Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Gamers, and the gaming industry as a whole, can be a little too focused on the future. Newly released blockbusters can fade from public consciousness in a matter of days, while “next generation” console hardware or a highly anticipated sequel that has been years in the making can dominate the headlines.
In such an environment, it can be helpful to review the major trends shaping the industry over a period of more than a few days. Looking back at the big gaming news of 2022, a few clear storylines emerge.
Big game publishers are getting even bigger
If there’s one trend that’s defined the game business in 2022, it’s been giant companies taking over each other to get even bigger. This was the year when big conglomerates spent a lot of money to fill holes in their portfolios, as Sony spent $3.6 billion on Destiny creator Bungie; Take-Two spends $12.7 billion on Farm village maker Zynga; or the Embracer Group boasting parts of Square Enix, Limited Run Games and more.
But one proposed merger stood out; the $68.7 billion marriage proposal Microsoft made to Activision Blizzard in January. The move can be seen as an opportunistic move for Microsoft, as Activision’s market value plummeted amid the many harassment and discrimination scandals and investigations in 2021. It’s also an acquisition that would give beleaguered Activision CEO Bobby Kotick a golden parachute. offer to escape the turmoil.
The biggest concern for gamers after the announcement was whether Activision would like franchises Duty would still be allowed on PlayStation and other non-Microsoft platforms. Microsoft has tried to address those concerns with a series of increasingly fervent promises that it will not lock Activision’s games on the Xbox.
Those assurances haven’t proven enough so far for Sony or for antitrust regulators who now seem poised to seriously jeopardize the proposed merger. After urging from US senators, the Federal Trade Commission officially filed a lawsuit to block the merger, citing antitrust concerns. Regulators in the UK and the EU are also in the middle of serious investigations that could lead to similar attempts to stop the merger.
Despite all the drama, markets currently seem relatively confident that the deal will go through.
The year of weird portables
Sam Machkovech
For decades, portable gaming has been dominated by one company: Nintendo. For years after the death of Sony’s PlayStation Vita, no one even bothered to release portable gaming hardware to challenge Nintendo’s Switch or the popular mobile gaming devices in everyone’s pocket.
2022 was the year this started to change in a big way, as a number of companies pushed out some decidedly off-kilter gaming portables. It started with the Analogue Pocket, which technically launched in late 2021, but shipped in large numbers to pre-order customers this year. Right out of the box, the Pocket’s solid industrial design and high-quality screen make it ideal for replaying thousands of cartridges from Nintendo’s classic Game Boy and Game Boy Advance lines. But it was the introduction of new emulation cores this year that really made this FPGA device a must-have for retro gamers.
This was also the year Valve started with portable hardware. The Steam Deck has been at or near the top of Steam’s own sales charts since launch, even though initial stock shortages have given way to increased availability. The hardware has some limitations: screen quality, battery life, huge size, and anti-cheat compatibility. Still, the Linux-based device has proven “good enough” to put thousands of “Deck Verified” or “Deck Playable” titles in the hands of PC gamers. No wonder Valve is already talking about a sequel. On the other end of the mass market spectrum, the quirky and delayed Playdate used 2022 to prove that portable gaming can be cute, light-hearted and fun. The bright yellow portable doesn’t even have a backlight or color screen, but it does have a new crank controller on its side and a wide variety of inventive indie games powered by a robust homebrew community.
This year, a number of companies have also released dedicated portable hardware aimed at the streaming gaming market. Logitech’s G Cloud and Razer’s Edge 5G combine generic dual-stick controls alongside a generic Qualcomm-powered Android device, allowing easy access to various streaming services and classic emulators. It’s too early to tell if these devices will find a significant market unserved by existing smartphone controller attachments. Either way, their very existence confirms that handheld gaming isn’t just for Nintendo anymore in 2022.
NFTs? Gamers Say “No Thanks”
As 2022 began, large segments of the gaming industry seemed poised to go all in on NFTs and their promise of “unique”, salable digital collectibles, whether as in-game items or glorified trading cards. Buoyed by stories like Peter Molyneux’s startup raising $54 million in NFT sales in one week, companies like Square Enix, Konami, and GameStop were just some of the biggest names teasing their big NFT plans early in the year. And while companies like Sega were publicly wary, Ubisoft actively defended the in-game NFT program it launched in 2021.
However, as the year progressed, blooms began to come off the NFT rose in a big way. Axie Infinity-once considered the prime example of a successful play-to-earn game- saw its economy nearly collapse before a major crypto hack wiped out any remaining trust left in the game or its crypto tokens. GameStop’s NFT marketplace was eventually launched to slow down sales, which slowed down even further over time, though it proved to be a boon for scammers selling unlicensed games. Ubisoft, meanwhile, subduedly shut down its own NFT sales and later tried to pretend it was never all that interested in space. High-profile failures like this — and a broader collapse in crypto and NFT prices in general — led to a massive shift away from NFTs among many game companies. Games from Eva online until Minecraft until Grand Theft Auto explicitly rejected the use of NFTs, at least in part because they had already built highly lucrative in-game economies without blockchain technology. The International Game Developers Association said it would take a “stronger stance” on the ethics of NFTs. And Sony seemed to go out of its way to note that its new line of PlayStation digital collectibles didn’t use crypto or the blockchain in any way.
NFT gaming still has plenty of proponents, and there will still be investors willing to place big monetary bets on the as-yet-unproven space in 2023. But by the end of the year, there are fewer and fewer people who seem to have public confidence that blockchain-based assets will power the “next big thing” in the industry.
