The pandemic, which has locked people in their homes, has played into the hands of the gaming industry in many ways. Despite numerous transfers and raw releases, people began to spend much more time online and spend more on gaming gadgets, consoles and computer components. According to experts, in 2022, about three billion people in the world will regularly play on consoles, PCs and smartphones, and the total profit of the video game market by 2024 will exceed $218 billion! Moreover, the mobile games market, which is growing by leaps and bounds, will play an important role in increasing profits. It was no accident that back in 2018, instead of announcing Diablo 3, Blizzard tried to sell fans a handicraft for smartphones.


After a couple of years in quarantine, the joke that in the future offline entertainment will only be available to the rich doesn’t seem like such a joke anymore. And in order not to get too bored at home, we all need more and more content. And if everything has been clear with films and series for a long time, then video games are still an unknown medium that requires serious investments, but promises great benefits.

For example, the production low-cost of a modern AAA project has almost grown to the level of Hollywood blockbusters: 200-300 million dollars are spent on the development of new parts of Call Of Duty, the production and marketing low-cost of Cyberpunk 2077 amounted to 330 million dollars. For comparison, the development of the fourth part of Pirates of the Caribbean, taking into account inflation, spent a little more than $480 million. For a moment, this is one of the most expensive films in history. Now imagine that his rental would fall during a pandemic. How much money would Disney miss at the box office?

Seeing how the rules of the game are rapidly changing, media companies and IT giants are becoming more and more interested in the video game market. Back in 2012, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos allocated two truckloads of money to launch a game studio. Since then, according to Bloomberg, the game studio has been burning about $500 million annually and has not yet released a single significant project. One cancellation, yes cancellation. Google is trying to approach the game market from the cloud (note: we are talking about Google Stadia), Facebook has so far been buying up studios like Ready At Dawn (note: developers of The Order: 1886) without much success to develop VR games for its virtual meta- universe. As you can see, IT companies have an interest in the industry, but there is not the slightest understanding of how it works.


Perhaps the coolest against this background is one of the largest IT giants in China, Tencent. Just the other day, Tencent bought the Bloober Team and Turtle Rock studios, and are now in talks to buy Crytek, the creators of the Crysis series. In addition, Tencent owns small stakes (5-10%) in Universal Music, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Paradox Interactive and Warner Music. Note that 3 of the 5 companies on this list are in the gaming business.

Well, so that all doubts disappear from you, remember the recent animated series Arcane, which literally hit all the tops and charts of 2021. As the authors themselves later admitted, they spent 6 years and $ 237 million on its script and drawing! One might admire the desire of Tencent and its sister studio Riot Games to invest in culture, but the reason is much more subtle. The cartoon was created primarily to stir up interest in a new game based on the League Of Legends universe.


Back to the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. To strengthen their position in the gaming market, the leadership of Microsoft and Xbox is ready to turn (note: the papers have already been issued, but the approval of the antimonopoly committee is needed) one of the largest deals in the history of mankind, spending $ 69 billion on this purchase! That's more than ZeniMax, Nokia, Skype, Mojang and Linkedin combined. And only 2 billion. less than the amount Disney bought Fox for.

Insiders write that Microsoft / Xbox believes so much in the current video game market that they consider this purchase almost the deal of the decade. Indeed, adding the Call Of Duty, Diablo, WarCraft, Overwatch and StarCraft franchises to your piggy bank is like adding a fifth stone to an almost completed infinity gauntlet. Even if you are not going to snap your fingers, others will still be forced to reckon with your life position.

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Game Pass is the new Netflix


If you haven't followed the last round of the console war, let's clear things up. It was natural rape that the guys at Microsoft want to forget as soon as possible. It got to the point that the current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, with whom all the recent successes of the company are associated, seriously thought about how to hang out a white flag and completely close the Xbox division. But, as they say, there was a prophet in his own country - the closet-like owner of a wide smile, Phil Spencer, who at that time was in charge of Xbox Game Studio, volunteered to lead the entire gaming division of the company.

Phil went to work rolling up his sleeves and immediately tried to persuade competitors to introduce cross-platform so that PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch players could play the same games with each other. In order to take his words seriously, Phil bought the most popular game in the Minecraft universe for Xbox and released it on other platforms, including Sony and Nintendo stores. At first, the Japanese refused, they say, it’s not customary for us, but a little later they accepted the gift. Then the Xbox got backwards compatible with older versions of the consoles, although Sony claimed that this was not possible. Well, then the Game Pass service appeared and the Xbox became a desirable console again.

Game Pass is a kind of analogue of Netflix, created to combat the ever-rising prices of games and scarce hardware. For 8-10 bucks a month, the service gives you access to an ever-growing library of games on Xbox and PC, including new releases on the day of release. Moreover, you can play from the cloud without installing the game on your device. At first, Game Pass did not cause a storm of excitement, so Phil remembered his infinity gauntlet and went to negotiate.


