Videogame Industry Banks on Distant Coming Attractions

livemint.com:

Videogamers aren’t exactly known for their patience. They have little choice at the moment, and neither do investors in the industry. Major videogame developments are on the horizon.

Rockstar Games finally confirmed in December that it is working on “Grand Theft Auto VI," which would be the first sequel to its blockbuster franchise in more than a decade and follows a predecessor that is now ranked as the third bestselling individual game ever. Nintendo is widely believed to be working on a successor to its Switch console, which has sold more than 139 million units to become the company’s second-bestselling console ever, surpassing the mega-popular Wii. And just this past week, Disney made a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games.

That deal will lead to the creation of “an all-new games and entertainment universe" connected to Epic’s popular“Fortnite" game, the companies said in their joint statement. And Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard, which paves the way for blockbuster franchises such as Call of Duty to be distributed through subscription-based services that could lower the entry price for players and help upend the industry’s long-established business model of selling such games on a per-unit basis. None of these next big things are on the near-term horizon though.

And the outlook for much of the industry for this year is muted at best. Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, the two largest independent publishers left in the business after Microsoft’s takeover of Activision, are expected to see low-to-mid single-digit growth in net bookings for calendar 2024, according to consensus projections from FactSet. Both are decelerations from the net bookings growth logged by the two publishers for 2023.