According to Unity's annual gaming report, the game development industry exhibited "resilience and strength" during 2022, despite economic changes and challenges, through a focus on efficiency, optimization, and post-launch efforts.
Unity has published its annual Unity Gaming Report providing insights from the Unity development community and highlighting the prevailing trends of 2022 and strategies that are shaping the future of gaming.
According to the Unity Gaming Report 2023, despite economic changes and challenges during 2022, the game development industry demonstrated "resilience and strength" by focusing on efficiency, optimization, and post-launch efforts.
Efficiency proved to be critical, with smaller studios shipping games quickly and working fewer hours. In fact, 62% of indie studios shipped games in less than a year, and smaller studios worked an average of 1.2% fewer hours, which amounts to a total of five years of work hours.
To optimize investment, studios of different sizes were strategic about the number of platforms they developed for. The majority of smaller studios (nearly 90%) chose to focus on a single platform, while large studios increased the number of multiplatform games produced in 2022 by 16% compared to 2021. Furthermore, 88% of large studios invested in cross-platform development.
Post-launch support remained a top priority for all studios, with developers doubling down on efforts to extend their games' lifespan by 33% to retain existing players. Approximately 84% of studios with more than 50 people updated their games for more than six months, emphasizing the importance of post-launch support.
Looking forward, the report predicts that generative AI will play an increasing role in the development process, boosting productivity for creators and reducing the time and resources required to create games.
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