2025 is set to be a bumper year of growth for the games industry due to the long-awaited launches of Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto 6.
This is according to DFC Intelligence, which released its annual market report and forecast last week (via VGC).
The firm predicted that Nintendo would be “the clear winner” in comparison to Sony and Microsoft and that only one of those firms would be able to compete with the console.
“There isn’t room for more than two major consoles,” the report said. “Sony or Microsoft will struggle mightily in a distant third place – largely depending on which of those companies can gain early momentum.”
It suggested that Sony has the upper hand due to a “loyal base and strong Sony IP”. In contrast, Microsoft will become “the world’s largest software publisher” following its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October 2023.
Elsewhere, DFC Intelligence predicted that the number of players worldwide will increase past four billion by 2027.
“Over the past three decades, the video game industry has grown more than 20 times, and after two years of slumping hardware and software sales, it’s poised to resume growing at a healthy rate through the end of the decade,” said DFC Intelligence founder and CEO David Cole.
“While 2025 will mark the beginning of that upward trajectory, some huge questions remain, including who will lose the next-gen console war and who will win the game software distribution battle.
“And with the large publishers focused on live services around evergreen franchises, opportunities for smaller studios will be plentiful.”
At the outset of 2024, the most often expressed concern about this year in the games business was that it was going to have a very sparse and underwhelming release calendar, at least compared to the spectacular heights of 2023. This was to some extent a ripple effect from the pandemic years: a backlog of delayed software made its way onto the market during 2023, meaning that with many major studios set to be in the early stages of new projects, 2024’s line-up did not look very inspiring.
With the benefit of hindsight, that fear didn’t entirely come to pass; or at least, whatever slump in the release schedule for 2024 we did experience was spread out rather unevenly around different parts of the industry.
Fears of a fallow 2024 overall, then, did not come to pass – at least not for everyone
From a consumer’s perspective, it’s actually been a pretty solid year for games in the end. It may ultimately come to be seen as the calm before 2025’s GTA 6 storm, but this year has held up remarkably well thanks to a combination of hit titles nobody really saw coming – Helldivers 2 and Astro Bot are especially notable here, having rescued Sony from what would otherwise have been a pretty shockingly empty year in the middle of its console cycle – and, especially in the back half of the year, some games that really defied expectations.
In terms of expectations being defied, quite a few games turned up that had largely been written off as development hell nightmares, and have ended up being actually pretty great. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the prime example; on a personal level I find its gameplay a little too much of a departure from previous games in the series for my tastes, but taken on its own merits it’s a very enjoyable game and far better than many people had dared to hope for after so many years.
Silent Hill 2 is a remake I don’t think many people had expected to be quite so good, despite its developer’s pedigree in the horror genre. The really unexpected surprise of the year, though, is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – a title that honestly feels like it has no right being quite as fantastically good fun as it actually is.
Fears of a fallow year overall, then, did not come to pass – at least not for everyone. For some publishers, the danger of 2024 being a lost year was very well-founded, with quite a few companies failing to find a hit title from one end of the year to the other.
Poor old Ubisoft is the unwilling flag carrier for that unhappy bunch; it had probably hoped that the relatively quiet release slates of some other major publishers would give Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Shadows a chance to shine, but the former title sank (arguably a victim of Disney’s mishandling of the Star Wars brand as much as any issue with Ubisoft itself) and the latter has been delayed to 2025. Ubisoft isn’t the only publisher that was struggling to find hits in 2024, but its ongoing struggle to reinvent and reinvigorate its business is likely to be a story that drags out well into next year.
It wasn’t just certain publishers having a rough 2024, though; the year’s successes were spread rather unevenly around game genres as well. I wrote last week about the torrid year live service games had, with high-profile failures ranging from Sony’s Concord disaster to the announcements that the likes of Suicide Squad and XDefiant would be shutting down. Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals were the only real bright spots in that market, though it’s worth noting that established games like Fortnite have continued trucking on very nicely even as the live service model gets clobbered everywhere else (and even the bruised and battered Overwatch 2 seems to have had a bit of a comeback year).
On the other hand, it was a great year for single-player action games, thanks to the likes of Black Myth Wukong, Stellar Blade, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and many others. Incidentally, it’s also no accident that two of the high points mentioned here – Marvel Rivals and Black Myth Wukong – are from Chinese developers; after many false starts and a huge amount of investment, this was the year in which China really started flexing its muscle as one of the major global centres for game development.For all that, however, I suspect that when we come to look back at 2024 through some future lens, the most important story is going to be what happened to Microsoft this year.
