Recently, a significant increase of mergers and acquisitions(M&A) is observed in the video game industry. Major market players such as Tencent, Embracer group, Microsoft and Sony keep moving towards consolidation. Despite the fact that mergers reduce competition on a market, they’re beneficial for both parties of the deal. If we’re talking about acquired companies, they’re gaining access to capitals and funding that were unattainable before. As well as there are much less risks for the publisher in case he acquisite a small player who has expertise and intellectual property rights than if he has to domesticate new areas for himself.

Confines between PC, console and smartphone players are gradually blurring. These were isolated ecosystems ten years ago, and now it’s a trend for development games acceptable for several platforms. Thanks to the constant growth of cross-platform games technologies, today you can start using subscriptions or save your game progress on multiple platforms at the same time.

The pandemic has had an impact on new games development and release in terms of delays of announcement dates, which had affected the revenue of video game companies’ market in 2021 – mainly for console segment, but also for PC scope. By the end of 2021, the console market is expected to shrink by 8.9% compared with the last year and compolse 49.2 billions dollars, while the PC market will shrink by 2.8% to 35.9 billion dollars. The pandemic effect was not practically noticed for mobile games: the revenue in this segment largely depends on purchases within popular apps which already exist.

Mobile and cross-platform games are becoming more amusing and fun, and demanding more resources and power for playable devices, which is increasing the demand for high-technological smartphones. The mobile segment could be temporarily affected by a restriction imposed by Apple on the use of IDFA (The Identifier for Advertisers, a unique number which Apple assigns to each device; advertisers are using it to target and evaluate the results of mobile campaigns). Mobile games, which monetize primarily through advertising, may be affected. Advertisers will need to spend some time adapting their working methods. However, the mobile industry is expected to innovate in line with Apple’s new standards quickly and the negative impact will be short-term.

Players’ spendings on mobile games continues to grow no matter what: social restrictions due to the pandemic increase these spendings, creating new habits for those who weren’t involved with games before restrictions. The mobile game market is one of the most attractive with confidently positive expectations for coming years. Among the leaders are the public companies Unity (U), and Roblox (RBLX), each has its own platform to create mobile games using advanced tools. Roblox aims to create a metaverse. Among private companies, Scopely stands out: the company also has its own platform, uses popular franchises and receives numerous awards for its success. All 3 companies are recruiting top talents for creating their mega-popular games, driving double-digit percentages of revenue from quarter to quarter.

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