Veteran games analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana has called GTA 6 possibly the most important thing "to ever release in the industry," so in a recent interview, as Rockstar's long-awaited open-world monolith slowly approaches, I was keen to dig into the idea of this rising tide lifting all boats. Much of our conversation revolved around the one-two punch of GTA 6 and the still-unnamed Nintendo Switch 2, the software and hardware releases poised to define the next year in gaming, if not beyond.
The fact that these two software and hardware titans are coming in the same year is, to put it mildly, simultaneously almost unprecedented and increasingly necessary. To put it less mildly, Piscatella says "if one misses the year, or if one doesn't deliver on expectations, it could be a much tougher look" for the industry in 2025. Either way, Piscatella reckons "these are the two things that could really change the course of consumer behavior when it comes to gaming."
"That's not to say there aren't going to be other surprises, that we couldn't see more Helldivers 2-type hits," he continues. "We sure could. But while those can move the needle a little bit, these two things can move the needle a lot. I don't recall – maybe when Grand Theft Auto 5 showed up, that type of thing in 2013 is maybe the last time we had an individual product or two really have this big of a potential impact on the market."
"I don't remember a year like this where so much of what's going to happen is focused on just two products entering the market, right?" he reiterates. "A lot of eggs in the basket, so to speak. And we'll have to see how that goes. So it's really tough until we get confirmation about when these things are showing up, and we start seeing the results about just how good or bad 2025 is going to look from a video game world perspective."
"My expectation for the year is going to be determined by if and when new Nintendo hardware and Grand Theft Auto 6 show up and how successful they are," Piscatella says of the year ahead. "Those two things are going to basically determine how good or bad next year is from a market look. I'm expecting both will show up next year and be relatively successful. So I'm anticipating we start seeing growth next year, but if one misses the year, or if one doesn't deliver on expectations, it could be a much tougher look."
After a year of severe layoffs, industry-wide contraction and consolidation, some expensive and high-profile misses, persistent investment drought, slowing console sales, and flattening sales for subs like Game Pass, GTA 6 and the Switch 2 could give games as a whole a much-needed boost. But what does that actually look like beyond the nebulous idea of more money? What are the ripple effects of a new Nintendo system or a new GTA?
Hopefully the industry doesn't become so conservative that we just get the same games all the time
Mat Piscatella
In an ideal world, Piscatella reasons, the tangible benefit for other folks in the industry, while Rockstar and Nintendo may be swimming in Scrooge McDuck tubs of money, would be an uptick in investment opportunities. This could translate to more and, at a less reticent and risk-averse time, more experimental games getting made.
"The biggest thing is investment, getting investment back into developing games, particularly for smaller and up-and-coming developers and publishers," he begins. "It's been an incredibly difficult year to generate investment. You know, people look at the trends, and they look at where the games industry is compared to, say, what it was in peak 2021, they look at other opportunity areas for investment. And a lot of folks have chosen to allocate those investment dollars elsewhere.
"Getting GTA 6, getting the new Nintendo hardware device, bringing growth back to this market, particularly for those markets that have peaked in 2021 – we're not talking about India, Brazil, which continue to grow, or China, which continues to grow – but those markets that were already basically fully developed in '20 and '21, getting those back to growth will be key to getting investment going again, and hopefully offsetting a lot of the layoffs and closures we've been seeing here over the past couple of years. I mean, that's my hope. We'll have to see if that actually works out or not, but that's my hope."
Those layoffs have immediately impacted thousands of game developers, but the broader industry may not feel the effects of them until "years down the road," Piscatella says.
"It's really tough to kind of look forward that way," he explains. "I mean, what we're seeing right now is because engagement is so concentrated in just a few of these super games, these black hole evergreen games." Almost like a chant, he points to the "Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox" behemoth ecosystems.
"Publishers have gotten more conservative. Risk-taking has been pulled back a bit. But we have best-case 3-year, worst-case 10-year development cycles now for some of these games. So what's happening now, you're looking years down the road before you see the impact of it.
"And hopefully the industry doesn't become so conservative that we just get the same games all the time. Because, as we've seen, you get enough of the same type of game in the market and folks just aren't interested. So that's the thing, and revitalizing and re-energizing development is a big thing that hopefully we start seeing again beginning next year."