[Buying Activision Blizzard] was always part of a huge business transformation in the making, and the existing identity of Xbox as a platform was always on the chopping block
This has been an incredibly pivotal year for Microsoft’s strategy as a game publisher and platform holder, as it embarks on one of the boldest, and arguably trickiest, transitions that any company in this industry has ever attempted. It’s a transition that seemed inevitable to many observers of its struggle to purchase Activision Blizzard – there were plenty of voices warning that completing that acquisition would effectively mean the end of Xbox as we knew it – but it seems nonetheless to have blindsided many of the most ardent Xbox fans (most of whom were vocal supporters of the deal in question, at that).
Spending so much money on buying one of the industry’s largest publishers was never going to be about just propping up a console business that was consistently losing out to both Sony and Nintendo in the global market. This was always a huge business transformation in the making, and the existing identity of Xbox as a platform was always on the chopping block.
Microsoft has become one of the world’s largest and most influential publishers (propped up massively in that role this year by Black Ops 6 being a high point in the series’ recent history, and Indiana Jones being so well-received), but in the process it has become something very different from a traditional platform holder. Xbox hardware will now necessarily play second fiddle to the broader idea of Xbox as a platform service and Microsoft as a third-party games publisher. The business that will emerge will undoubtedly be more robust and successful; whether it will still be recognisably anything like Xbox was in the past remains to be seen.
One thing to watch carefully in the coming months is consumer response to the ‘This Is An Xbox’ campaign, which is a bold attempt to explain and outline this complex strategy to the wide consumer audience. Not to be a downer on the campaign (it’s a very well-executed piece of marketing), but to make an anecdotal judgement from the confused reactions I’ve heard personally, I’m not sure it’s landing quite like Microsoft had hoped.
Consequently, 2025 may well be a year of experimentation for the company as it tries to explain what exactly Xbox means now to a broad audience who are not quite so cued-in to boardroom buzzwords as the people to whom these ideas were pitched internally.
As ever, we end the year with some broad strokes outlining how the next year will probably shape up. We know that it will be defined to a great extent by the impact of GTA 6 and Nintendo’s new console launch; we can expect stories like Microsoft’s repositioning and re-explaining of Xbox, Ubisoft’s attempts to rebuild its publishing success, and the ongoing implosion of the live service dream all to continue to develop through the year.
We can at least hope, though, that the enormous wave of stories of layoffs and studio closures that made headlines for the past two years will not follow us into 2025; fingers crossed for a year of green shoots and optimism instead.
Discounts on Seagate’s Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X/S consoles are quite rare, with one of the last deals I wrote on one going back over two years ago. Since then, we’ve seen SSD prices fall down even further for the best SSDs for PS5 and PC gaming, but in the spirit of propreitary storage, Microsoft’s options from Seagate and Western Digital have been increasingly stubborn. In the context of previous pricing, it makes this deal from Argos on the 2TB expansion card quite incredible – £160 with a £10 off a £60 min spend code (requires email signup).
Adding another two terabytes of storage is a handy way of getting more space on your Xbox, especially with lots of AAA titles taking up triple figures of gigabytes on your drive. You’ll feel the benefit most with a Series S and its measly 364GB of usable internal storage out of its 512GB stated capacity. You’ll also be able to nearly treble a Series X’s storage with its 802GB of usable space on its stated 1TB internal drive. This essentially stops the juggling of uninstalling and reinstalling games if you run out of space, or moving them from an external drive for ‘cold’ storage to the internal one to play them.
Handily, Microsoft made the Expansion Card a simple drop-in upgrade on both consoles – there’s a port marked on the back marked ‘Storage Expansion’, which you simply slot the card into. It should be instantly recognised, and your Xbox should then take the extra two terabyte of capacity into account when displaying the total storage available in the bottom left corner. You can then choose to automatically install games there – or move games between the internal storage and the Expansion Card.
As much as the Expansion Card is a drop-in upgrade for your console, it also goes for other ones, too. This means that you can load it up with games and take it on your travels if you visit someone who has an Xbox Series console and you’ve got games that they don’t have – simply slide the card into the back of their Xbox, and your games should appear there. You do of course also get the full benefits of speedy load times with Xbox Velocity and the powers of Quick Resume, which leaves the game in a suspended state if you enter into another app, and when you go back into the game, you can pick up right where you left off – it’s the same as on the internal SSD.
This deal from Argos on the 2TB Seagate Expansion Card is not to be missed, especially if you want to add more space to your Xbox at quite a discount.
