The DeanBeat: A report from the stormy seas of gaming at Casual Connect

Every year, I enjoy going to the Casual Connect USA conference in San Francisco. It’s a place to listen to talks, roam the hallways, gossip at the parties, and chatter with old friends. The stories were familiar. Gaming is a business of hits and misses, winners and losers, big companies and indies, with very little in between.

The show this week at the Marriott Marquis was smaller, with about 2,000 people compared to maybe 3,000 people last year. Thanks to mergers and acquisitions, layoffs and relocations, I saw fewer game companies and fewer vendors selling things to them. It was almost as if everybody was reloading and figuring out new ways to succeed in what has become a $99 billion global business. It feels as if everyone is looking for a haven in a market that has become very stormy and dangerous.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.