Games are expected to generate revenue of $148.1 billion in 2019. The director of marketing at Newzoo, Emma McDonald said, “This is a massive opportunity for many brands. The games market, with its innovative monetization strategies and highly engaged consumers, is seriously challenging the way traditional entertainment has worked for decades. This is one of the reasons why media giants like Netflix are continuing to experiment with interactive experiences.”
The online gaming market is expanding at an exponential rate and has created various revenue streams for developers to monetize upon. From the previous year's reports and trends, we can aptly estimate how the gaming market will look like in the coming years. But, let us first look at the recorded statistics and trends.
Recorded statistics and trends from
By 2020, the gaming market is expected to be valued over $90 billion. It was calculated to be around $78.6 billion in 2017. According to a 2016 European Mobile Game Market Report, around 2.5 billion gamers are currently present in the world. That number is expected to increase exponentially by the end of 2019, thanks to the influx of mobile gaming.
In 2017, Asia Pacific became the biggest gaming market by acquiring a net revenue of $51.2 billion. By the first half of 2017, Tencent made an impressive revenue of $7.4 billion by heavily investing in gaming companies such as Blizard, Activision (News - Alert) and Riot.
According to a recent report by Entertainment Software Association, about 80% of the total gaming revenue ($36 billion) was attributed to the software sales. The mobile casino gambling industry also generates billions of dollars in revenue. With revenues from mobile casino gaming in Bluefox as well as other casino operators growing exponentially every year, Statista.com has predicted a $130 billion gaming revenue by the end of 2019. In 2016, mobile casino gaming fetched around $115 billion.
Let’s talk about the worldwide distribution of gaming market revenue from 2015 to 2019. With an increase of 17% in 2015, the tablet and smartphone market is estimated to take over the gaming market by 2020.
In a recent report published by NewZoo, the tablets and smartphone gaming market have already taken up around 34% of the total games market share globally. The inevitable rise of mobile gaming has become! This fact is further strengthened by the following estimates: 29% of the players nowadays prefer playing on consoles while more than 40% of the players prefer playing on online social platforms which are easily accessible through versatile devices like mobile and tablets. From a 2018 report, it was stated that around 62% of people prefer playing on consoles and PCs while more than 7265 prefer playing on mobile devices.
By 2019, the TV/Console/VR market is presumed to take up 26% of the entire gaming revenue. Moreover, the online PC game sales will take up over 47% of the entire console and PC gaming revenue by 2019.
Estimated Statistics and Trends for the coming years
The 2019 Global Games Market Report has broken down the gaming market in terms of gamer forecasts and revenues per segment. The report takes into account the current ongoing trends and latest developments in every gaming segment and appropriately dives into some of the key findings. Let’s check it out,
With 2.5 billion gamers globally, it is estimated that players will spend around $152.1 billion in 2019. This will signal an increase of +9.6% year in the same year. In 2019. The console gaming segment will be the fastest-growing segment in the gaming market and will have a growth rate of +13.4% that will equal to $47.9 billion in 2019.
This year, mobile gaming will be the largest segment (as predicted aptly from the previous year’s estimates). It will account for over 45% of the global games market ($68.5 billion) - +10.2% from last year. Smartphone PC games will account for around $54.9 billion. The slowest growing segment will be the PC segment which will see the growth of just +4.0% accounting for around $35.7 billion. Despite this, the PC segment will serve as the foundation for the other gaming segments. Most of the mobile game that we play today have been derived from PC games such as MOBA and Battle Royale games.
By 2022, the console gaming segment will generate around $61.1 billion with an annual growth of +9.7%. From 2019 to 2021, these sales figure will dip a little bit due to the release of the new generation of PlayStation and Xbox consoles where consumers will spend most of their budget on hardware products.
Surprisingly, the PC gaming market is expected to grow with a rate of +3.5% which will equal around $39.5 billion. This will happen due to the migration of more users from browser-based games to boxed or downloaded games. This will result in a decrease in revenue for the browser gaming sector from 2018 to 2022. One thing will remain particularly constant - the growth of the mobile gaming sector which will outpace console gaming by a huge margin after 2019.
Besides these, the APAC or Asia-Pacific region will produce most of the global gaming revenue, which will be around 47% of the global total accounting to $72.2 billion. The growth rate can be estimated at +7.6%. In the coming years, China will still remain the most important market for gaming and the fastest emerging market will be Indian and other South-Eastern countries. By 2020, China will reclaim the number one spot as the highest gaming revenue market in the world, surpassing the current leader, USA. North America will remain the second-largest revenue maker of gaming.
