Play on or game over? A look back at 2025 for the video game industry

It’s been a monumental year for the video game industry, marked by new devices and billion-dollar deals.

Further consolidation in the sector occurred when a consortium led by Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and Silver Lake, as well as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, announced plans to increase consolidation in the sector. Electronic Arts special. The $55 billion deal, which included $20 billion in debt financing, is the largest leveraged buyout in Wall Street history.

According to Omdia analysts, this move could have major implications for EA. We are told that the question now is whether PIF plans to launch EA as a “PR project” or to “get maximum returns” from the company.

French game developer Ubisoft Although it started 2025 with a second delay to Shadows, the latest game in the flagship Assassin’s Creed series, it tried to turn its fortunes around this year.

Ubisoft’s shares rose in March after the Chinese tech giant announced the creation of a new gaming subsidiary Tencent It’s called Vantage Studios. The new developer, which will be partially owned by Tencent, will focus on Ubisoft’s core IP, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.

Despite Ubisoft’s efforts, shares have lost just over half their value to date, leaving the stock down more than 90% from its 2021 high.

Backwards, Take-Two InteractiveIts shares have continued to rise throughout 2025 as expectations for the next Grand Theft Auto game grow. It’s been 12 years since the previous version, GTA 5, was released on Xbox 360 and PS3.

However, since there has been radio silence on GTA 6 for most of the year, fans have speculated that an additional delay to the release date is on the cards from May 26, 2026, even though Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told CNBC in May that he had “very, very high confidence” that the planned date would be achievable. In November this year, the game was postponed to November 19, 2026 amid news of Take-Two shares falling.

The game will launch in the twilight window for Sony PlayStation 5 and MicrosoftXbox Series X and S — six years after both consoles launched. There was a change in strategy for both brands in the last generation, as the focus shifted to next-generation consoles.

While Xbox is moving away from exclusives, with games like Indiana Jones, Forza Horizon and more releasing on PS5, PlayStation continues to experiment more with releasing games on PC.

Take-Two’s Zelnick argued that changing strategies would make the video game industry more open. When asked if the console would be around in the next five to 10 years, he said consoles would still be around and that devices were moving towards PC because “things are moving towards being on rather than being off.”

“But if you define the console as a property rather than a system, then the concept of a very rich game that you spend hours playing on the big screen never goes away,” he told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in November.

According to George Jijiashvili, senior principal analyst at Omdia Games, consoles still have a big role in the market. He told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that the devices are still “the place to go for premium games.”

Data from Omdia shows that consoles are the second largest category when it comes to total consumer spending; mobile spending reached 60%, consoles 23% and PCs 16%.

While others often give up privileged titles, Nintendo’s It continued to pursue the strategy by releasing a variety of exclusive games for the new Switch 2 console, including an open-world reskin of Mario Kart and a brand new Donkey Kong game.