Welcome to 2019! At the end of 2018, DFC Intelligence worked with leading industry news site GameDaily.biz to share our predictions for 2019. The big themes around our predictions include new devices and a focus on game streaming. With the launch of the Nintendo Switch almost two years ago we saw how the future of video games will likely be a merger between mobile devices that connect to a larger screen. This trend is likely to accelerate as announcements are made about exciting new hardware products. Some of these products will come from companies fairly new to the video game hardware business. The competition in this space is going to start to get intense and it is likely that the industry will finally need to rethink the traditional console cycle. This leads to the idea of game streaming, aka the Netflix of gaming. This is a big focus of DFC Intelligence research in 2019. However, as we stress this is still in the early stages. Streaming games will open up major opportunities for some players while undermining the traditional business model of some established players. Of course, the idea of streaming games has been around for a long time. Things will not suddenly change overnight. Like VR, three years ago, the hype will be greater than the reality. A Netflix of video games will come, it is a question of “when,” not “if.” However, that “when” question is a huge unknown and it will have major strategic impact for the game industry over the next ten years. To see the full predictions in GameDaily.biz go here.
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