MIDiA’s five games trends to watch in 2025

The year 2024 has been eventful for the games market to say the least. Call of Duty came to Game Pass, Sony released its PS5 Pro console, live-service games faced a reckoning, and gaming has solidified its space at the heart of entertainment.

We are proud to have been part of gaming discourse this year, with our research on older gamers, fans preferring single player to multiplayer, the case for couch co-op and shorter games, and how gamers engage more with social video than games.

But enough reflection. It is time to turn our analytical eye forward to 2025 and beyond with five trends to watch.

1. Multi-game subscriptions will take a back seat

Many proclaimed that subscriptions would become the de-facto way consumers access game content, just like Spotify, Netflix, and the like are dominating distribution in music and video.

Despite companies’ best efforts, subscriptions will not be the main method of game distribution. For now, consumers – and the market – have spoken.

The reasoning is clear: the attention economy is already oversaturated, and consuming game content is more demanding than other mediums. A consumer can:

• Listen to hundreds of tracks on Spotify each month
• Watch dozens of movies / TV episodes
• But the majority only has time to play a few games maximum – and that extends to even highly engaged players

This is just the tip of the iceberg about why multi-game subscriptions are only worth it for the most dedicated players:

• Most gamers are already served by the free-play markets, via games like Fortnite, Candy Crush, and Roblox
• Others are happy to buy a few premium games a year – as seen with 2024 hits like College Football, Black Myth Wukong, and Helldivers 2
• Meanwhile, PlayStation and Nintendo are seeing stagnating subscribers
• Xbox was also following that trend on console despite a recent boost from adding Call of Duty to Game Pass, the service's new baseline

Free-based tiers and cloud gaming could boost multi-game subscriptions in the long term. But unless consumer behaviour and needs drastically change, subscriptions will settle as a secondary revenue stream in 2025 as subscriber growth continues to stagnate. 

2. The year – and beyond – of the portable 

Nintendo will launch its Switch successor in 2025. Based on the activity of Nintendo’s development teams, we expect to see a new Mario Kart, 3D Super Mario, and Pokémon game during the Switch 2 launch window.

These Nintendo entertainment IPs are some of the strongest in the world. So the Switch successor will sell very well, driving game-related hardware and console revenues in 2025.

Many are sceptical about the Switch 2 living up to its predecessor, due to black-swan moments like the COVID-19 gaming boom.

However, even the brand and IP power of Pokemon alone should not be taken lightly – nor should Nintendo’s cross-generational reputation as an entry point for new gamers with games like Mario Kart. Kids inherit their parents' Nintendo nostalgia, and the Disney-like cycle continues.  

The inevitable announcement of a sequel to 2020's Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which has sold over 45 million copies and became a cultural zeitgeist, will mobilise cosy gamers in full force. A new Animal Crossing and Mario Kart would also reactivate some of the consumers who played during lockdowns.

While the Switch successor is just one part of portable gaming’s incoming tailwind, the original console has had a major second-order effect on other manufacturers launching companion devices.

The attention economy has been oversaturated for a while. Nintendo noticed this early. It shrewdly launched the hybrid Switch handheld, allowing for at-home TV play AND portable play.

Years later, companion devices like Valve’s Steam Deck and other portable PCs followed suit, similarly complementing PC gamers' main platform (a gaming PC, in this case).

Portable companion devices are ecosystem signal boosts – a way for platform holders to capture more attention. Nintendo proved the hybrid use case in 2017, Steam showed it works for companion devices, and now everybody else is following suit via companion devices of their own.

Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer, confirmed Xbox is working on a portable, and leaks reported by Bloomberg indicate Sony is as well. Both devices would be years away but have implications for game platform holders to capture more attention.

Simply put, portable devices are about to skyrocket, and the Switch 2 will kick things off in earnest in 2025.

Learn more about companion devices as ecosystem signal boosts.

3. Console and PC will push advertising more to grow revenues

After an extended period of strong growth, the games market has been facing growth challenges since 2022. To turn the tide, some game makers will turn to advertising – which has largely been untapped on console and PC – to drive growth.

Advertising will become more prominent at the platform level – such as in Xbox and PlayStation menus, where both companies are already experimenting – and in individual games (immersive, interstitial, and rewarded alike).

Facing challenges in their gaming segment, mobile developers are also increasingly entering console and PC (and will bring mobile ad monetisation learnings with them).

The elephant in the room: game developers have experimented with advertising in the past – and failed.

But the revenue stream is more viable now, as programmatic advertising means ads are more automated and targeted.

Serving relevant, specific ads on console / PC simply was not possible 15 years ago in games like Burnout Paradise (which experimented with billboards to no avail). Now it is.

Also, gaming is now front of mind for marketers, and there is also a necessity: the games market and advertisers alike need new revenue streams.

Gamers are no longer just basement-dwelling teens to marketers like they were in the past. Advertisers in particular are looking for ways to target hard-to-reach younger consumers, aggravated by the looming threat of a TikTok ban in the US.

4. ‘’No generative AI was used in the making of this game’’

Bubble or not, generative AI will have a growing role in game development going forward. And even if the AI bubble bursts, the tech will remain in game development in some form. But the transition to workers using technology will create even more tension in 2025.  

As game publishers are continuing to inject generative AI to cut costs and streamline game creation, the technology is not sitting ethically well with developers.  

A GDC survey of over 3,000 attendees shows that 82% were ethically concerned about generative AI. The technology understandably creates tensions around job security and copyright infringement – two already sensitive topics in the games industry.

Replacing creatives with predictive modelling (based on historical inputs) would by definition be derivative – and not iterative. This of course rings alarm bells for those who care about innovation and games as an art form, including game makers, journalists, and tastemakers.  

Generative AI is relatively new and more use cases will hit the market in 2025, leading to yet more debate, leading to more tension. More developers will publicly decry generative AI and will mobilise fans of their games to do the same.

We predict that a high-profile game will use something along the lines of “no generative AI was used in the making of this game’’ as a marketing beat.

Curious about what gamers think about generative AI? We surveyed over 6,000 gamers on that very topic, complemented by qualitative interviews. We are launching a report on the topic next week, and the results might surprise you.

Reach out here if you would like to know more.

5. A creator-led game will be the talk of the town

Creators and influencers who got rich through gaming video content have their eyes, and their capital, on game development.

For example, popular YouTuber videogamedunkey already owns his own indie publisher, Bigmode. Its debut game, Animal Well, even got a nod at the recent 2024 Game Awards, with a nomination for best indie game. 

Meanwhile, several influencer-led game studios are creating game experiences on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine for Fortnite, like TypicalGamer with his own studio JOGO.  

Games like Fortnite and Roblox already capture vast amounts of consumer attention. Most of the UGC games will fail to take off. But with Epic and the Roblox Corporation actively pushing their creation platforms and tools so heavily, and brands also getting heavily involved, it’s just a matter of time before we get a modern UGC hit.  

This is not a new phenomenon, though. After all, it was UGC –or modding as we called it back then – that led to the formation of two of today’s biggest genres:

1. A 2002 fan-made StarCraft map (Aeon of Strife) sparked the MOBA genre, paving the way for League of Legends
2. While battle royale came from 2012 mods for Minecraft (Survival Games) and Arma 2 (Battle Royale in DayZ), paving the way for Fortnite

Bringing influencers into the equation – armed with huge audiences (marketing), networks (B2B), and a knowledge of games their fand love – could spark gaming’s next big trend.

Prediction: We expect to see a viral hit / UGC game from an influencer-led studio – or at least a game becomes part of the gaming cultural zeitgeist.