According to new data from IDC, the total revenue of the gaming industry for this year will approach $ 180 billion. This was influenced by both the release of next-generation consoles and mobile, which accounted for almost half of the total amount.The results of the IDC report were published on the MarketWatch website.
An important clarification: unlike consoles, data on the mobile and PC markets do not take into account the sale of hardware.
According to analysts’ forecasts, the total revenue of the entire gaming industry for 2020 will amount to $179.7 billion (an increase of 20% year-on-year).
Mobile marketMobile gaming accounted for $87.7 billion of the total revenue of the gaming industry (an increase of 24% year-on-year).
- The popularity of mobile is caused by both cheap prices for devices (compared to consoles and PCs) and the dominance of China in this area.
- More than half of China’s mobile market is controlled by Tencent and NetEase.
- In other countries, the leaders are Activision Blizzard, Zynga and Glu Mobile.Gaming Industry Revenue (2018-2020)
Console Market
Console gaming accounted for $52.5 billion of the total revenue of the gaming industry (an increase of 20% year-on-year).
- Most of the revenue came from the United States.
- In the first 11 months of 2020, American users spent $44.5 billion on video games. Of these, $38.4 billion was for games, $4 billion for consoles, and $2.1 billion for accessories.The peak in revenue came in November, when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S were released.
- Iron sales jumped 58% year-on-year to $1.4 billion in a month.The console generated the least revenue in China.
- Even after the lifting of the ban on the sale of consoles in China, it accounts for only 1% of the total console market.PC market
The revenue of computer gaming amounted to $39.5 billion (an increase of 11% in annual terms).
- IDC analysts believe that the PC share would have been higher if Internet cafes, which are in great demand in the country, had not closed in China due to the pandemic.
- PC as a platform for games still occupies a place between mobile and console gaming.
- This is due to the fact that computers themselves are more common than consoles, but there are still fewer of them than mobile devices.Experts expect that the growth of the gaming industry may slow down only by 2022, when mass vaccination of the population will take place.
Also, the increase in revenue is influenced by a huge number of ways to play games — whether it is the purchase of digital copies, the availability of mobile or the distribution of cloud gaming services and subscriptions.