GTA 6's delay means that Rockstar Games' upcoming blockbuster won't have the positive impact on the games industry in 2025 that some analysts were hoping for, but while the executive director of games at market research firm Circana tells us that things are looking "fine" for business overall, there's another issue he's wondering about: "Why is there so much churn?"
Speaking to GamesRadar+, analyst Mat Piscatella admits Circana has revised its growth and spend forecast for the games industry since the delay of GTA 6. While the analysts previously anticipated an "all-time new record to be set this year," we're instead "down mid-single digits."
There are ups and downs across the market, but looking at it overall, Piscatella says "it's fine," and "we've maintained pretty close to those all-time highs [but] have never exceeded them." However, there is a big question surrounding the amount of "churn" we're seeing in the games industry, and the reason for it, he believes, is that "the winners are winning bigger, and everyone else is scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie."
He continues: "When you have a market that's not growing, but the number of games continues to exponentially increase – because we have more and more games, particularly on PC, coming out all the time – that available pie for those titles and services that aren't the biggest in the market, that pie is shrinking, and so there's more pressure. There's more games, but a smaller pie."
Piscatella goes on to explain that the "impact of having a record-setting year in the gaming space" is that "it will bring more investment to the space. It'll get people investing in new types of games, new publishers, new developers, to try to take advantage of a growing market. Because one of the biggest problems we've had is investment getting really tough to find, especially for, you know, smaller and new IP-type games."
Right now, investment isn't at the same level that it was in 2020 and 2021, which has made things "extremely challenging." He adds: "You still have your surprise hits that are outlier successes, like Clair Obscur, but you have many more games that people just don't even know exist, because there are so many games coming out all the time in a market where attention is really dominated by those biggest of the live-service games, right? So it's just an extremely difficult market. You look on the surface, and it looks fine from total spending, but then you look under the surface and you see all of the churning, and currents, and that's kind of where the big mess is coming from, and what we're seeing."
Asked if he thinks there are signs of this investment drought improving heading into the second half of 2025, and if he's still optimistic about the effect GTA 6 could have on the games industry, Piscatella tells us he's "hopeful." He points out that while the market has been "good," ultimately "the growth hasn't really been there from a total market perspective" in comparison to the enormous spike in 2020 brought on by players staying home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Over time, we'll start getting back to slow and steady growth," he continues. "But for right now, we're still kind of in that phase of trying to figure out what the next steps are for this industry. And, you know, we're kind of transitioning away from a console-centric type thing to more of a… basically the 'game as platform'-type market, and that's going to come with a lot of growing pains too, as I think we're seeing right now."
