Now that another successful year in the video game world has nearly come to a close, it's time we start looking ahead to 2014 and all of the potential the future can bring. So many big things have already happened in gaming throughout the course of 2013, so what could possibly be next for gaming staples like microtransactions and cross-platform experiences? While Gamezebo's predictions for 2014 are already on the way, we thought we'd get a real expert in the field to weigh in with some of his own predictions before then, and to let us gamers know just what might be in store for 2014. To that end, I recently had a chance to speak with Kenny Rosenblatt, the CEO of hugely successful game development studio Arkadium, and to find out just how he thinks the next year of gaming is going to pan out.

For starters, Rosenblatt predicts that there will continue to be consolidations throughout the gaming industry in the forms of mergers and acquisitions, although nothing too crazy like we saw in the days back when Facebook gaming was really taking off. And while we're on that subject, he also feels that Facebook gaming will continue to stick around in 2014, although developers won't have big success unless they go cross-platform with a mobile release. But regardless of Facebook or mobile, Rosenblatt still predicts that casual games in general will begin to have similar marketing campaigns as some of today's biggest console game franchises like Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, with big investments in both TV and print ads.