Humanoid Origin, the studio founded by former Mass Effect director Casey Hudson in 2021, is ending development of its untitled sci-fi game and shutting its doors, after an “an unexpected shortfall of funding left [it] unable to sustain operations.” Hudson, who also served as BioWare general manager before departing the studio in 2020, announced the establishment of Humanoid Origin (initially Humanoid Studios) in June 2021, teasing it was working on an “all-new IP”. A year later, Hudson shared a little more information on the “multi-platform AAA game”, as well as early concept art, calling it a “character-driven narrative in an all-new science-fiction universe”. Today, however, Hudson released a statement announcing the project’s termination and the closure of the studio. “Earlier today, we informed our staff that Humanoid Origin will be shutting down,” he wrote. “Despite efforts to shield the studio from broader challenges in the industry, an unexpected shortfall of funding left us unable to sustain operations.” “We’re heartbroken that we will not be able to bring our new science-fiction universe to completion,” Hudson continued. “Our main concern at this time however is for our team, and we are committed to supporting them in their transition to new employment. “In our time together, the team achieved incredible progress, and demonstrated that it’s possible to do amazing work while fostering a culture of fun and creativity. We thank them for their talent, courage, and friendship. “Thank you to everyone who supported us throughout our journey.” Humanoid Origin is the latest studio to be impacted in what continues to be a devastating year for games industry employees, with over 14,000 people estimated to have lost their jobs so far. That’s compared to the 10,500 games industry workers who were laid off across the entirety of 2023. Back in March, GamesIndustry.biz’s Chris Tring, writing for Eurogamer, took a closer look at the circumstances leading to such massive numbers of job cuts over the last few years.
I don’t usually post deals on games, but I had to make an exception for this one. Forza Horizon 4 has gone down as one of my favourite Forza titles since the inception of both the OG Motorsport games and the trendier Horizon open-world racers, and it’s currently possible to grab the Ultimate Edition with all the DLCs and expansion packs for just £11 from CDKeys.
The reason why it’s possible to grab this Ultimate Edition for essentially 85 percent off its original £80 list price is becasue of the unfortunate reality that FH4 is going to be delisted in just under a month’s time. This essentially means it’ll become impossible to purchase the game digitally due to licences expiring and such. It represents quite the shame, as apart from picking up a physical copy, you won’t be able to buy the game, nor the DLC in the future, making it difficult to return to one of the richest environments ever placed into to a Forza game.
It’s the sheer variety of the map that makes FH4 one of the best titles in the series, ranging from a literal quarry to the narrow, winding streets of Edinburgh and the cosy Cotswold village of Broadway. There’s also a vast car list, totalling well over 700 vehicles with all of what was added into the game over its lifespan, while the Auction House is still there if you want to pick up any vehicles you might not have.
The thing is, with the delisting of FH4, it acts as a timely reminder of the short lifespan of digital games against their physical counterparts. We’ve seen entire storefronts for the Xbox 360, Wii U and 3DS shut down in the last couple of years alone, and I imagine there will be even more of this as time passes. With it, it becomes harder to preserve games that are otherwise consigned to history. At least the FH4 serves are still around.
If you want to grab a classic Forza Horizon title for a virtually nominal fee, this CDKeys deal on the FH4 Ultimate Edition is truly excellent.
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 players are calling on Activision to suspend the over zealous AFK timer in its Zombie mode. In a reddit thread that has garnered hundreds of replies and thousands of upvotes, DiegoMm shared their frustrations when, whilst trying to solve the Liberty Falls easter egg, they were unceremoniously kicked for inactivity. And unlike similar threads making the same objections, this particular player was actively moving when they were booted from the game – you can check it out in the reddit embed below. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 live-action reveal trailer.Watch on YouTube Unfortunately, the player couldn’t just jump back in and pick up where they left off, either. Kicked for inactivity while literally moving around solving an easter egg stepbyu/DiegoMm inCODZombies To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings “Joining back in removed everything I had and just gave me my loadout weapon with green rarity, like 3000 points and no salvage,” they explained in the comments. “It just gives you some base amount of stuff based on the round number, like after bleeding out.” One less sanguine player in a separate thread also asking for the 15-minute timer to be scrapped said: “Remove the fu*king 15-minute timer. It’s insane. If I’m playing SOLO. I’m ALONE in the match. The game is 80€. If I want to pause the game for 10 hours straight, I should be able to do so,” (thanks, TheGamer). “I do not care that I take up server resources. Either make the game playable offline or remove the greed timer.” “I didn’t realise just how much I like to pause and chill for a minute until this pause timer kept closing my games lol,” said one respondent. “Something fun found… patched in literal hours,” another player commented. “Something game-ruining… literally never patched and will be around for decades. “It’s the CoD zombies experience, yay.” If you’re looking to complete the puzzle without getting disconnected, check out our Liberty Falls easter egg guide. In our Call of Duty Black Op 6’s campaign review, Chris T. said it was a “return to form for the series, mixing the usual, slightly unsavoury real-world set dressing with cracking action, horror twists and tongue-in-cheek charm”. Earlier this week, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella called Black Ops 6 launch the “biggest Call of Duty release ever”, saying its arrival set a record for “Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day”.
The launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 into Game Pass will hurt sales of the game, but will see millions of subscribers flock to Xbox’s service, leading analysts say.
