Jamil Moledina gives us a glimpse into the Google Play of 2020

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SAUSALITO, Calif — Two years emerged as hyper-relevant during the GamesBeat Summit. The first was 2018. Jamil Moledina used his time onstage to discuss the Google Play store in terms of the later — 2020.

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The five-year forecast for the reportedly most profitable mobile platform in the world included a variety of old and new investments. Most prominent among them is the capitalization on emerging market trends. The successful release of Google Cardboard last year (500 thousand having shipped since last December, according to Moledina’s figures) acted as an encouraging indicator to the company over the potential for virtual reality. Simplified play, that being games that distill their content toward mobile functionality (or “app ecosystems,” as Moledina described), will also be a key investment for Google in the next five years. Those app ecosystems won’t exist on just mobile products, either, with an increased roll out of Play-compatible smart TVs expected over the next five years.

But the future isn’t entirely reliant on the new. Google Play has discovered, Moledina said, significant success in translating existing games like Goat Simulator and Limbo to not only mobile phones and tablets but smart TVs. Individual titles don’t get all of the attention on the storefront, though. Brand support, particularly through curated collections like the May the 4th Star Wars selections on the Play store, will continue to drive a lot of the company’s store-facing interaction with customers.

In a similar regard, Moledina announced a plan to further revive classic games on Google’s mobile (and, in particular, TV) platforms. Beloved titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and NBA Jam were confirmed alongside recent hits like TellTale’s Game of Thrones series and the mobile hit Crossy Road for the first time to soon be available on connected TVs. The market for which, according to Strategy Analytics study cited during Moledina’s speech, was estimated at a total of 2 billion available devices by 2018.

Moledina concluded by referencing a point made the day before by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. For all of the hype given to augmented and virtual reality at this year’s summit, he suggested that the potential market impact for connected TVs not be overstated.

“We talked a lot at this summit about finding the next ‘blue ocean,'” said Moledina. “I believe this to be one of them.”