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“Everyone has been sniffing around, experimenting and trying to work out how to make professional content for social platforms for at least a decade, given it’s such a large source of youth engagement,” explains Tom Harrington, an analyst at Enders Analysis. “Outside China, unless the monetisation models of the platforms change, the risk lies entirely with the content creator: you could front the entire cost of an expensive show and then it doesn’t surface for anyone, and you get no revenue. It’s almost the opposite of TV, where you might get paid on delivery and can often already be ahead before the public even sees the show.”

“It’s fairly grim this year,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, head of gaming at Enders Analysis. “It would be difficult to imagine a holiday season that is less exciting than this one when it comes to gaming hardware.”

“Consoles seem to have hit this very, very hard ceiling of demand and they cannot get past it,” said Sutcliffe at Enders Analysis. “The only model that has exceeded that is in the mobile space, and that is where Switch comes in.”

Douglas McCabe, chief executive and director of publishing and tech at Enders Analysis, believes that Hearst had been putting too much faith in digital platforms, primarily social. “They were overreliant on social media and, to some degree, search as well, because they were over-reliant on programmatic advertising," he says.

McCabe believes that this is just what Hearst needs, a way of sidestepping the trap that others in the magazine market have fallen into, thinking that every eyeball is as valuable “as any other eyeball… In the print world, magazines weren’t trying to sell 35 million copies a month. They never pretended that every single household or every single citizen was equally valuable for their product. What they were aiming for was to find the right audience of 40,000 people, or 100,000 or 200,000.” In other words, it’s not about chasing scale, it’s about chasing engagement (and so encouraging loyalty). 

“For Roblox, in particular, I don’t believe that they really have any choice at this point other than to offer it as an option, given their financial situation and given the fact that there would be a very negative reaction from the market if they were to say that they’re ruling programmatic out of the gate,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, the head analyst covering the games industry for the market research service Enders Analysis.

“Older viewers are controlling long-form content as never before – and what they like is generally pretty comfortable stuff, which is not a criticism. I love Ludwig and All Creatures Great and Small,” says Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. “Growth in streaming is all from older viewers because so much younger viewing is on YouTube and TikTok where there is no real way yet to monetise quality long-form content. Commissioners from the broadcasters and streamers will double down on this kind of programming as it gets an audience.”

According to a research note published by Enders Analysis last week, the sector lost more than £1bn last year, constrained by higher capital expenditure costs and weaker-than-expected average revenues per user as altnets slashed costs to compete for customers.

“I don’t believe that Netflix thinks in a way about ‘AAA’ or ‘AA,’ [industry lingo for premium, big-budget games] or any of that sort of traditional nomenclature about what defines a game,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, the head analyst covering the games industry for the market research service Enders Analysis. “I think they’re much more lateral in terms of defining the game experience, particularly when they are looking at a technology-led distribution model, around streaming, around multiple devices, tied in with the SVOD [subscription video on demand] offering.”

“It’ll be the largest television show globally for weeks. When that launches, it will be absolutely massive, and they’re shipping a game simultaneously,” Sutcliffe said. “I think that’s really aggressive, and I think that that’s really incredibly clever.”

As Karen Egan at Enders Analysis argued: “It is heartening to see that the CMA has taken the time to get to grips with the complexities of the industry”, so allowing a probable decision “counter to the knee-jerk assumption that four to three mergers are anti-competition”. True, network integration is hard, not least when cost cuts hurt staff morale. And the regulators would need to ensure Voda/Three lived up to its promises, with penalties for poor delivery. But the pair have a case that their merger is “pro-growth, pro-customer and pro-competitive”. The CMA is right not to hang up on this four-to-three deal.