From a PC and console player behavior point of view, the biggest change in 2025 was where player loyalty sits.

Established IPs still proved their resilience. Franchises like Battlefield and Monster Hunter continue to perform when they deliver a genuinely compelling experience. Brand equity still matters, but it is no longer a sufficient moat on its own.

At the same time, there has never been a better environment for viral breakout success from newcomers. Titles like Schedule I or Peak benefited from creator-led discovery, short-form video, and rapid community amplification. Visibility is less gated by platform holders than it used to be, and more driven by social momentum.

In parallel, platform boundaries blurred further. “Games as platforms” such as Roblox and Fortnite reinforced a shift toward hardware agnosticism. Players increasingly move fluidly between living room, desk, portable, and mobile contexts, often within the same ecosystem and account. The device matters less than continuity of identity, progression, and social presence.

The net result is a bifurcation: strong legacy IPs can still win big, but discovery dynamics now allow new entrants to scale faster than ever—and players increasingly follow experiences, not hardware.

Discovery and attention for PC and console titles have shifted decisively outside traditional storefronts.

With thousands of games releasing each year, achieving meaningful share of voice on platforms like Steam or console stores has become increasingly unrealistic, especially without top-tier featuring. As a result, awareness and intent are now formed upstream, through creators, communities, and social platforms. Store pages have effectively become conversion points rather than discovery engines.

Creators and community dynamics now act as primary filters. Short-form clips, streams, memes, and update-driven moments determine which games even enter player consideration. This favors titles that are socially legible and watchable, not just mechanically sound. Virality is less manufactured and more emergent, driven by authentic engagement rather than campaign timing.

This shift is even more pronounced among younger audiences, many of whom spend significant time in platform-games like Roblox. Rather than competing with these ecosystems, publishers increasingly need to use them as on-ramps. Branded or native experiences inside such platforms can build early IP familiarity and emotional attachment, later redirecting players toward premium PC or console titles.

Despite the noise, two levers still cut through. High product quality remains the strongest amplifier: in a social-media-driven environment, word of mouth scales rapidly, and quality directly fuels shareability. In parallel, demos are regaining relevance. They reduce friction, build trust, and give both players and creators a low-commitment way to engage—particularly important in premium-priced ecosystems.

Overall, discovery is no longer won at launch or inside stores. It is earned continuously, through experience, recommendation, and sustained social visibility across ecosystems that increasingly sit beyond traditional PC and console boundaries.

Studios moving from mobile-first into PC and console underestimate expectation depth, IP stewardship, and the impact of pricing norms.

PC and console players expect long-term mastery, systemic depth, and technical reliability from day one. Cadence alone is insufficient; if core gameplay or performance falters, retention drops quickly and is hard to recover. These expectations are closely tied to fidelity to IPs. Players judge new titles against past entries, genre benchmarks, and the promises an IP has built over time. Design or monetization shifts are often framed as dilution rather than iteration.

This is reinforced by pricing context. Many successful PC and console titles remain premium, pay-to-play, and premium pricing carries premium expectations around quality, completeness, and vision. Conversely, free-to-play is still not the default model on these platforms and can suffer from a perception of lower quality or aggressive monetization before players even engage.

Combined with vocal, technically literate communities, this makes credibility, consistency, and stewardship critical—and frequently underestimated.

Monetization on PC and console is continuing to hybridize, but designing in isolation is increasingly impossible as games ship on more platforms by default.

Premium pricing still plays a central role, particularly on PC and console where upfront payment signals quality and completeness. Live monetization layers – cosmetics, passes, expansions – are broadly accepted, but only when they feel additive rather than corrective.

As titles expand across platforms, players naturally compare value, progression, and entitlements. Differences in pricing, content access, or progression speed between PC, console, and other devices are quickly noticed and often perceived as unfair. What might have been a local optimization on one platform now has global consequences for trust and retention.

Free-to-play remains viable but uneven. On PC and console, it is largely concentrated in category leaders. New F2P titles face skepticism around monetization intent, especially when cross-platform economies feel unbalanced or opaque.

The implication for studios is structural. Monetization can no longer be optimized per platform or per P&L in isolation. Business models must be designed holistically, aligned with IP positioning and long-term engagement, because players increasingly experience the ecosystem as a single, continuous product.

Tiago Reis, Market Analyst at Newzoo: If I had to highlight one market for PC, it would be China. The 2024 release of Black Myth: Wukong had a massive impact on the Chinese PC market. We expected the lack of a comparable hit in 2025 to stall further growth, especially given signs of saturation from an aging population and high existing spend, as well as domestic launches shifting revenue between titles rather than expanding the pie.

However, full-year availability of 2024 releases (e.g., Marvel Rivals, Delta Force), the sustained momentum from Activision Blizzard titles (World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch), following their 2024 return via NetEase, and solid performance of existing titles drove sizeable gains in 2025. Revenue growth from giants like Tencent and NetEase, based on the first nine months of financials we have access to, signals healthy prospects for the overall market.

The biggest blind spots are player-level understanding and cross-platform context.

Many studios still measure performance in platform silos – PC, console, mobile – while players increasingly move fluidly between them. Identity resolution remains weak, making it hard to see overlap, migration, and true incremental growth versus cannibalization. As a result, teams often optimize per platform without understanding total player value.

Time allocation is another gap. Revenue and MAUs are tracked, but where players actually spend time—across devices, modes, or titles within a portfolio—is less visible. This leads to distorted priorities in live operations and roadmaps.

Finally, data is often abundant but poorly synthesized. Telemetry explains what happened, not what to do next. Organizational structures reinforce this problem: platform P&Ls and regional ownership encourage local optimization, while the player experience is increasingly global.

The issue is not data availability, but measurement models that no longer reflect how players engage across ecosystems.

Stop planning per platform. Messaging, creators, and beats should follow player moments, not devices. Marketing needs to align with live operations, not launches. Most importantly: optimize for sustained visibility, not day-one spikes. Attention is now earned continuously, or lost quietly.