| Hi everyone. Today we're pulling out our crystal ball and making some predictions, but first... This week's top gaming news: Happy New Year, and thank you for your continued support of Game On. This year, Nintendo Co. will finally reveal and begin selling the next Switch. New entries in big franchises such as Civilization and Assassin's Creed will be released. And a legion of video-game industry employees will hope to see a brutal correction period come to an end. That's what we know — but what about the unknowns? It's time to consult the bones and make some predictions for the year to come. The industry will start bouncing back Tens of thousands of video-game workers have lost their jobs over the last two years — an unfathomably difficult time for what is ostensibly a growing industry. We've seen studios shut down and big games fail to hit, whether due to an oversaturated market, unreasonable sales expectations or bad bets. Independent game makers struggled to attract investments, and when they did, the contract terms were unbalanced. As early as the DICE convention last February, game workers and entrepreneurs were preaching the mantra, "Survive until '25." So...now what? While I don't expect every game company to miraculously return to pandemic-era peaks, I do think we'll see some improvement. Consoles have plateaued, but the computer market is growing rapidly. Steam, the PC platform, does not share daily or monthly user counts, but the service peaked at more than 39 million concurrent users in 2024, a leap of 6 million above the previous year's mark. The next Switch, too, should lead to a flurry of new spending from early adopters hungry for games to play. More game publishers are in buying mode than they were at this time last year, and some new potential investors are springing up. The layoffs may not be completely over, but I think the video-game industry is on the road to recovery. No more exclusives Last year Square Enix Holdings Co., the Japanese gaming giant, released the role-playing game Final Fantasy VII Rebirth exclusively for Sony's PlayStation 5. It may be one of the last third-party exclusives we ever see. The company has since promised to "aggressively pursue" a multi-platform strategy, with Rebirth hitting PCs later this month and more ports likely to follow. Even the console makers, Sony Group Corp. and Microsoft Corp., are releasing their games on rival platforms — the previously PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man 2 is coming to PCs, following many of Sony's other games, while Xbox's recently released Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is also arriving on PlayStation 5. Exclusive math just doesn't make sense anymore. Games cost too much to make, the console audience isn't growing fast enough and skipping Steam means missing out on a massive chunk of the market. This year, I think we'll see Xbox go completely multi-platform and PlayStation get closer and closer. The only exception may be Nintendo — and we'll just have to see how much longer that lasts. Ubisoft will irrevocably transform Not all is well in Paris, where Ubisoft Entertainment SA has seen shares plummet to their lowest in a decade on weaker-than-expected sales and the delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which was originally planned for last year but slipped to February after the underperformance of Ubisoft's previous big game, Star Wars Outlaws. Now, Ubisoft is weighing over options including going private. The upcoming release of Assassin's Creed Shadows could tell us a lot. If it's a hit, Ubisoft will have more time (and leverage) as the founding Guillemot family sorts out the company's future. But if it flops, we might see a drastic reorganization happen very quickly, be it a buyout or a sale. Tencent Holdings Ltd., which already owns a stake in Ubisoft, has been linked to buyout talks, but we could also see an unexpected suitor swoop in. One guess? Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group, which has said it is looking to make a big purchase this year. Grand Theft Auto VI won't make it Publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. has said that the most-anticipated game of all time is on track for a fall 2025 release. But companies say a lot of things. The next Grand Theft Auto is a huge and ambitious game, the pressure to make it great is inordinate and developer Rockstar Games has vowed to avoid forcing excessive overtime during the final months of development. I expect that it will slip to 2026. …but Silksong will! If you follow the video-game industry but haven't heard of Silksong, you will this year. Announced in 2019, the much-anticipated sequel to the indie gem Hollow Knight has become a running gag in some circles after failing to materialize over the last few years, generating nearly as much hype as some of its big-budget contemporaries. I predict that it will finally come out this year — and it will sell millions of copies. Generative AI will have its Icarus moment Despite the feverish hype surrounding artificial intelligence — Electronic Arts Inc. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson called it "the very core of our business" — the results have been underwhelming thus far. Tools like ChatGPT have proven useful for helping organize workflow and assisting with productivity, but their ability to create content (and deliver accurate information) isn't quite there. Tepid Coca-Cola commercials, erroneous search-engine results and AI-fabricated social media profiles have been met with scorn at worst, laughter at best. This year, I think we'll see a video-game company experiment with generative AI to disastrous ends, potentially ranging from plagiarism to lawsuits. Or perhaps a company currently trying to make an AI-powered game will realize that it's a fool's errand and cancel it by the end of the year. Half-Life will make a return There's been a lot of smoke surrounding the resurgence of Valve Corp.'s iconic shooter series, which has a long history in the gaming industry. The 2004 release of Half-Life 2 was followed by two episodes and a third that was announced and never materialized. The franchise then went dormant for 13 years before returning with the virtual-reality game Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. Now, rumors have been rumbling about a proper sequel, so I'll call it: I predict that Half-Life 3 will be announced this year. Just two decades late. | 
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