The gaming market is developing at an incredible speed, having overcome the movie and music industries by size and volume. The global gaming market has already reached $184 billion, with the domination of digital gaming and the constant introduction of innovations and new solutions to keep players and spectators engaged. The growth of the gaming market happens so quickly and unexpectedly that many players can’t keep track of the regular changes and tech advancements. This article focuses on the main directions of changes in the gaming market and trends to expect in the future. 

Shifting To Digital Gaming

Console and PC games remain popular with players, so their market value remains rather high, being $50.3 and $41.5 billion, respectively. But the leader of all games is undoubtedly mobile gaming, which contributed over $95.2 billion to the market in total and featuring an increase in comparison with the two other game types.

A special focus should be placed on esports, whose market value is expected to reach over $4.8 billion in 2025. The number of users in the esports market is going to reach 896 million people by 2029, so it isn’t surprising to see such a variety of people to wager real money on esports on reputable bookmaker GGBET ggbet-litauen.com, thanks to their accessibility and convenience. So the number of games to bet on and people to do that will continue to grow as well.

The comparison of differences between the popularity of digital and physical games shows that the world of gaming moves towards digitalism, which makes up 95.4% of the total gaming revenue in the world.

Domination Of Indie Innovations Over AAA Struggles

The analysis of 2024 showed a striking trend that indie studios are getting much more popular than AAA developers. The iGaming industry faces not only a shift in player preferences but also the strength of smaller agile teams’ popularity over higher-budget projects.

The Indie gaming sector saw an unprecedented growth in 2024, which accounted for over 58% of all games on Steam and 48% of revenue in sold copies. 

Growing Role of Artificial Intelligence

AI has taken a variety of modern industries by storm, and iGaming isn’t an exception. AI tools continue to develop and grow, offering new, innovative solutions to both game development companies and game fans.

The previous year has shown how corporations prioritize AI tools since they made several controversial decisions like the integration of generative AI tools, AI-driven 3D modelling features, IP value maximization, etc.

All these and other AI-based solutions have resulted in reduced game development costs and a shorter development timeline for every product. At the same time, you can also observe some major pro-human victories like a commitment to human-led development, promotion of transparency, and using user content for AI training.

Virtual Reality Expansion

Gaming sectors dominated by VR and AR saw significant growth in 2024 thanks to the release of Apple Vision Pro and the Meta Quest 4. They have provided a high level of immersion and accessibility, which has allowed VR and AR to become an integral part of the gaming process. 

Streaming 

Streaming is now a characteristic that says about the success of new games. If a new release hasn’t received many views in live broadcasting, the chances that it will find many followers is minimal. No wonder live streaming will continue to grow and change the gaming market for the better since streamers often act like influencers. They show players a glimpse of a new game, its quality, gameplay, features, depth and entertainment.

It is enough to discover that Americans used to spend over 12 trillion minutes on streaming. By 2027, the live streaming industry is going to reach $184.3 billion.

Involvement of Tech Companies In The Gaming Industry

The tech leaders like Google, Meta, and Apple, which previously weren’t connected with the gaming industry at all, understand the significance of the gaming and live streaming market and undertake steps to become its part as well.

Microsoft is already known for being involved in the gaming industry after the release of the Xbox console. In 2019, the company released Project xCloud, a special video broadcasting service to stream Xbox games.

Meta also began the development of the Unity Technologies gaming platform in 2016. It is going to become a number-one platform for making video games. 

Google has launched Stadia, a cloud gaming service to play video streaming games with exceptional video quality.

Merchandizing

Since the gaming industry also wants to gain more revenue from the intellectual property it features, players can see a significant increase in the number of merchandise items, which are offered for sale. Games also inspire movie and series producers to develop new examples of projects like Halo on Xbox from Microsoft. This trend has already shown success with Assassin’s Creed and Sonic the Hedgehog, so it will continue to flourish in the future as well.