Video games have been a great escape from reality, especially during these hard times due to the pandemic. Many have been using their free time to play video games. There are many industries experiencing a decline in their growth. Is this the case for the video game industry? We will be taking a look at the effect the pandemic had on the industry in this article (market watch). The global video gaming market in 2020 was valued at USD 162 billion. The growth expected by 2026 is valued at USD 295 billion (mordor intelligence). The global film industry reached $100 billion in revenue in 2019 and North American sports was estimated to bring $75 billion in 2020. Considering the numbers for different parts of the entertainment industry, video gaming is very dominant. Both sports and film industries have suffered from loss but the gaming industry is expected to grow. In 2020, Sony Corp. came out with PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Corp came out with Xbox Series X. With the new consoles being released, the forecasts are indicating strong growth for 2021 as new games for the consoles are going to be released (market watch). Although console gaming is big, it is not the biggest part of the gaming industry. The biggest growth is expected from mobile games. Considering the means to play games is much easier to access and more convenient on smartphones, the expected growth makes sense.
The image above demonstrates the global video gaming revenue by the device in 2020. As it can be seen the largest number is coming from smartphone games. This is also big news for Apple and Google as they receive a significant portion of the game revenue that uses their app stores (market watch).
This pie chart shows the global market size in different regions. As it can be seen here the biggest market is in Asia-Pacific. In terms of individual countries, China ($34 billion) seems to lead the way and it is followed by the USA ($31 billion) and Japan ($17 billion). The market share drops dramatically with Japan and they are followed by South Korea, Germany, and the UK.
Throughout the years the number of gamers has grown, in 2017 2.21 billion gamers existed worldwide and 3.1 billion was estimated for 2020 which is a large portion of the population, 40%. (wepc). Considering the global market shares and the consumers, it is safe to say that video gaming is not going anywhere anytime soon.
