Distribution is everything, as it always has been.
Distributing your game has never been more challenging, and gaming industry macro trends seem to complicate it even further.
I was reading the last Naavik Digest the other day, Distribution is Everything, and it reminded me of the famous Slack vs. Microsoft Teams growth graph. It took Microsoft just four years to surpass Slack…
And then, the comparison just becomes unfair 😅
Slack arguably has a better product, but it simply cannot compete. Microsoft has a distribution advantage, and distribution is always the best MOAT.
This is also true in gaming. Unfortunately, it seems that distributing your game has never been more challenging.
According to
by :🥇 There are just EIGHT games with +1M DAU on PlayStation.
🥈And less than 60 with +100k DAU from the entire PS4/PS5 catalog.
👉🏼 It is more complex, if not impossible, for new games to compete with games like Fortnite, GTA, Rocket League, etc., that have built up 5 to 10 years of content to attract and retain players.
I believe that this reinforces our thesis that some video games will be played for more than 100 years.
Also, the macro trends in gaming are not helping:
🍏 Apple and his ATT changes precipitated a recession within the social media advertising economy and other advertising-dependent categories like gaming, particularly mobile gaming and hyper-casual gaming.
🔍 New game discovery is more complicated than ever. There’re 40M Roblox experiences; Steam accounts for more than 11K new games in 2022; meanwhile, the Epic Game Store added another 626 more.
📲 The App Store has more than 460.000 games; even so, the only way to discover them is via Top-10 Charts, direct search, or advertising. (really, apple? 🤦🏻♂️)
Unsurprisingly, trying to become viral on TikTok is becoming the default way to promote your game. For instance, Subway Surfers (initially released in 2012) became the most downloaded game of 2022 by going viral in Tiktok.
🤖 Last but not least, the mix of UGC + AI is cooking the perfect combo to reduce the barrier to creating new games. Fortnite Creative, Roblox, or Overworlf’s mods are just sneak peeks of the future. The number of new games available will continue growing faster and faster 💨💨
And who’s the winner when the product (in this case, games) becomes commoditized?You guess it right, the ones in control of the distribution. That’s why distribution is everything, as it always has been.
