Glu CEO predicts the trends that will be hot next year in mobile games

Glu Mobile has seen some ups and downs in the past year in mobile games. The San Francisco game publisher’s fortunes will rise and fall based on how well it predicts the trends of the future. The ups have come from surprise hits like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, a mobile game that has generated an estimated $130 million in revenues to date. But other branded game titles, such as James Bond: World of Espionage, aren’t burning up the charts. We asked Glu’s chief executive, Niccolo De Masi, what’s in store for 2016.

De Masi didn’t make specific predictions about how well Glu will do. But he was perfectly happy to talk about the strength of trends such as celebrity gaming, personalized media, virtual reality, the future of game platforms, the future of indie game companies, and whether the top-grossing-games list will change much in the new year. We’ll be making our own predictions about the state of the game industry in 2016, but De Masi’s opinions are a nice start in this ongoing conversation.