India’s gaming industry is said to expand from USD 3.7 billion in FY24 to USD 9.8 billion by FY29, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 20 percent, as per a report from consulting firm 1Lattice.

This growth is attributed to several factors, including increased smartphone adoption, a young demographic, and government initiatives aimed at upgrading India’s presence in the global gaming sector.

As per the report, with more than 950 million internet users and 820 million smartphone users, India’s gaming base reached 560 million in FY23. Key drivers of this growth include enhanced connectivity, affordable high-quality smartphones, and the expansion of digital payments, which have all contributed to the industry’s reach.

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Mid-core And Hardcore Games Witnessing Growth

45 percent of India’s demographic is under 29 and is actively engaging with gaming, leading to a demand for more immersive experiences. The rise of gaming influencers, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, has also drawn new players into the gaming landscape.

The market is witnessing growth in mid-core and hardcore games, which require greater time and skill engagement. This segment is said to grow at a 47 percent CAGR and could become the dominant category by FY29.

Besides, the Real Money Gaming (RMG) segment is facing slower growth due to ethical and regulatory hurdles, although it remains a huge part of the ecosystem. In FY23, Indian users downloaded approximately 9.5 billion gaming apps, accounting for nearly 20 percent of global downloads.

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Indian Government Seeing The Potential of Gaming

The Indian Government has also recognized gaming’s potential initiatives such as the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC) Task Force, established in the 2022-23 budget. This task Force aims to foster talent development and promote international partnerships. In September this year, the Union Cabinet approved the establishment of the National Centre of Excellence (NCoE) in Mumbai, which is projected to create 500,000 jobs and enhance skills in immersive technologies.

Government-backed events like the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) and the National Game Jam aim to foster innovation and engagement in the sector. The recognition of Esports as a legitimate sport also adds credibility to its competitive potential, as evidenced by India’s Dota 2 team winning a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Esports Championships in 2022.

The private sector is investing in the gaming industry actively, with firms such as Nazara Technologies increasing stakes in key players like Paper Boat Apps and Absolute Sports, totaling over Rs 455.5 crore in 2024.

The Sims 4 might be getting old, having launched over a decade ago, but that doesn’t seem to slow it down in the long-running life sim series: EA just announced The Sims 4 has managed to gain more than 15 million new players this year alone.

To put that into perspective, it took The Sims 4 six years to amass 20m players after launch back in 2-14 - a figure that then skyrocketed after EA decided to transition the formerly premium title into a free-to-play game in October 2022.

That business model shifts more than multiplied four times The Sims 4’s audience, with EA boasting 85m players back in May this year, and we now know the past year has brought a total of 15m new players.

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EA Focus On The Game Contributed To Sims 4 Success

The most recent figure was unveiled as part of EA’s second-quarter 2025 financial earnings report, and helps offer additional context for its announcement earlier this year that, despite its age, The Sims 4 will continue to be "a foundational Sims experience" as the series moves "beyond linear, sequential Sims releases."

The Sims 4’s boost in popularity also shows EA’s renewed focus on the decade-old game, with the publisher having pledged more bug fixes more often this May as it seems to address years of technical issues. That’s on top of a range of new in-game initiatives, such as the new live-service style Reaper’s Rewards Event, and a continuing avalanche of new DLC.

Next up for The Sims 4 is the Life & Death expansion, which releases this Thursday, 31st October. Its launch follows a free base game update last week considerably expanding Sims’ ghost-form gameplay, and comes ahead of a new series of creator-designed DLC packs.

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Netflix Shuts AAA Game Studio Without Launching a Single Game

Netflix’s push into gaming might not be going as planned. First reported in Game File and confirmed by Netflix, the streaming giant has discreetly shut one of its studios, the first in three years since it started foraying into gaming.

According to Game File, the shut studio was known as Blue. In 2022, the company announced it hired former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny to run the studio. Since then, Blue has roped in several game industry veterans with experience working on high-profile franchises including Halo and God of War.

If reports are to be believed, Blue was developing a multi-platform AAA game for an original IP but was shut down before the could be announced or launched. Netflix has released a steady stream of games on its platform since the start of its gaming experiment in 2021.

Sony is closing the doors on Firewalk Studios. The news was broken by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, and Insider Gaming was quickly able to align with sources. Sony made the announcement public shortly after the news broke in a message on its official website.

According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Sony’s closures of Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi will result in 210 people being let go in total. Firewalk sees 172 people lose their jobs while Neon Koi is another 38.

“We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities,” PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst said. “As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.”  

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What’s The Reason Behind Shutting Firewalk Studios

Hulst says that over the last few months, the team at PlayStation explored “all [their] options” regarding the game. Despite these efforts, however, the decision was made to close the studio and sunset the game for a long time.

“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio,” he said. ” I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit, and dedication.”  He continued: “I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE.  Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization.”

Concord came out in late August to less than 1,000 players on Steam and roughly 25,000 copies sold. The game was shut down two weeks later with talk of a potential return as a possible free-to-play shooter.

Eventually, that did not happen and Sony has moved on. There was no mention by the company if all employees would be let go or moved to other areas with Sony. There have been nearly 14,000 known jobs lost to layoffs in 2024 within the game industry across almost 160 companies.

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Sony Launches PlayStation VR 2 PC Adapter To Play SteamVR Titles

Sony launched the PlayStation VR2, a virtual-reality headset, in February 2022, which allowed PlayStation 5 players to enjoy new VR games. To expand the player’s library, Sony is about to launch a PS VR2 PC adaptor, which will allow players to access all the SteamVR titles. 

PS VR2 is Sony’s second-generation VR headset, and to date, players can only play VR games from the PS library. With the launch of the PC adaptor, Sony wants to bring VR titles present on PC to PS VR2, helping PS VR2 players expand their library.

Dizzy Hero, a new action game for the Nintendo Switch that needs players to act drunk to activate their superpowers. The game has been garnering a lot of attention on the internet. In the game, players control a character that becomes stronger the more users sway around in real life.

To detect the player’s movements in real life, Dizzy Hero leverages the Joy-Con’s built-in infrared motion camera. As per SoraNews24, who downloaded the game from Nintendo eShop, players have to put down the right Joy-Con with the camera pointing towards them and holding the other one in their hand.

The publication suggested that the gameplay is pretty simple and needs players to “navigate from one door to another on the floor of a building and pick up a folder of dossiers in the process.”

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Using Nintendo’s Joy-Con In Unique Ways

With each floor in the game, players face traps and hazards. To overcome these hurdles, players will have to act drunk and sway constantly to push obstacles like boxes and chairs. But with great powers, comes a new set of hurdles- chairs. If the player’s hero gets too close to the open end of a chair, he will sit and fall asleep straight away, so players need to always be on their toes and switch between acting sober and drunk in some rooms.

The report also noted that the game is hard when it comes to acting drunk, as players won’t “just sheepingly wiggle around a little bit and expect to hold onto their superpower.” This means players will have to sway around drastically, which adds to the challenge as players will have a hard time keeping their eyes on the screen.

Dizzy Hero, Yapparising as it’s called in Japanese was developed by Takuhiro Miyaqzara, the same developer who brought us Kami Ga Nai (No paper) and Kaodake Blues (Box only Blues). These games also leverage Joy-Con in their own unique ways. The game is available on the Nintendo Switch store for £4.50 (approx Rs 500).

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PS Gamer Spends $2000 On 24 Years Of PS Plus.

One PlayStation fan has done something unusual to curb the hiking prices of the games. The fan spent something upwards of $2000 on 24 years' worth of PS Plus to avoid increasingly common price hikes.

Reddit user On_Reddit_In_Class said they "decided to stack PS Plus subscriptions until 2048 because of the absurd price increases the past few years." They plan to be gaming the rest of their lives so decided it would "save a good bit of money."

A PS Plus Essential subscription costs $79.99 per year, so 24 years worth costs $1,919.76. Then, the company was kind enough to offer the player an 89% discount to upgrade to a premium subscription in a bizarre loophole, charging just $199.99 rather than $1,889.75, meaning it came to $2,119.75 altogether.

PC gamers are counting down the days of the launch of Read Dead Redemption on Steam and the Epic Games Store. After keeping the fans on their toes for 14 years, Rockstar Games will finally roll out Red Dead Redemption to PC later this week.

