The year is ending, and it’s a good time to reflect on the future of video games in this column (which ends until January). 2025 was, as already mentioned in the recent list of Babeliavery lucky in terms of quality of the best games. But the real good news would be that 2025 would mean the healing of some wounds that the industry has carried in recent years; injuries that endanger the entire sector and threaten the media’s incredible creative ambitions in the medium term.
We’re coming from 2024, a good creative year in which they failed miserably. concord, Suicide squad either skull and bones (games whose cumulative budgets well exceed a billion) and which illustrate a growing problem in the industry: budgetary inflation means that to be viable, these games must sell tens of millions of units, which is very difficult. And, at the same time, they are so important that a single failure can end an entire study. These three measures are just the tip of an iceberg that has led to more than 10,000 layoffs in the industry in 2023, more than 15,000 in 2024 and another 10,000 in 2025. The real problem? The unrealistic projections that have been made since the pandemic, when investors entered the sector and raised expectations to limits that are frankly difficult to meet. An example: the PS5 has sold around 85 million units since its release in 2020. Is it a success? Well, it depends: objectively yes, but if your goal was to sell 100 million units by the end of 2025, then it’s a failure.
Part of these layoffs is surely due to the emergence of AI. But let’s make no mistake: this was a year in which digital tools and judicious spending ended up contributing to the creation of reasonably cheap games that nevertheless achieved stratospheric levels of quality. We are talking about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Hollow Knight: Silksong either Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33 (Besides, the Sandfall studio was hit several times for an interview in this newspaper, in which some ridiculously wanted to interpret that the game used AI. generative and thus diminish the immense artistic quality of Chiaroscuro). This budgetary control is the path the industry must follow: more Double A games which, thanks to the progressive improvement of creation tools, resemble authentic blockbusters. Games that are moderate in their budget and which, in the event of failure, do not harm their entire studio and, incidentally, the reputation of the entire industry.
GTA VIIt is assumed that it will arrive next year. It has suffered several delays and its current date (end of 2026) suggests that a future delay, even if minor, would already move it to 2027. We are talking about a game that cost 2,000 million and that, according to many analysts, on the day of its release on the market will condemn the American economy to lose 1,000 million because of all the people who suddenly “get sick” that day. This is the level of this industry. These are the numbers that are moving. Well thought out, maybe it’s not a bad idea to postpone the RGT If things calm down a little like that. Can anyone imagine what a catastrophe would mean? GTA VI in 2026 for the entire sector? To those who think that a disaster GTA VI It is directly impossible, it is worth recalling the example of the PS5: for this game, a failure does not mean selling much; is to sell below the projections projected by investors. And it’s not impossible.
Let’s hope that in 2026 games will arrive which, without needing budgets of 150 million, will surprise us, fascinate us and warm our hearts in the same way as the best games of 2025 did. But above all I hope that the video game sector will finish calming down, forget the investment frenzy and concentrate on what it does best, that is, building the most eclectic art, innovative and visionary of the century. XXI. This would actually be the best news for everyone.
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