The game is booming and is expected to continue to grow

Some games were boosted by perfectly timed launches. Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched in March 2020 and sold 13.4 million units in its first six weeks. It became one of the best-selling Nintendo Switch games of all time.

Lockdown delays game release

Lockdowns may have turned millions of people into gamers, but adapting to work from home (WFH) presents an unexpected creative challenge for those working in the gaming industry, according to Harvard Business Review. brought

A tech-savvy workforce (nearly all dealing with digital goods) might have been expected to switch to telecommuting easily. In some cases, however, the lack of spontaneous collaboration slowed down product development, pushing critically acclaimed new games weeks or months past their release date. Delays have cost some gaming companies millions of dollars in losses.

According to Chad Grenier, who helped found Respawn Entertainment, an American video game development studio, WFH creates “creative hurdles.” “You lose the conversation in the hallway. There’s no one to sit on the couch and talk to him about something for an hour or he for two hours. You miss the lunch conversation. It’s all gone and it just happens naturally.” Instead, it will be what was planned.”

Expected growth in Turkey and Pakistan

Nevertheless, PwC analysts expect gaming revenue to continue to grow due to increased investment in in-app advertising.

Video games accounted for just 6.1% of global spending in the entertainment and media sector in 2017, but will capture a 10.9% share by 2026 as games become more mainstream, according to a PwC report. It is predicted that

China and the US will dominate the market in 2021, accounting for about half of gaming and esports revenue. But future growth could come from less wealthy countries with growing populations.

According to a PwC report, the gaming market is expected to grow fastest in Turkey, with a compound annual growth rate of 24.1% from 2021 to 2026. Pakistan will follow him at 21.9% and India at 18.3%.

‘Unacceptable’ price increases

G2A.com’s Skwarczek is concerned that the game’s rising cost could slow progress. Writing for Forbes, he said: At a time when many are facing financial hardships, this is unacceptable… current and projected future pricing is displacing a significant percentage of the people who keep the gaming industry running. “

While the gaming sector’s long-term performance looks solid, UK-based market research firm Ampere Analysis forecasts a 1.2% decline in 2022, with spending similar to that seen during the pandemic lockdown. It doesn’t last forever.

“After two years of massive expansion, the gaming market is poised to regain some of its growth in 2022,” said Research Director Piers Harding-Rolls. “Nevertheless, the year ended significantly earlier than its pre-pandemic performance, and the outlook for the sector as a whole remains bright.”

Keza MacDonald, video game editor of British newspaper The Guardian, said a market correction is expected. “People are playing less and spending less for a variety of reasons…I played myself a lot less this year. You can do other fun things like hugging again. Friends.”

This article was originally published by the World Economic Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License.