Game industry predictions for 2024 | The DeanBeat

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Predictions are foolish to make and yet the temptation to rush back into the breach is always a pull for me. The future is terrifying the more unknown it is, and so I and many other prognosticators try to see a pattern in the darkness ahead. All I can say once again is that I hope you are well and that we’ll all have a better year in 2024 than we had in 2023. This year was marked by 11,000 layoffs that I didn’t expect, given the resilience of gaming during tough economic times.

As such, it was a pretty unpredictable year. As I learned in the pandemic, I now think about predictions with both a sense of hope and a sense of dread. The compass seems broken when it comes to finding that unending paradise for the gaming industry.

Let’s review what we’ve seen as the pandemic threw off our ability to predict what will happen life, and how it did the same in the game industry. Game companies had a record year in 2020, and I wondered if it was a one-time bump thanks to the coronavirus forcing lockdowns. People played games to survive, repair their social lives, and distract themselves.

And yet while it was hard to top 2020, the game industry grew in 2021, according to market researcher Newzoo. Game companies bulked up as they dealt with the realities of remote work and had trouble shipping games. Just when it seemed the game industry could defy gravity and would get a boost from blockchain and the metaverse, Newzoo saw the industry shrink 5% in 2022. Consoles were in short supply. People returned to non-game in-person activities like travel, and the invasion of Ukraine caused havoc in the markets,