From fans to superfans What’s missing from the games industry

Game development is a complex landscape, with rising costs, longer production cycles, and intensifying competition all shaping how industry stakeholders engage consumers. The increasing saturation of the games market makes it harder for titles to stand out from the crowd. Relying on familiar genres or replicating past successes no longer guarantees consumer interest, particularly as players’ time, money, and attention become more constrained. 

Developers need to navigate these pressures thoughtfully, ensuring that the experiences they create align with what players want. To succeed, companies must instead focus on the intersection between consumer demand and areas of market underrepresentation. This report provides insights into the unique characteristics of core video games consumers – fans and superfans. Additionally, it examines the features that consumers feel are currently missing from the video games market, helping companies identify and capitalise on these unmet needs.

Key data and insights:

• Differences in demographic characteristics between video game fans, superfans, and non-fans
• Attitudes towards gamer self-identification across cultures
• How fans and superfans view video game features, their importance to consumers and their relative availability in today’s games
• Mobile gaming penetration across segments
• The importance of post-launch developer support to gamers
• Survey data from MIDiA Research consumer survey Q3 2025, n > 7000, fielded in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, and Mexico

Companies and brands mentioned: Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, Concorde, First Berserker: Khazan, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto VI, Hades, Lords of the Fallen, Mindseye, New World, Sony PlayStation, Roblox, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Xbox, and Wordle.