Epyllion CEO Matthew Ball has created a stunning report on the state of the video game industry in 2025, which has slowly been making the rounds as Ball shares insights even the games media wasn’t aware of. However, he makes one stunning revelation that’s definitely going to get gamers reacting.
First things first, Ball is a well-respected investment analyst, in and out of gaming. He’s worked at Amazon Studios, McKinsey & Company, and Accenture. But for our purposes, he’s received endorsements from Tim Sweeney, Phil Spencer, and Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. You can read his website’s about page for more.
Ball made a 222 page presentation about the industry, which he also generously decided to make free for everyone. A lot of the information found here doesn’t come with citations, and seems to be based partly on (partly confidential) financial reports, and possibly some insider information as well.
Unfortunately, the picture he paints is not a happy one. Ball points out that PC, console, even mobile gaming has seen little growth in recent years. Much of the money being made in gaming is made by only a few players such as Fortnite and Call of Duty. Subsequently, video games are losing the battle for attention to social media, especially Tiktok. Hence, we’re actually gaming less as we spend more time watching content, such as console war rage bait on YouTube.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Ball made this troubling caption in one of his slides:
“But some gamemakers hope GTA VI will be priced at $ 80 to $ 100, breaking the $ 70 and helping $ 50 titles to move up to $ 60, $ 60 to do $ 70, $ 70 to $ 80, etc.”
Ball goes on to explain that video game budgets are at the highest they have ever been before, increasing risk. Subsequently, the number of players isn’t growing fast enough. But perhaps most importantly, in real terms, game prices have actually never been lower than they are today.
In simple English, what Ball is saying is while video games have stayed $ 60 for years, that amount hasn’t been adjusted for inflation this whole time. So you may remember Grand Theft Auto III costing only $ 60 for you, but adjusted for inflation, that actually cost you between $ 80 – $ 100 in today’s money. Adjusted for inflation, $ 91 would be closer to the average cost of what a gamer has spent on a video game.
But we do know some gamers have learned about this somewhere, or possibly even figured it out on their own. It’s part of the reason why the industry has been shifting between DLC to microtransactions and loot boxes. The game companies know that gamers are resistant to prices going up, but at the same time they aren’t making enough money back from that $ 60 retail price.
We’re now at a point where less people are discovering and playing console and PC video games like Grand Theft Auto. This is the reason there are people in the industry who hope that Grand Theft Auto 6 will sell above $ 60 and make that the new normal. Because with no new customers, they need to find other ways to make money. And that higher asking price may not lead to game companies making less DLC or microtransactions, but it could mean the industry will start growing again. And then the wave of layoffs in the industry will actually end.
It’s certainly a bitter pill to swallow, but we beg you not to reject this revelation outright or cast aspersions on the messenger. Matthew Ball’s analysis could be wrong, but he’s just calling it as he sees it. If anything, you can take this as a warning that huge changes are on the way for video games as a whole.
