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Niko Partners President, Lisa Hanson, and Senior Analyst, Alex Champlin,\u00a0were again in\u00a0attendance\u00a0at\u00a0the Game Developers Conference this year. While the mood seemed slightly brighter compared to last\u00a0year,\u00a0the scale of the event and topics in conversation\u00a0and\u00a0at\u00a0panels\u00a0signaled\u00a0some changing realities in the games industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GDC\u00a02026 felt decidedly different from past years, as many\u00a0attendees have said in their own posts summarizing the event. There were far fewer people (down 30%, officially,\u00a0although\u00a0last year already felt smaller than 2024). The hotel lobbies were less crowded. Moscone Center itself was less occupied, leaving most of the talks in the West Hall,\u00a0rather than the other halls.\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0the expo floor\u00a0combined large-scale company booths with the international games and student games sections,\u00a0historically spread across three areas, into one single floor.\u00a0Industrial consolidation is translating into a consolidation of the conference as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While\u00a0many\u00a0observers\u00a0have noted\u00a0the\u00a0GDC discussions around upcoming games, technologies, hardware, and\u00a0staffing, we\u00a0observed\u00a0through\u00a0a lens of international markets\u00a0and global growth.\u00a0To that\u00a0end, there were at five\u00a0key\u00a0themes of GDC that resonated\u00a0most\u00a0with us at Niko Partners:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Localization is critical.\u00a0As international markets become key targets for the industry, it is more important than ever to know your audience and figure out how to write\u00a0&\u00a0talk in their language, how to sell in their payment methods, and how to market on their holidays.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lisa was a panelist alongside Shane\u00a0Happich, CEO of Coda, talking about localization of payments and storefronts, moderated by Liz Adam,\u00a0also of Coda.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asia is a hot growth market, from Japan and Korea to China, to Southeast Asia and over to India. This is true for companies based in those countries as well as those selling to those countries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the past we may have said Niko Partners\u2019\u00a0expertise\u00a0in these areas made us biased to these trends, but this year the shift was undeniable.\u00a0Competition here is stiffer and success is more important than ever.\u00a0Many people wanted our opinions on this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tread lightly with MENA due to the current geopolitical situation and\u00a0pray\u00a0(or\u00a0call)\u00a0for\u00a0peace, and\u00a0then\u00a0hope\u00a0that we\u00a0see the\u00a0return of\u00a0hot growth shown in MENA before this\u00a0conflict\u00a0began.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lisa moderated a\u00a0recorded podcast\u00a0conversation\u00a0about the Middle East,\u00a0between Berkley Egenes, CMO of\u00a0Xsolla, and\u00a0Gokce\u00a0Kozandagi, VP of Business Development in MENA,\u00a0also of\u00a0Xsolla.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
China is rising, both with domestic demand and\u00a0with regard to\u00a0Chinese exports and international publishing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
One could not walk far without hearing \u201cChina\u201d in discussion.\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0Chinese companies like Tencent and NetEase had some of the strongest presences of any game developers at the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI is here to stay.\u00a0We\u00a0hope for no more layoffs,\u00a0but worry is obvious, and there is great unknown ahead.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Everyone\u00a0talked about this.\u00a0But while last year AI was framed as an uncertain quantity,\u00a0this year the use cases seemed\u00a0more fleshed out and charted clearer pathways for the combination of human creativity and technical efficiency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A\u00a0final\u00a0bonus\u00a0theme was\u00a0investment, or the lack thereof. This pertains to public markets as well as private funding. In the US there will be only 1 pure play games company publicly traded\u00a0(Take-Two), once EA is fully\u00a0acquired\u00a0by the PIF-led group.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We heard fewer discussions about investment and funding than in past years.\u00a0And saw at least one talk that\u00a0indicated\u00a0a shift happening among games industry investors who are turning their hopes to streaming\u00a0platforms\u00a0like\u00a0Netflix, Apple,\u00a0etc.\u00a0as new frontiers for publicly traded play.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We had more meetings than ever at a GDC this year, despite the lower attendance.\u00a0Participants are interested in those themes listed above, and Niko knows a lot about them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a global industry joyously allowing humans from everywhere to play the same games, if they want to, and in that\u00a0regard\u00a0it felt that the biggest shadows over GDC were geopolitical concerns, and the views of foreign visitors on the United States. As\u00a0Lisa\u2019s\u00a0personal motto is Peace Through Intercultural Understanding,\u00a0we at Niko Partners\u00a0sincerely hope that these dark times get bright again and,\u00a0in the meantime,\u00a0we\u00a0will continue to do our part to inform our clients about the hot markets in Asia and MENA, so that the games industry can continue to grow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contact us:\u00a0lisa@nikopartners.com<\/a>,\u00a0alexander@nikopartners.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Related Articles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niko Partners President, Lisa Hanson, and Senior Analyst, Alex Champlin,\u00a0were again in\u00a0attendance\u00a0at\u00a0the Game Developers Conference this year. While…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10968,256,64,63,512,59665,271526,268156,271527,271528,38987,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-548834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-10968","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-coda","14":"tag-game-developers-conference","15":"tag-gdc","16":"tag-gdc-2026","17":"tag-localization","18":"tag-mena","19":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}