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The DeanBeat: Predictions for gaming in 2022

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 28 min

Predictions are a dicey business. The year 2020 was one of the most unpredictable in all of human history. And now I think about predictions in a different way, with both a sense of hope and a sense of dread.

The pandemic threw off our ability to predict what will happen life, and it did the same in the game industry. Game companies had a record year in 2020, and I wondered if it was a one-time bump thanks to the coronavirus forcing lockdowns. People played games to survive, repair their social lives, and distract themselves.

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Written by

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.