Here are the Games Industry Highlights | Week 30-32 provided by ForsVC.
𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀
🌍 Newzoo released its latest report, predicting that the global games market will generate $187.7 billion this year. It also predicts the global player count will increase by 6% to 3.38 billion, and the global payer count (those who spend on games) will increase by 7.3% to 1.47 billion. In addition, the report shows that 49% of all consumer spending will come from the U.S. and China.
🌍 Magic The Gathering is releasing several sets inspired by famous videogame IP’s in 2024-2025. Fallout, Assassin’s Creed and Final Fantasy have already been announced.
🌍 Blizzard Entertainment‘s Diablo 4’s launch was huge for the Twitch audience, with 156 million hours watched, surpassing even Elden Ring’s debut week numbers from last year.
🌍 Capcom shares surged over 1,200% over the past 10 years. The company’s strong growth is largely driven by its back catalog sales and multiplatform approach with multiple back-to-back releases that have seen critical and commercial success.
🌍 Xbox Gold has just entered its last month, after being introduced over 20 years ago. The service that lets players access online features and awarded them with monthly titles now gets absorbed into a new Xbox Game Pass formula.
🌍 Devolver Digital had a “Devolver Delayed Showcase” in which a lot of releases from this year were moved to 2024. The company’s share also continues to drop.
𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗴𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀
👉 Larian Studios launched Baldur’s Gate 3 to immense success. It’s the top-selling Steam game, broke into the all-time Top 10 of concurrent players with 800K active players (and rising) and is currently the most wishlisted PS5 release. It also has a 95 Metacritic rating. Read more about their cobbled road to glory in this blog on the Flemish Games Association website: https://www.flega.be/unlocking-the-gates-baldurs-gate-3-is-out-now/
👉 PLAY IT Game based learning has received a €1.2M investment to help them expand their activities to the Netherlands. They use game-based learning to speed up the learning process and make it more efficient.
👉 PreviewLabs, a company that specializes in the development of prototypes for games and other projects, expanded to Canada with a new office in Québec.
👉 Belgium officially expanded its Tax Shelter to games. The tax incentive will finance up to 27.2 % (net) of “eligible production budget of the total qualifying expenses in the EEA”. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/belgium-officially-expands-its-tax-shelter-to-games
👉 The Man Came Around, a survival game with narrative choices by Pipette inc, launches tomorrow on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1104920/The_Man_Came_Around/
👉 gamescom is in two weeks, so let this bullet point serve as a reminder to set up your meetings now before everyone’s calendar is full. See you there at the Belgian Games Booth. 👋