gaming
Most gamers prefer single-player games
It’s no secret that the bulk of AAA games market revenues come from in-game purchases , mostlyfrom live-service games. It’s also impossible to ignore that the live-service market is fiercely competitive.
Older gamers are a growth opportunity for AA(A) publishers
The days of gaming as a hobby only for young people are clearly over. Unlike in the past, gamers are now sticking with console and PC games into adulthood and old age. Consumers aged 55+ account for a quarter of gamers now, and that share is on the rise.
MIDiA Research study rejects $100 price point for Grand Theft Auto VI
[London, 9th October, 2025] -As anticipation for the long-awaited release of Grand Theft Auto VI reaches fever pitch, speculation surrounding its price has intensified. Since the game’s announcement, rumoured base edition prices of up to $100 have ignited industry-wide debate about the future of A...
Defining entertainment superfans
Characteristics, categories, and commercial impact
Superfans represent a highly valuable yet consistently underleveraged audience segment for the entertainment industry. What drives this disconnect is the fact that – despite frequent anecdotal use of the term – a standardised, empirical definition remains absent, preventing companies from systematically identifying, nurturing, and monetising th...
The future of creator apps
Fuelling engagement with fandom
The AI boom has unleashed a wave of creator tools, but some are struggling to make the transition from interesting and experimental to compulsive and essential. Fandom offers a solution by tying creation to a consumer’s personal passion, appetite for community engagement and a desire to have a stake in the entertainment they love.
Apple’s Vision Pro may (finally) be VR’s turning point, but where is it going?
Virtual Reality has been ‘just around the corner’ for more than a decade. Any day now, it would seem, it must finally have its moment. So far it has been held back by high cost, little to offer on the headsets, and somewhat janky lag and resolution tendencies.
Cultural movements
A new take on mainstream for the fragmentation era
Entertainment has become nichified, mainstream has become smaller, and audiences have fragmented. While this has been crucial to the rise of the long tail and the creator economy, there is a need for a new, fragmentation-era successor to mainstream. Building upon MIDiA’s work on scenes, in this report we make the case for cultural movements, the ...
Is the quality of games going down?
“Things aren’t like they used to be”, a common refrain of anyone over the age of about 25, is a sentiment especially prevalent amongst gamers today. Is this blind nostalgia, or have games really gotten worse? To investigate this, I looked into user rating data from TrueAchievements.
Making artists heard: Women in the music industry
In and among the chaos of Eurosonic, MIDiA sat down for a fireside chat with artist Marina Herlop to talk about what it is like to be a producer in the music industry today. Or, more specifically, what it is like to be a female music producer – who are wildly outnumbered by men, at 38 to 1 .
The games market will grow by 4.6% in 2025 – in line with the global inflation rate
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 game...
Despite declining time spent, Microsoft’s gaming strategy is well and good
In its Q3 2022 results (FY Q1 2023), Microsoft reported growth in Game Pass subscriptions, but said that Xbox content and services revenue declined 3% year on year, driven by declines in first-party content and third-party content, while hardware grew 13%.
Is in-game advertising the next frontier for PC and console games?
In-game advertising (IGA) in AAA console and PC titles is experiencing a resurgence. Advancements in technology, shifting consumer behaviours, evolving monetisation strategies, and a now-mature games market have reignited interest. With AAA publishers adopting free-to-play models and hybrid monetisation – mirroring mobile gaming’s success – a...
How the Bloodborne community filled the void with fan-made content
Bloodborne has built a deep and committed fanbase since it was released exclusively on PlayStation 4 in 2015. Despite a decade passing since, the action role playing game has remained the subject of intense speculation of what its next iteration will be.
The coming long-tail cull
When governments plan to introduce controversial new policies, they prepare the ground in advance (dropping hints in speeches, privately briefing journalists, etc.), so that by the time the new policy finally arrives, it does not feel quite so controversial.
Steam is the unlikely winner of the modern console wars – for now
Thanks to console manufacturers and third-party publishers moving content to Steam, Valve now boasts one of the most diverse AAA offerings on the market, benefitting from new strategies adopted by Xbox and PlayStation.
Chaos and uncertainty: Tariffs’ impact on gamers and the games market
Tariff turmoil related to the US’ trade war is intensifying. Other countries have retaliated, and while Trump has eased tariffs in some countries, the situation is far from being resolved. The tariffs have major implications for the games market in the US.
The state of music AI
The consumer opportunity lies in modification, not generation
MIDiA previously predicted that generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) would accelerate music’s “Instagram moment”, where consumers could create and remix music as easily and often as they post photos and videos on social media. However, just because everyone can do these things does not mean everyone will want to.
Scenes are the new markets
Why and how entertainment should go niche
In 2022, MIDiA introduced scenes as a new lens for marketing music. This report expands on the concept, reintroducing scenes – groups of people whose shared interests, aesthetics, values, behaviours, and vernacular have coalesced into a shared lifestyle – as a wider business strategy reset for all of entertainment.
Audio’s entertainment value
Examining audio listeners’ cross-entertainment lives
Typically, the marketing team for a games company or TV show would not be thinking of audiobooks and podcast listeners as a key consumer segment to address. Yet, podcast and audiobook listeners are digitally sophisticated and spend more time and money than the consumer average on most forms of entertainment – including games, music, and video.