Strategic Intelligence: Gaming Sector Scorecard Q3 2024 Update

While most gaming companies score strongly (a 4 or 5) in mobile gaming-the most important theme in the thematic screen of the analyst’s gaming sector scorecard-only a few are leading in AI. Of these, the dominant players are the tech giants: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, ByteDance, and Apple. Tencent, NetEase, Unity Technologies, Sony, and Roblox are investing heavily in AI, especially generative AI.

Key Highlights

• AI is increasingly being used in gameplay and game development. In Q3 2024, Electronic Arts (EA) introduced the Imagination to Creation tool, which uses AI prompts to create video games in real-time. Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard also began incorporating AI in game creation and selling AI-generated skins in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Sony is using its PS5 Pro AI to upscale and improve over 8,000 games, while it plans to use AI to reduce development time and costs. NCSoft will release a game featuring AI-generated characters in 2025. That said, some companies are taking cautious steps. For example, Nintendo has highlighted intellectual property concerns with AI.
• Black Myth: Wukong has become China's most successful release of all time. Released in August 2024, it has become one of the fastest-selling games ever, selling over 20 million copies in its first month. The game demonstrates China’s desire to become a major player in the console and PC gaming industry, traditionally dominated by Japan, the US, and Europe. The game's success highlights a shift in the gaming industry, with Eastern narratives from outside Japan gaining popularity and respect from the global console and PC gaming community.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the gaming sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

Reasons to Buy

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• The analyst’s thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• At the analyst, we have developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• Our thematic engine tags over 180 million data items across six alternative data sets-patents, jobs, deals, filings, social media, and news-to themes. The vast datasets within our thematic engine help our analysts to produce sector scorecards that identify the companies best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats.