Comments - Daemeous

My argument and other stuff done by someone more intelligent and able to form better structured arguments:

Contd.

For other platforms it's hard to say... Old mega-companies like Activision and EA do dominate the marketplace but on PC particularly smaller developers are getting as much coverage as they ever had with constant accessibility (whereas with consoles good luck getting it after it's stopped being sold in stores). That's not enough to predict it's growth or decline though since every developer's success and failure is a case by case basis.

Slightly pessimistic, eh? Strange coming from the most optimistic person at Aphelio...
The most optimisic person at a company who's name is very close to Aphelion; the name of the part of a stellar bodies' orbit in which it's furthest away from it's star. Doesn't surprise me one bit :P

A couple of predictions of my own:
Games will start to be offered with multiple business models, for example buy the whole game at once, or buy sections of it at a time; don't fancy multiplayer? Just buy the single player.
Hybridisation of mobile platforms to start development/concept. Just imagine how much more of a success the PS Vita would have been if it also did everything a phone did. You'd only need one device to have good portable gaming and a phone.

Happy New Year Aphelio!

I'd go more in depth but the character limit is restrictive.
Tablets will start to replace portable gaming consoles in market share with a surge of high quality premium games ($20+)
Doubt it, limitations of touch input (obscuring screen, lack of pixel perfect precision, only one action "tap") will continue to hamper tablet (and phone) gaming until controllers (built in or otherwise) become mainstream.

Smart TVs will become gaming hubs through their app stores
I'm not wholly knowledgeable but it looks like Phone/tablet games on your TV, looking terrible and mimicking touch with Wii motes but without the graphical fidelity to match, forgive me if I'm cynical.

Console and PC will lose further market share to casual platforms
Apples and Oranges, you can't lose market share to something which is a completely different market. As it stands the focus of both markets are on multi-hour immersive/deep games and 5 minute "pick up and put down" ("toilet") games.

Digital download revenue will exceed physical purchase revenue
In what? Gaming across all platforms? It's likely that's already the case, it certainly has been on PC and mobile platforms, even the consoles have been moving in that direction, there's no way to know since Digital Distributions sales tend to be kept closely guarded.

The indie scene bubble will ‘pop' as studios don't make solid returns, even on great games
I was about to say this seems more like a wish list than a prediction list but this is the odd one out. Very easy prediction to make given the IOS focus a lot of indies, who recently banned app discovery apps. Think back to when we were are Dare+, we already knew this was happening.

There will be more studio closures than ever before, with fewer start-ups created than last year
For mobile I agree, market over-saturation with low product visibility, consisting of endless clones, treadmills (with pay to run faster models) and games based on single gimmicks.
For other platforms I've run out of space.