In the spring of 2021, Xbox bought Bethesda (the Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom and Wolfenstein series), then partnered with EA (now all of their games are in the Game Pass catalog), and along the way bought a bunch of smaller studios. As a result, in 2 years the service has turned into a gaming library where you can find your favorite childhood games, get acquainted with the best indie projects of recent years, or try the new Forza Horizon, Halo, STALKER 2 or Star Citizen right on the day of release, which will not be on the PlayStation . In comparison, for a subscription to PlayStation Plus, Sony charges the same $ 8 - 10 per month, but only allows access to two random games from its catalog. In 80% of cases, these are not AAA projects, but some hits of the past or just so-so games of not the first freshness.

For Microsoft, it's a long game. The company aims to build an ecosystem of products in which the central place will be occupied by players and games, and not by hardware. This will be especially true in the future when Xbox upgrades its Project xCloud streaming service, which allows you to play your favorite PC and Xbox games on a smartphone, tablet, TV or weak PC that does not meet the requirements of the game. The company is confident that a large catalog of games, low subscription prices and integration of cloud services will not only stir up interest among old fans, but also allow longtime PlayStation fans to convert to their faith.


As a benchmark for GamePass, the company's executives chose the same model as Netflix. And this is logical. No matter how the network jokes about unsuccessful film adaptations, strange adaptations and never spectacular action movies produced by Netflix, this Californian online cinema continues to bloom and smell. Confidence in success is built on the ability to produce tons of content for viewers of all ages and tastes - from big-low-cost series and rare films with an eye on the Oscar to niche documentaries, anime adaptations, Korean series and Norwegian detective stories.

Surveys show that this diversity is why people choose Netflix over streaming from Apple, Disney and HBO. Netflix has achieved such influence that it can shoot at least a dozen "Cats" annually (note: the most disastrous musical in history) and it doesn't care. Yes, critics will swear, but is it necessary to listen to them if the viewer has already voted for you? Clearly, Microsoft is aiming for the same level of influence with its gaming ecosystem.

How will Sony PlayStation respond?


What place will Sony take in the new world and what awaits the console market in general? After a resounding victory in the fourth round, Sony's position is incredibly strong - even during a hell of a shortage of spare parts, inadequate prices from resellers and a lack of distinct exclusives, the Japanese company manages to sell more consoles than the Xbox. By tradition, the survival of Sony envy from itself. They have had a policy of exclusivity in the past, with many players choosing PS4 solely to experience God Of War, Last Of Us and Uncharted. This tactic has strengthened the company's position so much that even with a shortage of consoles and a lack of high-profile releases, Sony still sells more consoles than the Xbox.

But this cannot go on forever. Yes, the company has some really cool internal studios in the piggy bank (Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, Santa Monica and Insomniac), the announcement of PS VR 2 is on the nose, but now it becomes obvious that the Japanese giant does not control the situation in any way, but only tries to respond to attacks opponent. You could lie low and wait, but the PS5 came out a year ago, and there is still nothing to play there. It is logical to assume that in the future, Sony will either launch its GamePass, or abandon the policy of exclusive games and begin to cooperate with Xbox. As wild as it sounds.


There are prerequisites for this - most of the PlayStation 4 exclusives, which were the company's main weapon, have already been ported to the PC. A couple of years ago, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released, then Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding were added to the piggy bank, and completely PC-boyars got the opportunity to ride a bike across America covered by a zombie virus (Days Gone) and fuck off the Scandinavian gods (God Of War 2018) . From the "exclusive exclusives" in the piggy bank of Sony, only Ghost Of Tsushima and Marvel's Spider-Man remained. Due to constant financial problems, Sony actually went over to the side of a competitor and gave him his main weapon - exclusives. And in the light of these events, the appearance of the conditional Days Gone in Gamepass no longer seems to be such madness as it was a year and a half ago.

Some experts are considering changing shoes in a jump and copying the Nintendo model, which, like Switzerland, is not at war with anyone and is doing great, continuing to release games based on Mario, Zelda and other franchises it owns. The fact is that Sony does not have such a deep wallet as Microsoft. Over the past 10 years, competition with Chinese companies has seriously battered the Japanese, and in recent years, almost the entire corporation has been fed by the gaming division. To put it simply, Microsoft can raise the stakes indefinitely, and Sony will have to take off watches, trousers and crocodile shoes in a couple of hands. To give you an idea of the seriousness of the situation, the news of the Microsoft-Activision deal alone dropped Sony's market value by $20 billion overnight.

What role will video games play in the entertainment industry of the future?


Judging by the game releases of 2021, we are on the verge of tectonic shifts. Although modern games borrow artistic techniques from cinema and literature, they allow you to go beyond their limitations. For example, the horror series House Of Ashes showed how to properly mix games and interactive cinema. Outwardly cheerful and carefree, It Takes Two arranged a session of family therapy under the guise of a cartoon platformer. And the literary RPG Disco Elysium, with its concept of inner voices, was so out of the genre that both serious guys from The Washington Post and specialists in scandals, intrigues and investigations from the British Daily Star spoke excitedly about it. Although, in fact, none of these publications covers the gaming industry in any way.

Well, the money that Microsoft poured into Activision confirms the growing importance of games. Whoever holds the keys to the gaming world will rule the entire entertainment industry.