What do you think 2025 will bring?
We asked a whole host of regular mobilegamer.biz readers what they think the big trends will be over the next year, and here’s what they said.
You can find yesterday’s batch of predictions from leaders at Xsolla, My Games, SciPlay, Phantom Gamelabs, Fingersoft, AdInMo and more here.
Bob Slinn, Funplus VP business development
D2C web experiences continue to move beyond webshops and reach mainstream players and more casual genres.
Performance marketing is still challenging and developers (and white label providers) are quickly learning to build and operate sophisticated, fully featured consumer web experiences. Being able to engage directly with players brings not only improved margins but the ability to create more personalised marketing and merchandising and provide a richer player experience overall.
Game developers are learning the art and science of e-commerce merchandising and a broader mix of marketing strategies and tactics beyond UA. This expansion will open up D2C to more casual genres as these experiences become more customer friendly and include a full range of content and services.
Sabrina Carmona, King’s Farm Heroes Saga VP
2025 will be the year mobile gaming further blurs the lines between games and lifestyle platforms. Expect to see more games embracing social features, real-world integrations, and co-creation opportunities where players shape the experience themselves. This evolution will make mobile gaming an even more integral part of how we connect, create, and unwind in our daily lives.
Alex Merutka, Craftsman+ founder and CEO
In 2025, Interactive Out-of-Home will emerge as a game-changer in the advertising space. Self-driving cars, evolving into entertainment hubs, will lead this shift, giving advertisers new opportunities to engage passengers in ways that static ads can’t match.
Early data already shows interactive ads on rideshare platforms are driving 2x the CPMs of video ads and 20x the engagement (CTR) – proof of their immense potential. But IOOH won’t stop there. It will expand into retail stores, gas stations, kiosks, and even airline headrests as more companies adopt touch-enabled, dynamic screens.
With airlines investing in technologies such as Starlink for ubiquitous in-flight internet, programmatic ads will become a major part of air travel. Companies like Uber have proven the success of ad-based models, and more platforms will follow, unlocking new revenue streams through IOOH. This trend is worth watching – it’s set to redefine how brands capture consumer attention on the go.
Jason Wang, Hungry Studio VP
In 2025, AI will take gaming to the next level with real-time, player-driven experiences – think dynamic content, adaptive levels, and storylines that evolve with your play style. With Block Blast!, we’re all in on AI, using it to supercharge our game design and A/B testing for an even more exciting experience.
Summer Liu, SocialPeta CMO
Because SocialPeta is an ad intelligence platform, we usually think from a marketing perspective. So, in the upcoming year, we reckon the merge of branding marketing, KOL marketing and performance marketing will continue to be a hit.
Eric Futoran, Embrace CEO and cofounder
Teams will evolve from a Find & Fix post-hoc mentality to a Measure and Optimize proactive approach using OpenTelemetry. It’s no longer acceptable to use traditional error logging tools in isolation by the Unity Eng teams. Backend, DevOps, and SRE teams are under pressure to connect their value to user impact. Why? The competition in games has never been more intense, and moving cohorted KPIs has never been more important.
Using o11y, particularly OpenTelemetry, to measure and connect business KPIs, empowers DevOPs and SREs to do deeper analyses, especially for AI, to really drive metrics. Plus a common data set (as opposed to disconnected tools used by different eng teams) pulls those client-side and Unity developers out of isolation so that the entire tech org is talking a common language to prioritize those issues that really move the needle.
Ignacio Monereo, Boost Capital partner
Even more AI hype! One year in the world of AI feels like a decade in tech, and advancements this year have brought notable improvements in output quality, from copilots and coding tools to applications like image or video creation and AI games. These innovations are enabling faster content creation and thus I expect to see some success stories among the new generation of AI-born and AI-powered game developers.
I also predict more distribution changes. Regulatory challenges to the mobile app stores dominance and the rise of other forms of distribution or platforms, like messaging apps (Telegram, Discord) or alternative mobile stores (Epic, third party stores) are reshaping game distribution. As such I expect more developers exploring these new ecosystems in search for blue oceans as well as direct-to-community channels for growth due to the overall fragmentation. If some of these platforms become relevant enough, I would expect to see some early adopters emerging as new platform leaders.
There’s also the rise of UGC. More companies are following in the footsteps of Roblox and UEFN, empowering players to not only create but to monetize as well their own content, driving engagement and innovation within these games. Low or no code solutions and now AI-integrated tools are making UGC more accessible to non-technical users. While building a UGC platform is not trivial, the potential benefits for the developer are strong and I foresee many companies going in that direction blurring in some way the line between developers and players and engines and games.
Manuel Prueter, Colossi Games CEO
I believe that we will see a fundamental change to the App Store with personalized recommendations and a different way how users utilize the new Apple Intelligence for App Discovery.
Actually, let me get bolder: Microsoft will get back into the hardware business by announcing the xPhone as a coop with Razer and thus to provide an attractive bundle for Game Pass-enabled hardware and exclusive apps from own store, and everyone harping about DTC/webshops as well as video ad networks will awake rudely when Google will announce on-device ad notifications eligible only with on-platform margin bidding – first party tRoAS, if you will. Google has been on the forefront of trying to combine the regulatory push for privacy with new ways to generate revenue as an ad network, and we certainly will see more of that type.
Tommi Koirikivi, Theymes CEO and cofounder
GenAI will become a must have tool in mobile gaming, bringing innovation across multiple use cases. From asset creation and rapid prototyping to player care and community management, studios will increasingly rely on AI to streamline workflows and enhance player experiences. Smaller studios in particular, will become much stronger and faster due to the efficiency gains AI can provide. The challenge will be ensuring these advancements complement, rather than replace the human touch.
Ivan Trancik, SuperScale founder and CEO
Mobile games will increasingly expand to other platforms, including web, PC, streaming, and console. This growth will deliver improved gameplay and seamless cross-play features, enhancing accessibility and player experience.