However, the true success won’t be immediately known, as it’ll depend on whether Xbox can keep subscribers within the service in the months following the game’s launch.
Wedbush boss Michael Pachter believes that putting Call of Duty in Game Pass could result in up to six million lost sales, based on the idea that 25% of Game Pass subscribers may have bought the game anyway. However, he adds that the move could result in between three to four million people signing up to Game Pass to access the title.
“Good overall for Microsoft and for consumers,” he told us. “But the headline will say ‘Call of Duty sales are down’.”
Ampere’s chief games analyst Piers Harding-Rolls is a little more conservative, and believes that Call of Duty will result in a 10% increase in Game Pass Ultimate subscribers (so 2.5 million). He also says that not all of those will be completely new users, as it will include those upgrading from Game Pass Core and Game Pass Standard (Call of Duty will only be available in the ‘Ultimate’ tier). In fact, he feels a ‘good chunk’ of new subscribers will come from those tiers.
Harding-Rolls adds that although there will inevitably be some lost premium sales, there is scope to alleviate that through other forms of monetisation.
“The removal of the 14-day $1 trial offer is an indication that Microsoft needs to maximise its subscription revenue returns from the introduction of one of gaming’s biggest franchises at launch,” he says.
“There is no doubt that adding the latest Call of Duty will be expensive, at least initially, for Microsoft. However, Call of Duty is increasingly a live-service game first and foremost that monetises strongly in-game. Microsoft will be trading premium full-game sales in exchange for a bigger audience that can be monetised in-game instead.
“One of the key questions is how this might impact how the game is monetised and whether there is a bigger onus on in-game monetisation compared to previous entries in the franchise. In terms of audience expansion, Xbox and PC are likely to be key growth platforms. Cloud support at launch offers some potential, but I think the Call of Duty streaming opportunity aligns most strongly with playing on TV screens and PC monitors rather than on mobile devices where Call of Duty Mobile and Warzone are already popular.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 won’t have a partnership with PlayStation this year | Image credit: Activision
Newzoo market analyst Brett Hunt also believes that Black Ops 6 will attract a stronger audience this year, certainly compared with last year’s Modern Warfare 3. However, that’s not just because of its inclusion in Game Pass.
“Black Ops has always been well received and with a mutually exclusive campaign from Modern Warfare, new movement system in multiplayer, and return of round-based Zombies, this should result in numbers much closer to those of Modern Warfare 2 than 3. This is the most Call of Duty has been reinvigorated in recent years, and the numbers will likely reflect this.”
Newzoo says that Modern Warfare 2 attracted 21.7 million monthly active users in the US, compared with just 12 million for Modern Warfare 3.
One key discussion point is around the impact Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will have on PlayStation. For the past generation, Sony has had a content and marketing exclusivity agreement with Activision over Call of Duty, which has now ended. Game Pass is also unavailable on PlayStation 5. So could this result in some audience shift from PlayStation towards Xbox?
“Those who own both Xbox and PlayStation consoles may be swayed to play the game on Microsoft’s devices, but cross-platform play and multi-platform accounts mean this is not necessarily a permanent decision,” explains Harding-Rolls.
“Indeed, there could be a scenario where PlayStation-first multi-console gamers switch to Xbox to play the premium campaign while still playing F2P Warzone on their preferred console under a single Activision account. As such, I’m not convinced that the longer-term audience on PlayStation will be significantly disrupted, although Sony will potentially have its storefront share of premium sales undermined to an extent.”
“I’m not convinced that the longer-term audience on PlayStation will be significantly disrupted, although Sony will potentially have its storefront share of premium sales undermined to an extent”
Piers-Harding Rolls, Ampere
All the analysts we spoke to agreed on one thing, and that’s the success of this move will depend on whether Xbox can retain the new subscribers it brings in beyond the game’s launch period. And whether they are prepared to implement a strategy to continually engage new subscribers into 2025.
Katan Games’ Dr Serkan Toto believes there is pressure from Xbox to get this right.
“We all know that Microsoft’s gaming unit has not been growing as expected, which is why Microsoft greenlit the Activision Blizzard mega deal in the first place,” he said. “Now the pressure on Xbox is sky high: If Call of Duty will not make the Game Pass business model work, what possibly can?
“Nobody knows what Microsoft’s expectations are for Game Pass growth past launch, but if Black Ops 6 does not meet targets, things can become very grim very quickly. I also wonder if Black Ops 6 will be able to retain subscribers in the long run or if numbers will drop sharply again early next year, after the initial hype runs out.”
However, Pachter believes Call of Duty is the perfect game to keep users engaged.
“Call of Duty players generally play for much longer because of multiplayer and frequent map drops,” he says. “I think the average is closer to six months and a lot play year-round. The year-round players will sign up and stay.”
