The 2024 will be a gray year for the video game market in terms of revenues, at least according to analyst Matt Piscatella of Circana, who predicts that in the USA there will be a drop of 2% in the most optimistic of hypotheses, which could however reach even 10% in the most pessimistic one.
Piscatella's far from exciting estimates are based on the absence of a sufficient number of popular video games over the next nine months and the uncertainties relating to the arrival of new hardware.
“Right now my most optimistic forecast is a 2% decline in revenue year over year,” Piscatella said in an interview with GamesIndustry. “If you start looking at things with a more pessimistic perspective, let's talk about a drop of around 10%. If things go wrong, even worse.”
“There's a lot of uncertainty when you look at sales numbers or projections for this year. There's uncertainty about hardware. There's uncertainty about content. Who the hell is producing the games?“.
While not mentioning them directly, Piscatella is probably referring to the alleged postponement of Nintendo Switch 2 to 2025, the absence of games from large-caliber franchises by Sony in addition to a calendar that is currently not exactly full of important releases between the period autumn and pre-Christmas.
Helldivers 2 and Palworld were a godsend for the market, but they are not enough
Piscatella added that the outlook would be even worse if it weren't for Helldivers 2 and Palworld, two games that have achieved completely unexpected commercial success. However, they are not enough to match the numbers recorded by Hogwarts Legacy last year.
“Helldivers 2 and Palword did a great job at the beginning of the year, but we have to deal with last year with Hogwarts Legacy, which was a huge success. So we need another game, besides Helldivers and Palworld, to try to compete with what Hogwarts Legacy did last year and is still doing a year later. There has never been such a high level of uncertainty that I can remember – and I've been around since 2025 – because we don't have those big announced games that we know.”
Piscatella added that 2024 in particular could be disastrous for the physical storesconsidering the continuous decline of this sector aggravated by the possible postponement of Switch 2 to 2025, given that the Nintendo ecosystem is the only one to have a certain balance between retail and digital copies purchased.
“Retail stores have to get very smart and the physical side of the business continues to decline. With the absence of new Nintendo hardware this year, the situation is bound to accelerate, because Nintendo sits right on the 50-50 dividing line when it comes to physical and digital products. So retail still relies on Nintendo a lot more than other platforms.”
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