The upcoming Game Developer’s Conference will be held in San Francisco this coming March and ahead of the conference GDC has released their annual “State of the Industry” survey results. State of the Industry captures the pulse of the development community thanks to over 2,000 participants, the results give developers, students and the media (heh.. that’s us) a sense of what is trending in development circles.
Here are some of the interesting findings from the 2016 survey:
VR’s Popularity Among Developers Is On The Rise
Development kits for the popular Oculus Rift have been available for sometime, Samsung has entered the fray with the Samsung Gear line-up of headsets and the consumer version of the Oculus will go on sale for $600 later this year. With all of that providing unprecedented levels of hype for Virtual Reality it is no surprise that 16% of respondents said that they were developing games with VR in mind.
PC Leads The Pack In Terms of Developer Preference & Vita Is A Now Show
Proving that the old adage of “PC gaming is dead” is completely false, 52% of those polled said that they were working on a project with the PC in mind. It is clear that PC development has now shifted into the “majority” officially, with consoles combined only matching the popularity of the PC when you add all of the home consoles together. It was surprising to see that in the official numbers released by GDC the PS Vita wasn’t even present. Are the days for Sony’s handheld numbered?
Here are the official numbers according to GDC (development platform among those surveyed):
PC – 52%
Mobile / Tablet – 44%
PS4 – 27%
Xbox One – 23%
Wii U – 5%
Nintendo 3DS – 2%
E-Sports Has a Viable Future, Says Development Community
One of the questions on this year’s “State of the Industry” survey dealt with whether or not E-Sports is a viable long term business strategy. 88% of those polled said they see e-sports, like the DOTA Invitational and WCS as viable into the foreseeable future. This is an 8% increase over last year!
What do you think of some of these statistics and trends? Does the current state of the industry reflect what you, our readers, are playing or looking forward too? Let us know in the comments and here’s hoping the state of the industry survey gives us a glimpse into some of the cool things we will see at GDC 2016.