More AI, fewer risky bets, and finding footing in a changing industry: 2024 predictions
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2024 is in its early days as to what's in store for the games industry. 2023 proved to be eventful, with Activision Blizzard joining Microsoft officially and the sector losing thousands of people through waves of job cuts.
It's anyone's guess what trends, stories, and topics will become the narrative of the new year. GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to publishers, developers, and games professionals about their predictions for 2024.
StrangeScaffold's Xalavier Nelson Jr. says 2024 will see the industry and games investment torn between two competing movements.
Nelson says, "On the first hand, everyone wants to take the biggest financial swings possible, regardless of market factors, player desires, and production realities. This will result in more unexpected budget increases and project delays, which will have a domino effect of instability on publisher portfolios.
"That's already been happening for the past few years, and these conditions will only worsen as the overall economic environment atrophies.
"On the second hand, the appetite for indie projects requiring support in the $500,000 range and below is increasing, with the caveat that all of those signings are happening on a short-term basis to try to fill the space between delayed larger bets – which puts that support in the area of finishing funds while creating a deeply uncertain environment for developers to pitch their projects within at any given time."
He suggests that the sector braces itself because he believes these systemic issues are not likely to change until 2026 at the earliest.
Geogrify CEO Kate Edwards says 2024 will see more visibility from global game creations while AAA
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