The games industry will not only grow in the next few years, but will experience trends in the hardware market, according to DFC experience – with only two clear winners out of three major manufacturers. The research and consulting firm has released its annual market report and forecast today, and one of the main benefits of the latter is that it will only take up space in the wallets of consumers. have for two new game consoles, and the third will struggle to find a place.
Previous DFC reports suggest that 2025 will usher in a period of record growth for the games industry, and this markets report elaborates on that: It predicts that the industry will rebounded from the decline of previous years due in part to exciting new game and console launches. – two of the biggest and fastest are the new Nintendo console and Grand Theft Auto VI, both of which are expected for 2025.
The report also shows that the gaming audience will grow along with the market itself. By 2027, DFC expects the gamer population to hit 4 billion, up from around 3.8 billion where it is now. Most of these 4 billion players will be “low income,” meaning they don't spend a lot of money on games. On the other hand, the top 10% of spenders in the gamer population will account for 65% of video game revenue in the next few years, according to the report.
Two consoles are winners in the next few years
Along with the growth of the gamer population, DFC also predicts the state of the hardware market over the next few years. The new Nintendo console will be the main driver of growth, and the report suggests that it will have an even stronger launch than the Switch, and that many households could buy multiple devices. This will be part of a larger trend in hardware spending – DFC expects hardware revenue spending to hit $120 billion in 2028.
However, not all consoles will have 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 of them is expected to be successful. Since both the next PlayStation and Xbox consoles are completely theoretical at this point, there is no way to know which one will succeed. It depends on the features of the new consoles and active install base.
In addition to hardware sales, the report also predicts changes in gaming revenue over the next few years. Add-on content and subscription revenue will continue to outpace that of full games, with individual game subscriptions (eg MMOs) outpacing those offering multiple games (eg Xbox Game Pass) . One of the biggest challenges game companies face is distribution.
DFC Intelligence CEO and founder David Cole said in a statement, “Over the past three decades, the video game industry has grown more than 20x, and after two years of hardware and software sales declining, it is ready to resume growing at a healthy rate 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 the big publishers focusing on live services around evergreen franchises, there will be opportunities for smaller studios.”
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