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As fans on either end of the video game market wait patiently for some of this year's possible big releases like Grand Theft Auto 6 and the Nintendo Switch 2, veteran analyst and Circana games lead Mat Piscatella wagers the two launching in 2025 could spark record sales growth in gaming.
Speaking to the Limit Break Network in a recent interview, Piscatella explains why Rockstar Games' long-awaited title and Nintendo's new handheld console releasing in the same year could be huge for the video game market. "If those two things do happen this year," says the analyst, "and they do meet the expectations going into this year, I think you're looking at low to mid-single-digit percentage growth in overall market spending on video game products."
It might not sound like much to those of us less well-versed in the financial side of games, but it'd actually be quite a major jump for the market. "Now, that doesn't sound like a lot but it would result in record spending on the consumer side, it would get the industry back to growth over that 2021 peak that we've previously seen," Piscatella continues, "and most importantly … it gets investment flowing back into the game space."
Such growth would be especially monumental as the market has only "held relatively stable" since that 2021 peak, according to Piscatella. "We had a market that had been growing for decades all of a sudden peak and wasn't growing anymore after 2021 – and while the market's held relatively stable to those highs, it hasn't exceeded them." He points out that it's not only consumers who would benefit from the market's potential growth but also investors and developers.
"These are a couple of things that will help that market get back on a growth trajectory and [there's] nothing investors love more than the line going up and to the right. If your line is not going up and to the right, as an industry, it's really tough to get those dollars flowing in – because once those dollars start flowing in, all of a sudden you have more games coming out, you have more teams supported, and then that kind of self-sustains into another growth trajectory – which is what I'm hoping to see."
It sounds like GTA 6 and the Switch 2 could have quite an impact on the video game market should they both release in 2025. There's no telling what will happen just yet, however, but analysts in Japan previously speculated that a possible June launch is in the cards for the Switch 2, and a trailer confirming a 2025 release for GTA 6 dropped at the tail end of 2023 with confirmation of a fall window dropping later on.
Need more to look forward to? Here are the biggest new games for 2025 and beyond.
