Key MENA trends: Partnerships, console growth, and Saudi's strategic shift

• Global companies like Tencent, Sega, Side and HP expanded their MENA footprint through new agreements.
• The coming year might reveal whether MoUs translate into real jobs, production, and stronger local teams.
• More small and mid-sized studios are shifting toward PC and console despite higher costs and longer development cycles.
• Mad Hook became the first Arabic studio to release physical PlayStation 5 games in the region.

The MENA games industry entered 2025 with enormous expectations. Billions in long-term funding, a fast-growing player base, and a new generation of studios across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Iraq and many others. 

What mostly took shape this year was that Saudi clarified how gaming fits into Vision 2030 and shifted from broad ambition to more structured execution. With governments launching new training programs and investment initiatives, three key trends stood out this year.

1. Partnership momentum

If there is one defining theme that has shaped 2025 for the MENA games industry, it is the sheer volume of partnerships and MoUs being signed across the region. Saudi Arabia, for one, now understands that reaching its Vision 2030 goals will require working closely with global companies. 

Because of this, the country has been very active. Savvy Games Group alone signed about 15 MoUs and partnerships in 2025. In practical terms, that is almost one agreement every month, each designed to open the door for more investment conversations.

However, this momentum did not start in 2025. After meeting Nintendo and Capcom in 2024, Savvy invited both companies along with Konami and Bandai Namco to consider establishing Middle East offices in the region to make the Kingdom a key hub that houses some of the biggest game makers.

Then across 2025, the partnerships kept coming from every direction. Tencent’s Level Infinite signed one with Invest Qatar, Side partnered with Savvy, Sega inked an MoU with Media City Qatar and Savvy closed the year with an MoU with AI company Humain and another with King Saud University. 

This list does not even include additional partnerships from PUBG Mobile, HP, and Merak Capital. And although 2025 was the year when a lot of these partnerships and MoUs were signed and announced, 2026 may be the year when we start to see what they actually deliver. 

Will they translate into new jobs, local production, stronger teams, and more games shaped for players in the region? The coming year will show whether the current level of partnership is enough to drive the industry forward or if MENA will need even more agreements to keep building momentum.

2. Triple-A ambitions 

Mobile is still the top revenue driver in the global games market, and the Middle East has its fair share of successful mobile studios. But this year, more small to mid-sized teams showed serious interest in PC and console.

Larger teams like Jawaker, Rababa Games and Mad Hook continue to perform strongly. Earlier this year, the latter even became the first Arabic studio to release physical PlayStation 5 games in the MENA region with Amer:Fighting and Highway Drifter.

Rababa Games’ Hajwala Drift has amassed over 50 million downloads on mobile, proving that locally made games can travel far and build loyal audiences. But when I look at newer studios across the region, a different pattern appears. Many of them are not building for mobile. Instead, they are focusing on PC and console even though these platforms are harder, slower, and more expensive for small teams. 

A similar shift is happening in Africa. The continent has a growing number of PC projects in development, from Fer Factor’s TossDown to Nyamakop’s Relooted. Despite being a mobile dominated market, this gap between where the revenue is and where creators choose to build says a lot about aspiration. 

Console development is still early, but PC ambition is rising fast. Mobile output remains limited for new game releases especially from local creators, which shows that even though mobile is the biggest market in the continent, it is not where most new studios choose to focus. 

In both markets, 2025 proved that small teams are dreaming bigger, and they want their games to stand on the global stage. And for regions still building foundational experiences, this jump in creative aspiration signals confidence. 

3. From spending to strategy

Saudi Arabia remained the gravitational centre of MENA’s games industry, but the tone of its influence changed this year. Past years were marked by headline-grabbing prize pools for the Esports World Cup and few other investment activities. 

This year was about what those moves meant and how they were being integrated. The push toward acquiring Electronic Arts brought an entirely different scale of ambition, signalling how Saudi sees its place in global entertainment even though it may be short on fresh capital for new major investments. 

The support systems surrounding developers also changed shape in 2025. Instead of prize-driven events or one-off competitions, the region leaned more into programs designed to build sustainable talent and repeatable pipelines.

Exel by Merak continues to support studios with training and funding, The Gaming Lab in Jordan amped up its efforts with 962.games, Savvy even partnered with King Abdulaziz University to launch diplomas in games and esports. 

The MoU boom played a huge role here too. Though some will take years to reach full effect, they map a clear strategy to build a regional ecosystem that can produce, train and sustain developers at scale and I’m sure we'll see more partnerships and the true impact of these trends from 2026.