The gaming industry of the future will favor two consoles | DFC Intelligence

The gaming industry will not only grow in the coming years, but will also experience changes in the hardware market, according to DFC Intelligence, with only two clear winners among three major manufacturers. The research and advisory firm has released its annual market report and forecast today, and one of the main conclusions of the latter is that consumers will only have room in their wallets for two new game consoles, while the third will struggle to find your place.

Previous DFC reports suggest that 2025 will begin a period of record growth for the games industry, and this markets report delves into that: predicting that the industry will recover from the decline of previous years thanks in part to exciting launches of new games and consoles. – two of the most important and immediate are the new Nintendo console and Grand Theft Auto VI, both scheduled for 2025.

The report also shows that the gaming audience will grow along with the market itself. By 2027, DFC predicts the gamer population will reach 4 billion, up from about 3.8 billion it currently stands at. Most of those 4 billion gamers will be “low income,” meaning they won’t spend much money on games. By contrast, the top 10% of gamers will account for 65% of video game revenue in the coming years, according to the report.

Two consoles will be the winners in the coming years

In addition to the growth of the player population, DFC also forecasts the state of the hardware market for the coming years. Nintendo’s new console will be a major growth driver and the report suggests it will have an even stronger launch than the Switch, with many households potentially purchasing multiple devices. This will be part of a broader hardware spending trend: DFC predicts hardware revenue spending will reach $120 billion by 2028.

However, not all consoles will get the Nintendo treatment, according to the report. Both Sony and Microsoft are likely to release a new console between now and 2028, but only one is expected to be successful. As the upcoming PlayStation and Xbox consoles are completely theoretical at this point, there’s no way to know which one will be successful. It will depend on the features of the new consoles and the active installation base.

In addition to hardware sales, the report also forecasts changes in gaming revenue in the coming years. Revenue from add-on content and subscriptions will continue to outpace that of full games, and subscriptions to individual games (e.g., MMO) will outpace those offering multiple games (e.g., Xbox Game Pass). One of the biggest challenges game companies will face will be distribution.

DFC Intelligence CEO and founder David Cole said in a statement: “Over the last three decades, the video game industry has grown more than 20-fold and, after two years of declining hardware sales and software, is poised to resume growth at a healthy pace through the end of the decade. While 2025 will mark the beginning of that upward trajectory, some big questions remain, including who will lose the next-gen console war and who will win the game software distribution battle. And with big publishers focusing on live services around evergreen franchises, opportunities for smaller studios will be plentiful.”