How Will the Gaming Landscape Look in 2025?

2024 is almost over but not before we give it a good send-off in our usual festive ways with turkey, tinsel, and time spent with loved ones.

16:23 03 December 2024

Mariah Carey has defrosted, your tree is already up, and you’re putting the finishing touches on your Christmas shopping. 2024 is almost over but not before we give it a good send-off in our usual festive ways with turkey, tinsel, and time spent with the people we care about. 

For many people, Christmas will be a season for gaming. Consoles like the Switch, PlayStation 5, and Steam Deck will all be in high demand in the run up to the festive period and online servers for multiplayer gaming will be bursting at the seams as players pile in together. 

But this glorious week of gifts, gaming, and gorging on good grub will pass in a blink of an eye and we’ll return to our routines as the calendar changes over. Gaming will continue though, particularly through the winter months as the fierce frosts and bitterly cold winds keep us inside until Easter. 

That won’t matter to gamers though as it’ll be a great time to enjoy the new releases from the final few months of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. Not only that, but the rest of next year is looking like it’ll be a bumper time for gaming. Let’s take a look at what we can expect to see. 

Grand Theft Auto VI With Shape All of Gaming in 2025

It won’t be long now before you’ll finally be able to say that the next Grand Theft Auto game is being released this year. Scheduled for a launch in “fall 2025”, the autumnal leaves will be dropping at the same time as GTA VI, the world’s most awaited and anticipated video game. 

It’s now a year since Rockstar Games released the first trailer for the game and we’re yet to get any more information. 

We have had confirmation that the release timeline remains on track, so we can expect 2025 to be dominated by Grand Theft Auto. Few publishers will want to compete with the game of the decade, so you can expect a wave of early releases as they try to maximise attention and sales. 

You can also expect consoles and peripherals to also be in demand with the release of GTA VI as gamers who had been waiting for its release all clamber to acquire the hardware they need to play it. Therefore, if you’re thinking of buying a PS5 or Xbox Series S or X, it may be better to do it sooner rather than later. 

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iGaming Will Continue to Grow

2024 has been another solid year for the iGaming industry, both in the UK and further afield. 

Here in Britain, the market has continued to grow as brands create new games and develop innovative ways to play them. We can see this in how platforms like PokerStars Casino offer several variants of the popular table game, roulette, including their own exclusive versions, as well as American and European rules and options for high rollers. This is likely to continue in 2025 with new slots, new live dealer games, and entirely new ideas to capture the imaginations of players. 

Elsewhere in the world, we can expect iGaming markets to mature. In Brazil, the government has set a deadline of 1st January 2025 for operators to acquire a license from its own regulator. This will reduce the number of brands operating in the country but will help to protect players and ensure fairness in the country.

It will also expand in the US. 40 states now allow some form of iGaming and Missouri is expected to be the 41st sometime in 2025. 

AI Boost for Gaming

The hype around artificial intelligence is beginning to wane but it is the less high-profile implementations that are where it is most useful. Gaming is one of these areas as it has been helping developers to streamline some of their processes. 

From concept art in the early stages to writing code and QA testing, the new technology is being used by developers of all sizes to help them reduce costs and speed up processes. 

Improved AI models for non-playable characters is also helping to make games more realistic and we can expect to see that to continue into 2025.