The 6 biggest gaming trends of 2025

We're a few months into 2025, and while it's been a turbulent time in the games industry over the past few years, this calendar year promises to be a massive one. So with so much set to change - new consoles, new juggernauts, new ways of making games, and whole new countries emerging onto the industry's worldwide stage - it can be useful to take a step back and consider what we're actually facing. The biggest gaming trends of 2025 are already starting to appear, so without further ado, here's what we're expecting to make headlines over the coming months.

1. Nintendo back on top

First up, 2025 is the year of the Nintendo Switch 2. Hopefully, that means that once Nintendo's new console arrives, it'll have a whole bunch of new launch titles to go with it. We've already had a tease of one of those (though the information we have about what's widely believed to be Mario Kart 9 still doesn't even extend to its actual title), but there'll likely be plenty more. In true Nintendo fashion, many of those are likely to be mass appeal, family-friendly efforts, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we started to see a whole suite of new ports. The original Switch's hardware meant that plenty of the last generation's biggest games never made it there, so I'm betting the Switch 2 plays host to many of them. Elden Ring on the go, anyone?

2. The shadow of GTA 6

Rockstar's next release is widely expected to be the spark that reignites an industry that's been struggling for a few years. If it does anything like as well as its predecessor, it's on track to make billions, but even without a release date in sight, its impact is already being felt. 2025 is looking like a big year, but several industry execs have not-so-subtly alluded to their concern about going toe-to-toe with GTA 6. We saw some of this in 2023, when some studios decided to shift their release schedules around to avoid Starfield, and I think we'll see it again this year - studios will hold off from launch date announcements or shift their release windows to avoid running into Rockstar's juggernaut.

3. The last gasp of the last service push

The past few years have seen far too many games - and studios - killed by an inadvisable shift to a live-service models. Often, those games have come from teams with no real history of making long-term multiplayer projects, and the results have been disastrous. Late last year, Sony was understood to have significantly walked back its live-service dreams, and while I don't imagine we won't see any multiplayer games, I think several companies will quietly be following PlayStation's suit. There'll be a few exceptions, exemplified by EA CEO Andrew Wilson's recent claims that Dragon Age: The Veilguard would have been better off as a live service, but with the dust having only recently settled over Concord, I hope that won't be a widespread opinion.

4. The luck of the draw

The past few years have seen the arrival of several surprise smash-hits. At the start of 2024, few could have predicted the complete runaway success of games like Palworld, Helldivers 2, or Balatro. While the odds are obviously in favor of the likes of Borderlands 4, GTA 6, and Elden Ring: Nightreign, there's a good chance that some of the biggest games of 2025 are ones you haven't even heard of yet. As internet virality plays an ever-more-important role in a game's success, we'll start to see the biggest games challenged by their smaller, scrappier competitors more and more often.

5. The rise of China

China's growing presence in the western game market was cemented last year by Black Myth: Wukong, but that trend isn't likely to be reversed any time soon. Lost Soul Aside, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and Phantom Blade Zero have all already made their mark ahead of their upcoming releases, and while they'll have their work cut out to clear the extremely high bar set by Black Myth, they're still likely to be major parts of China's rapid expansion into the global games market. As games like Marvel Rivals and the HoyoVerse catalogue continue to represent the country's taste for fast-paced, mobile-friendly titles, a host of new single-player titles are ready to cater to a global audience.

6. Smaller games

With players' time at a premium and development costs spiraling higher than ever before, the trend for somewhat shrunken RPGs that we've seen over the past few years is likely to continue. The smaller scopes of Avowed and The Outer Worlds has allowed Obsidian to fire out an array of acclaimed titles over the past few years. Rebellion's Atomfall is set to borrow from the Fallout formula, but over a map the size of a small town rather than an entire city. The Blood of Dawnwalker, the upcoming vampire RPG from lead developers behind The Witcher 3, is set to last 30-40 hours rather than the 100 or more that Geralt's last adventure ran to. There'll always be space for the likes of Skyrim, Baldur's Gate 3, or Persona 5, but the last few years have proved that size isn't everything.