There's Supercell's continued dominance in the free-to-play mobile markets with Hayday and Clash of Clans, the incredible high-end Frostbite tech behind DICE's Battlefield 4 - technology that's now being used in multiple Electronic Arts games. "The names are leaders in their fields - and that's pretty much every field in games" The names are leaders in their fields - and that's pretty much every field in games. But from an outsider's perspective there is no livelier, friendly, more productive or downright talented collective of games creators at this point in time. So we'll add Denmark and Norway to the mix and call it Scandinavia at the risk of offending anyone with such generalisations. Okay, it's a bit of a cop out to lump two regions together. Expect your social media timelines to become flooded with Titanfall footage in 2014. And it only becomes more accessible to the user as YouTube continues to indiscriminately stomp on its users, and Microsoft's Xbox One allows streaming from its console next year.
Broadcasting and streaming PC gaming is still at the heart of it, but consoles are pop culture, and help raise profiles in the mainstream consciousness. Twitch is a threat to any online company that makes money from advertising, not least the old guard video games media who will be competing directly with this new, buzzing, easy-to-use and accessible outlet.Ĭonsoles aren't a single factor in increasing the popularity of Twitch of course. With $20 million in fresh funding (some of which, tellingly, comes from Grand Theft Auto V publisher Take-Two), the business intends to grow its advertising resources. The company is riding two waves this year - the resurgence of the video games business and the popularity of online video. "Twitch is a threat to any online company that makes money from advertising, not least the old guard video games media" One little Share button on a controller prompted 100,000 people to stream their games on Twitch in the first month of launch. There may have been a hiccup with nudity (it turns out if you give some people a camera and access to the internet they'll take their clothes off - who knew?), but PlayStation 4 now accounts for 10 per cent of all Twitch streaming. Twitch ends the year as a central part of the PlayStation 4 console, riding high on a successful launch from Sony and into everyday usage by console games players. New hardware has lifted the console market, experimental tech has gained momentum, creativity has returned to games ten-fold, genres are spawning other genres, the player is spoilt for choice and marketing has returned to a grassroots level. And to be honest, it's been one of those most positive years in the video game business I can remember. So while we've already covered those we've labelled the losers of the year, its important to balance that with some positivity.
It's easy to knock those that had a poor run in 2013, as mistakes stick out more prominently than successes.