IGN launches Gaming Trends platform, shedding mild on how cellular, Roblox, and extra are reshaping the business

IGN Entertainment has launched Gaming Trends, a data-driven insights platform that utilises the corporate’s huge attain to foretell the long run route of gaming and leisure.

With 500 million month-to-month guests throughout 110 nations, IGN’s attain provides it an expansive temperature examine of what is trending. In its preliminary examine, IGN’s management attracts a couple of conclusions on what that information reveals – a abstract of these key learnings is under.

Signing up to Gaming Trends is free. Watching the video, hosted by IGN’s SVP of publishing, John Davison, affords many extra information factors that knowledgeable the examine than we have captured under, however listed here are a couple of highlights.

Mobile gaming is king

The prominence of cellular amongst youthful gamers in all probability will not be an enormous shock to anybody studying this – 93% of Gen Alpha choose taking part in on cellular, in line with IGN’s segmentation examine. But choice for cellular is definitely rising for Millennials, too, with 32% calling it their most popular gadget.

The examine additionally makes the assertion that Fortnite has been a key issue within the Nintendo Switch’s current success, particularly as the sport hadn’t been obtainable on the App Store since August 2020 (that modified lately, after all, because of the Epic vs Apple fallout).

Davison says an estimated 81 million folks have performed Fortnite on Switch – a quantity that eclipses the gross sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at 68 million copies bought.

It’s additionally why, regardless of the Switch 2’s huge launch success, cellular will stay a risk to Nintendo.

UGC progress

Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) has resulted in nearly 200,000 video games being made by creators inside the Fortnite ecosystem. But this determine is dwarfed by the numbers in Roblox, which is house to round 40 million user-made experiences.

Daily concurrent person numbers have grown in Roblox from 3.8 million in June 2022 to greater than 25 million in June 2025. Over the identical interval, Fortnite has grown from 1.2 million to 1.77 million concurrents – with occasional blips, like when 15.3 million gamers logged on for the Marvel Galactus occasion.

On Roblox, Grow a Garden has to this point peaked at 21.3 million gamers, turning into the preferred recreation of all time by concurrent person rely. For context, that is extra folks than the highest 100 Steam video games mixed.

Games powering popular culture

A Minecraft Movie has proved to be an unlimited success, raking in $950 million on the field workplace concurrently driving participant curiosity within the recreation. Monthly energetic person figures for Minecraft throughout PlayStation and Xbox reached a brand new excessive of 20 million consequently.

Similarly, Five Nights at Freddy’s grew to become Blumhouse’s highest grossing film ever in 2023, passing $297 million on the field workplace. A sequel is due in December this 12 months.

One key distinction between earlier makes an attempt at films and TV reveals based mostly on common video video games and those being made now’s that the folks in cost are devoted followers of the video games they’re adapting, or are even the unique creators – as seen with Amazon’s Fallout TV present and the upcoming Elden Ring movie adaptation. Writer and director Alex Garland says he has performed by Elden Ring seven occasions.

Games merchandise is now large enterprise. Oracle information confirmed that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was trending effectively with gamers again in January, and IGN secured rights for unique Expedition 33 merch consequently. In the tip, this merchandise bought 16% extra throughout 60 days than did IGN’s common Fallout TV present merchandise, though it was based mostly on a brand new IP.

Loyalty has modified

Millennials and Gen X are typically loyal to platforms or genres – now, the youthful generations are typically extra loyal to particular experiences. They now not establish as players – they establish as gamers of a selected recreation.

Game communities now behave very similar to sports activities followers, and have a good time content material drops in video games like League of Legends very similar to the discharge of completely new video games. And because the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a rebound in curiosity in eSports, led by one-on-one combating video games, that are the best for audiences to comply with and perceive.

The upcoming 2D combating recreation Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls proved to be a giant hit with IGN’s viewers when it was revealed this summer season, and the wi-fi PlayStation combating stick, Project Defiant, garnered an unlimited 6 million views on IGN social media.

Nostalgia and new IP

Every two years, IGN conducts a examine into viewers attitudes in direction of older video games, and the findings have proven that individuals are more and more trying again. Now, 71% agree that they are feeling an increasing number of nostalgic for franchises that had been round once they had been children.

But there’s nonetheless room for brand spanking new IP to breakthrough, as proven by the success of video games like Split Fiction and Black Myth: Wukong – the latter peaking at 2.2 million concurrent gamers on Steam.

Where Winds Meet and Blood Message are more likely to be the following two large hits from China on the idea of Oracle information, presumably reaching the identical scale of success as Black Myth: Wukong.

Subscription providers are getting greater and larger, and previous video games on these providers will at all times be new to somebody, similar to how the nineties sitcom Friends attracted an entire new technology of followers when it got here to Netflix. Gen Z and Gen Alpha now count on each music and TV present to be obtainable to them immediately, they usually count on the identical for video video games.

IGN has discovered that nostalgia-based content material has been large on Humble, together with Tomb Raider, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, which have pushed large will increase in subscriptions.

The greatest upcoming video games

There had been 770 video games introduced within the 2025 summer season showcases, and the motion of GTA 6’s launch date into 2026 has meant video games have flooded into the September to November launch window that publishers had been beforehand making an attempt to keep away from.

Some of the brand new titles that drove the most important visitors on IGN had been Resident Evil: Requiem, Metal Gear Solid Delta, Silent Hill F, 007 First Light, Pragmata, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and Ghost of Yotei.

IGN Entertainment guarantees there’s rather more to come back from Gaming Trends – its subsequent report will look again on the predictions above to see in the event that they had been truly proper. So, popcorn on the prepared.

IGN Entertainment is the mum or dad firm of GamesIndustry.biz.