89% of Devcom speakers believe AAA games don't need additional purchases

As the Devcom developer conference kicks off in Cologne today, the organisers have shared the results of this year's speaker survey, with almost 90% of respondents stating they believe AAA games can succeed without additional purchases.

In a survey of 100 speakers, out of 300 industry experts who will take the stage over the next two days, 89% said AAA titles can be "financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play."

The result comes after years of scrutiny over add-on-purchases within the AAA games spaces, including loot boxes (such as EA's Ultimate Team modes for its sports games), battle/season passes, and progress boosters such as XP multipliers and crafting resources.

Elsewhere in the survey, 65% of respondents said they favoured the premium model for both digital and physical games. This represented the overwhelming majority, with the next biggest being the 10% who prefer community funding for games, with just one person championed free-to-play titles with ads.

When asked what role AI should play in games development, 31% said it should be used as little as possible, while 21% said it would benefit code and production and another 18% advocated its use in marketing and communication.

Less than 10% said AI should be used in art and animation, less than 5% said it should be used in narrative design, and one speaker predicted AI will replace human translation and localisations within the next two years.

On the subject of the industry's biggest challenges, more than half (55%) cited market saturation while 46% said increasing development costs was the biggest barrier companies face.

Finally, 57% of speakers predict industry layoffs will continue over the next 12 months, with just under half of these expecting the pace of job cuts to accelerate. Just five people expected layoffs to slow down and hiring to increase.