Developed by Rockstar Games, Read Dead Redemption was originally launched back in 2010, but only for Xbox 360 and PS3. Nintendo Switch and PS4 versions will launch in 2023. With several upgrades and improvements, the PC version of Red Dead Redemption has an October 29 release date on Steam and Epic.

According to the countdown time on Steam, the PC port will be available to play from 2 PM GMT UK time. Similar to the Switch and PS4 ports, the PC versions will come with single-player campaigns for Red Dead Redemption and the Undead Nightmares expansion.

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Red Dead Redemption PC Requirements

The game will come with some nifty PC-specific features, such as native 4K resolution with the frame rate of up to 144Hz. That’s on top of Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9) support, as well as HDR10 compatibility, plus keyboard and mouse controls.

The PC version will support NVIDIA DLSS 3.7 and AMD FSR 3.0 upscaling technology, not to mention NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation, adjustable draw distances, shadow quality settings, and lots more.

The game will be available for £39.99 on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Besides, the game is also available for pre-order. Here’s the minimum PC requirement for the game:

• OS: Windows 10 64-Bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670 / AMD FX-9590
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / AMD Radeon R7 360
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 12 GB available space
• Sound Card: Direct X Compatible
• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
   

Recommended:
 

• OS: Windows 10 64-Bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-8500 / AMD Ryzen 5 3500X
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 2070 / AMD RX 5700 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 12 GB available space
• Sound Card: Direct X Compatible
• Additional Notes: SSD recommended

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Undead Nightmare DLC Officially Coming to PC

After years of wait, Rockstar Games has officially announced the arrival of Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare DLC, for PC, as it is set to launch on October 29, 2024.

The PC version of the famous open-world title will arrive with many specific features, including native 4K resolution, Ultrawide and Super Ultrawide monitor support, and much more. Aside from that, PC gamers can also expect unlocked framerates for a much smoother experience in current-gen hardware.

Released in 2010, Red Dead Redemption quickly became a classic title for gamers to enjoy on console. While the original game never saw a release on PC, the sequel received a Windows release two years after its launch in November 2019. However, fans kept asking for the original title's release on PC. 

Just days ahead of the launch of the next season, a lot of information about what’s coming to Fortnite has emerged. While we might be going back to Chapter 2 for a month, there are plenty of new changes coming, including some key Fortnite Battle Pass changes.

The Battle Pass is central to gameplay in the game, a pass to grind upward. Users can unlock more cosmetics if they get the premium tier that even includes several skins. However, unlocking them has always been quite structured. Players are usually required to complete quests and play consistently to unlock what they want.

Soon, some Fortnite Battle Pass changes are coming into effect. For one thing, these changes will enable players to combine the Passes for each of Fortnite’s different modes, like Lego Fortnite. However, it’ll also let players pick and choose their rewards a bit more. These are the changes that are coming according to Fortnite leakers.

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Fortnite Battle Pass Changes Coming Soon

The Fortnite Battle Pass has been a central part of the experience for almost all Fortnite seasons. With the next big update, we can witness some changes. Starting with the core way players interact with the pass, battle Stars are on the way out.

Instead of unlocking stars to unlock cosmetics, players will just unlock them as they move forward through the levels. The good part about Battle Star was being able to choose the order players unlocked rewards, at least up in what they unlock on every few pages before claiming all to move forward.

With this change, that won’t be possible anymore. However, anyone who bought levels is getting a new way to do that. Players will now be able to buy individual rewards from the pass. If players only want one skin, they can get that without having to go through the entire pass.

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One Place For All The Battle Passes

Currently, Fortnite has a lot of different passes. We’ve got the Battle Pass, the main one for Battle Royale. Then a Festival Pass operates on its calendar. Along with a Lego Pass that pops up from time to time. Not everyone gets all of them, but if players do it can be a bit of a pain to keep track of.

Players will have to earn three different types of currency to progress and they don’t count towards each other’s progress. This is getting simplified with the new Fortnite Battle Pass changes.

Players will move forward through all passes at once, no matter what mode they are playing. Moreover, players can get all the passes in one place, rather than constantly having to re-up on one pass or another.