences. The video game industry has been on the cutting edge of tech for decades. And at the heart of this innovation is the gametech market, which allows developers and publishers to create, operate and monetize their games.
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