The year 2021 has brought high profits for computer game companies. We wonder what’s in store for players and developers in 2022 and beyond. Let’s take a look and summarise the predictions from experts at Newzoo, Statista and Morgan Stanley.
The views of the analyst agencies may differ slightly, but in general many of them agree on the future of the gaming industry.
4 most likely areas of growth for the gaming industry in 2022
The growth of the gaming industry is directly related to the multiple lockdowns caused by the pandemic. The lack of familiar offline entertainment has expanded the audience of social network users, as well as those who have become interested in computer games. The share of mobile gamers increased particularly significantly in 2021.
Focusing on the development of meta universes
The big announcement of the meta universe by Tim Sweeney and Mark Zuckenberg has made a lot of noise and attracted a lot of interest from potential users. And while we shouldn’t expect it to come to fruition in the next couple of years, we should definitely expect the first developments as early as this year.
The first step towards this has already been Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, followed by the second, the new Metaverse-first strategy. It’s worth noting that this is what drove impressive sales of the Oculus Quest 2. In fact, it has renewed consumer interest in VR and outlined new opportunities for growth. And some major brands have already released VR headsets. Among them are companies like Sony, Apple and Meta. Incidentally, these same companies are also using their huge customer bases to reformat themselves for Web 3.0.
The growth in investment and consumer spending on VR is expected to cause a veritable gold rush in this area. Even though it will take time for companies to integrate the virtual world.
Play-to-Earn will gain momentum
The idea of making money from games is not new at all, but many times it has faced a lot of difficulties, such as contradicting publisher’s rules, unwillingness to moderate trading between players, etc.
But the focus has shifted a bit with the advent of NFT and the amazing success stories of selling them. Hence the desire of many game developers to legitimise player trading, and integrate NFT technology into their platforms.
Despite the many success stories, there are quite a few problems accompanying this format. And many of them have already been faced by large companies that have tried to integrate the technology into their applications. At the same time, many players actively oppose NFT in games, as evidenced by the backlash against the announcement of NFT in Ghost Recon by Ubisoft and the rejection of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 from NFT due to player outrage.
While opinions are divided among gamers, and among developers even more so, many shareholders wish to see an NFT strategy. In their opinion it’s a new feature to develop. It will be interesting to watch further developments on this front.
The return of the IP licensing trend
Crossplay in games not only increases the cost of developing and maintaining such a game, but also greatly expands the audience for these projects. But there’s no denying that a game designed for 75-inch monitors and gempads won’t provide the same kind of buzz and excitement when played on a smartphone. It is for this reason that game studios are increasingly using their intellectual property rights (IP) of the main product to create a spin-off for mobile devices.
A focus on mobile devices is being prioritised by many companies and thereby setting the tone for the main trend. Examples include major PC and console developers such as Epic Games.
Increased cloudiness on the network
The development has touched many areas, including the cloud. And this in turn has a significant impact on global gaming, opening up new opportunities for users with outdated PCs. The need to purchase expensive hardware will now be a thing of the past. And with the spread of 5G and the extreme price of graphics cards, cloud gaming is poised to become mainstream.
In addition, the advent of a large number of cross-platform games (which support multiple types of devices: PC, console and mobile gadgets) will put significant pressure on the giants in the market of mobile gaming: Apple and Google. Analysts are convinced that under such circumstances they will be forced to open up their ecosystems to publishers. If not completely, then at least partially.
To sum up
Definitely all of the above trends will only strengthen and develop, as we have detailed in the article. And all the more so because the conditions are already in place and there is a definite demand from the audience.
It is worth noting that the list of trends for 2022 and further can be significantly expanded and supplemented over time. In our article we tried to give a generalized forecast formed on the words of analytical groups which studied this issue and gave predictions.