GDC State of the Game Industry 2020: Key trends for the year ahead

The latest GDC State of the Game Industry survey has been released highlighting several interesting trends for the year ahead. 2020 is set to be an important year for the gaming industry. The next-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles are due to arrive in time for Christmas wishlists, there are murmurs of a Nintendo Switch Pro, VR is maturing, and cloud gaming will accelerate. 11 percent of survey respondents said their current project is being developed for the PlayStation 5 while 9 percent said they’re currently targeting the Xbox Series X. This slight lead for PlayStation is mirrored in the current-gen results with 25 percent saying they’re currently building games for PS4 compared to 23 percent for Xbox One. As for their next project, an equal 20 percent of developers said they intend to build games for the current Xbox and PlayStation consoles. There is, however, another discrepancy when it comes to next-gen with 23 percent planning to release their game for PS5 compared to 17 percent for the upcoming Xbox. Over a third (34%) of developers expect their games to launch on both current and next-gen consoles.