Game On: Looking back on 2022 in video gaming
The year 2022 was an odd one for gaming – beyond the games themselves, the biggest stories came from the business surrounding them.
There have been a variety of massive corporate buyouts and mergers, the likes of Ubisoft, Take-Two and Square Enix have been attempting and largely failing to capitalize on the “non-fungible token” craze and the Steam Deck dared to challenge Nintendo in the portable gaming market.
Best-known for Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest, Square Enix sold off three of its studios and IPs Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, Thief and Deus Ex to the Embracer Group for a surprisingly paltry $300 million. I say paltry because meanwhile, Sony spent $3.6 billion scooping up Destiny maker Bungie and Take-Two dropped $12.7 billion for Zynga, the mobile game publisher behind FarmVille and Words With Friends.
Last but certainly not least, Microsoft attracted the attention of antitrust regulators across the U.S., U.K. and the EU when it announced its intent to scoop up the struggling Activision-Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal. While Microsoft has been making promises to continue delivering Call of Duty to rival consoles, the FTC nevertheless filed a lawsuit to block the merger earlier this month.
I imagine the FTC is looking to make an example and set a baseline standard for what is and isn’t acceptable in the video game market the same way they did earlier this month when they fined Fortnite creator Epic Games $520 million over allegations that they used “dark patterns” to dupe gamers into making unwanted in-game purchases and harmed children with regards to privacy law. The market outlook regarding the Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard merger remains optimistic, however.
Speaking of optimism, public opinion is largely positive regarding Square Enix selling off several studios and IPs to the Embracer Group. The Tomb Raider reboots weren’t bad, but their treatment of Thief and Deus Ex was mediocre and Legacy of Kain was left completely dormant. In October, Embracer Group released a survey querying fans about what they’d like from the Legacy of Kain franchise – they later announced that similar surveys usually net 1,000-3,000 responses, but this time they received 100,000 responses.
The Steam Deck, Valve’s hybrid PC-handheld, was released early this year in limited quantities and began full-scale production a few months ago. Exact sales figures aren’t widely available – all we know for sure is that 1.5 million devices were sold by May, and the hardware has remained at or near the top of Steam’s global top sellers list since its release.
Unlike the failed “Steam Machines” and Steam Controller of 2015, the Steam Deck is far from a flop. It won’t keep up with beefy PCs, the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X, but it runs circles around the Nintendo Switch in every way except battery life and, of course, access to first-party Nintendo titles. I attribute much of its success to its built-in user base – the vast majority of peoples’ existing Steam purchases are fully playable on the Deck, no “upgrade fees” or any other nonsense.
Sonic the Hedgehog, a franchise notorious for its varied quality, performed admirably well at every juncture – the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie’s gross earnings quadrupled its budget, becoming the highest-grossing video game film of all time in the U.S. Sonic Origins and Sonic Frontiers both received good reviews and sold well, and even Sonic Prime, the new Netflix series released on Dec. 15, has been well-received by most.
The video game-to-film adaptation curse seems to be lifted in general. In February, the big-screen adaptation of Uncharted released to great box office returns, and the Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners received critical acclaim upon release in September, while hype for The Super Mario Bros. Movie rose dramatically following the release of two trailers. It’s set to release April 7 in the U.S.
In November, analyst Newzoo revealed that video game revenue totaled $184.4 billion in 2022, down from $192.7 billion in 2021 – but estimated there are 3.2 billion gamers in the world, up from 3.1 billion in 2021. The global pandemic surely gave video games a short-term burst in popularity, but the medium shows no signs of slowing down in 2023 and beyond.