The PC Pulse: What are the biggest trends facing the market in 2019?

pcgamesinsider.biz:

We at PCGamesInsider.biz boast many talents but we cannot predict the future. Shocking, truly shocking, we know.

But while we don't have a crystal ball, we do have a group of incredibly smart industry folks at hand who have the knowledge and insight to predict what the trends that will shape the market in 2019 will be. 

Unfortunately, the big trend in the coming years is going to be Netflix-style subscription models. We're already seeing it with offerings like Xbox Game Pass and Discord Nitro, players paying a monthly fee to get a ton of good games. It's great for the platform holders, but terrible for developers. If this trend continues as it is, in a couple of years we're going to be struggling even more to sell our games, and instead we'll have to haggle with big platforms to see how much money we can get for launching on their subscriptions services. It's gonna be grim!

I think we’re going to see a continued interest in the release of Western games in Asia, particularly China. The second half of 2018 proved particularly challenging for this given the freeze by Chinese authorities on issuing the necessary licenses, but there are indications this will begin to, slowly,  resolve itself in 2019. The release of Valve’s ‘Steam China’, similar to Tencent’s WeGame platform, is also interesting and could be a major boon for accessing one of the world’s fastest growing gaming markets. That said, many questions remain regarding how exactly this will operate, particularly given Valve’s already-existing unofficial Steam marketplace operating in China.

Because there is an incubation period for games, as in when a trend hits, plenty of people pivotal but it takes time for their efforts to appear, 2019 will see a plethora of battle