Rhys Elliott

Rhys Elliott is a games industry analyst at MIDiA. Over the past decade, Rhys has honed his voice in the gaming business world, making his passion for games, analysis, data, and words his career. As a consultant, Rhys has worked with tech giants to help unpack market trends. He has also done consulting work for the biggest short-form video app (pinpointing the role of community and culture in launching successful games), a major global investment management firm (honing investment strategies around gaming’s biggest acquisition), and has worked on various other projects across big tech, media, and entertainment. He also plays, in his words, "WAY too many games".

85% of Rocket League players do NOT count electronic music as a favourite music genre – own goal or opportunity?

Cover image for 85% of Rocket League players do NOT count electronic music as a favourite music genre – own goal or opportunity?
Rhys Elliott
Business Strategy
Music
Fandom
Key takeaways from this blog: Only 15% of Rocket League players list EDM as a top genre, per MIDiA data, despite its dominance in the game Players are twice as likely than average to prefer EDM, often due to in-game exposure (per MIDiA interviews) Psyonix should diversify its soundtrack, as explored in MIDiA’s ‘Pixels to Playlists’ report, to boost engagement and match broader player tastes Anybody who has played Psyonix’s Rocket League knows that the game is almost synonymous with electronic music.
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20% of gamers love couch co-op: Split Fiction’s success is proof players want more

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Rhys Elliott
Audience Insight
Games
Gaming
Key insights from this blog: MIDiA's research shows that a significant portion of gamers consider couch co-op a favourite genre. The runaway success of Split Fiction supports these findings Producing more couch co-op games would cater to gamer segments that MIDiA has identified as being underserved, including women and older gamers As growth across gaming slows, couch co-op games are a key opportunity the industry needs to seize Split Fiction , the co-op-only adventure game from Hazelight Studios, has sold over 2 million copies in one week, generating revenues of over $100 million.
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Live orchestras and game-specific songs: Death Stranding is a masterclass in harmonising games and music

Cover image for Live orchestras and game-specific songs: Death Stranding is a masterclass in harmonising games and music
Rhys Elliott
Marketing Strategy
Fandom
Music
Key insights from this blog: There is ample opportunity for the games industry to leverage music to its advantage Key MIDiA data highlights that real-world live concerts using game music AND artists recording original music specifically for games are two underutilised strategies The music industry is not leveraging games as well as it could, but there is some low-hanging fruit – backed up by case studies – that should change that.
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The case for more digestable games: Over a third of console and PC gamers play LESS than 5 hours a week

Cover image for The case for more digestable games: Over a third of console and PC gamers play LESS than 5 hours a week
Rhys Elliott
YouTube
Netflix
TikTok
The attention economy is oversaturated. Games are not just competingwith other games but with TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, and well ... life. But the games industry – especially premium games on console and PC – has a unique twofold challenge: Supply : New AAA games can take five years or more to make (and often have budgets in the hundreds of millions) Demand : Player attention and play time are already maxed out MIDiA’s consumer research for Q4 2024 underlines just how little time consumers have to play.
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How PlayStation broke its hardware and active user records in Q4

Cover image for How PlayStation broke its hardware and active user records in Q4
Rhys Elliott
Business Strategy
Netflix
TikTok
Sony released its financial results for calendar Q4 2024. Here are the high-level results: Sony generated revenues of $27.9 billion As always, its Game & Network Services (G&NS) Segment – PlayStation – was the biggest segment (38%) Sony Music accounted for 11% and Sony Pictures for 9% of revenue share respectively We'll be focusing on PlayStation for the rest of the article.
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The games market will grow by 4.6% in 2025 – in line with the global inflation rate

Cover image for The games market will grow by 4.6% in 2025 – in line with the global inflation rate
Rhys Elliott
Business Strategy
Fandom
Games
We just published our flagship games report MIDiA Research’s Global Games Forecasts 2025–2031 and its accompanying dataset. What you need to know: The games market is mature , so double-digit growth is a fantasy and the industry will only see slight growth going forward The global number of gamers will keep growing , but ARPPU will slightly decrease over time due to growing gamer numbers in emerging markets The oversaturation of live services will see the developer pendulum swing back towards premium games on console and PC The mega-budget strategy will slowdown in favour of shorter budgets – outside of the live-service incumbents and a few select “prestige” studios Multi-game subscription user growth is reaching maturity , though revenues will grow via pricing increases (and perhaps ad-based tiers) in the future The report dives into player forecasts , revenue forecasts for software (full-game advertising, and in-game split by cosmetics and progress-based) , hardware (console and XR), and subscriptions – all up to 2031, with platform and regional splits.
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Switch 2 FAQs: Your cheat sheet for understanding Nintendo's upcoming console

Cover image for Switch 2 FAQs: Your cheat sheet for understanding Nintendo's upcoming console
Rhys Elliott
Product Strategy
Games
Fandom
As we said in our games trends to watch article , 2025 will be the year of the portable. Nintendo kicked that off in earnest, finally lifting the curtain on its Switch 2 console. Here are the basics: The Switch 2 seems iterative – a bigger, better Switch with some quality-of-life improvements It is coming out in 2025 It plays Switch 1 games too, both physical and digital Nintendo will announce its software lineup on April 2, 2025 It will hold several in-person events across North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia to build fandom and let fans go hands-on Our clients and the press have been sending us plenty of questions, so we decided to answer the most frequently asked here.
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