The current state of the gaming industry is not ideal, with cost-cutting measures leading to layoffs, studio closures and game cancellations, with few big games to boost sales . In an interview, Game Industry Network industry analyst Mat Piscatella said that GTA 6 may eventually become an extremely important version for the entire industry.
Piscatella, who works for tracking firm Circana, said that 2024 is not a good year for the gaming industry, with overall spending expected to drop between 2% and 10%, depending on your optimism.
“When you look at sales numbers or forecasts for what’s going to happen this year, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Piscatella said. “There’s uncertainty about the hardware. There’s uncertainty about the content. Who’s making the game?”
This uncertainty is underscored by the two biggest games of the year so far, Friends World and Hellraiser 2 , neither of which are expected to be huge hits. Despite the unexpected success, Piscatella said the industry needs another game with a similar level of success to match the sales driven by last year’s blockbuster Hogwarts Legacy.
Sales in 2024 appear to be a bit light for the genre, with many of the industry’s most anticipated games not launching until 2025 at the earliest. “The level of uncertainty this year is probably the highest I can remember… We can’t get to the finish line because we haven’t announced those big races that we know about,” he said. “When people say ‘our slate is going to be light this year,’ that doesn’t usually happen.” (GTA 6)
While this has certainly been a tough year for the industry, Piscatella remains optimistic about the future, with one major release already in the works for 2025 – Grand Theft Auto 6 . “We’re going to get a renewed interest in GTA 6,” he explained. “There’s probably never been anything more important in the industry, so there’s no pressure.”
Previous Post Apple’s Vision Pro head-mounted Virtual Keyboard will add 12 Languages