Where has the year gone?

Part 1 of 5: Where has the year gone?

With Slush being next week it signals to me that the year is practically gone, or atleast, Q5 is on our doorstep, with that in mind I wanted to share my 2024 predictions from this time last year plus the addition 4 I did at the 6 month mark to take stock before putting out my 2025 predictions this week.

So overall how did my predictions fair against the year?

Well, as always, there’s winners and losers but I would say overall, and mostly, correct, with a few exceptions and caveats as always.

1. Consolidation? Yes we continued to see big companies acquire smaller ones and overall the big get bigger (no sh*t sherlock).
2. Mergers and Acquisitions? Yes, namely SuperPlay being acquired by Playtika and I would have liked to seen more deals in market, but it is happening, equally we started to see VC’s investing again (more PCC and AI but it’s happening).
3. IP Games? Yes definitely, Squadbusters whilst a failure was a hugely discussed launch, the new Barbie game by Rollic, Pokemon TCGP anyone?
4. Live Ops & Events? Probably the highlight of the year being Supercell‘s masterclass with Brawl Stars, to go from $10-20m a month in IAP to $70-80m for a game 6 years old is INSANE.

5. A UA shift from Quantity to Quality? ROAS/CPE campaigns are now making up 90% of studios UA in some cases, so yeah, nailed that one.
6. AI in Games? So I think I was a little early here, but it will be on my 2025 list, we’ve seen it adopted throughout marketing, and internally with QA, and in some cases, puzzle level creation but not on the scale I expected but it’s coming!
7. Hybrid Casual to be come the most popular for small studios? Yeah, I would say so, although, we have seen alot of people pivot out of mobile in to Steam (again, something I’ll mention in 2025).

8. Google Privacy/Sandbox? Well, if you ask anyone from the team there they’ll tell you it’s under way but personally I haven’t really seen the impact yet so I think more is coming, and whilst not as impactful as ATT it will hurt devs.
9. Apple Arcade & Netflix Games continuing to grow and sign better games? GTA anyone? but seriously I was expecting more from the platforms and think they actually fizzled out a bit, next year will be make or break for them!
10. The return of an older sub-genre? Didn’t really notice it or feel it like my Casual-RPG projection, although Puzzles and Dragons did get signed to Apple Arcade! I would say mechanic ways the winners was Ropes (IE Twisted Tangle) and Screw (Screw Jam etc).

What about the additional 4 at the 6 month mark?

1. Webstores? Yeah, probably one of the biggest trends of the year, and will be in 2025 (more on that tomorrow).
2. Community Based UA / Discord for Mobile? Well, discord games has launched and we are seeing adoption there for big mobile games but still early.
3. MENA becoming a rising star? most definitely, 2025 will be a big year for the region and especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
4. Squadbusters. No.