Blog: PlayStation

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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

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Rhys Elliott
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

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Rhys Elliott
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

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Rhys Elliott
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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Embracing the cultural ascent of games: Zelda, Sony, and games-video symbiosis

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Perry Gresham
Gaming has been mainstream for a while, but in recent years it has started flexing its cross-cultural muscles, intersecting with music, sports, and increasingly with video . The latest example is a new live-action movie, based on The Legend of Zelda games franchise, announced this week as a collaboration between Nintendo and Sony Pictures.
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The Last of Us – when games meet video

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Samuel Griffin
The HBO Original production of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us is solidifying the foundations of modern expectations for games video crossovers. With the games market increasingly saturated and seemingly dominated by a handful of games, companies that are acting on the cross-entertainment opportunity have a better chance of nurturing fandom of their IP and weather the current macroeconomic dynamics.
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