World of Gaming — Global Gaming Industry Stats, Trends and Facts!
Global Gaming Industry hits $176 Billion in Market Size in 2021.
The Evolution of Entertainment!
The year was 1930, let’s go back in time to the golden age of cinema and reflect — it was then that feature-length movies were presented with synchronized sound, the introduction of which led to a theatre frenzy. Hundreds of blockbusters, thousand tubs of popcorn, and million bucks of box office collection later, the Television Station saw the opportunity to get their audience to tune in by airing re-runs of older movies and things soon took a turn making Television the coolest thing somewhere around the 1950s.
The entertainment industry quickly transitioned from silver screen to small screen to then no-screen with VCRs in the 1980s — followed by a whole generation flocking towards digital music streaming and OTTs in the mid-2000s.
So, how do video games fit into the picture?
Video games hit the mainstream popularity spotlight in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To narrow it down, Space Invaders was released in 1978 marking a new dawn for games. If you’ve lived under a rock or are just too much of a Gen Z’er, then here’s a breakdown of one of the earliest popular console games. In Space Invader, the player is a lone gunner ship stationed at the bottom of the screen, in a defensive position against the space invaders encroaching on the gunner ship that rushes in with accelerating speed and dwindling numbers. In this adrenaline-filled gameplay fueled by the psyche to save the earth, the 1970s kids made way for a breakthrough in the video game industry. Competing successors wasted no time in taking over the most-played arcade mantle, and one of them was the most beloved Pac-Man.
The PC/console games saga continued as a solo ruler until a much younger and compact model joined the race — mobile phones. In 1997, Snake released on Nokia went on to become a worldwide phenomenon making most of our childhoods awesome. Fast forward to 2007, when the game changer iPhone launched, a new era of mobile games was born. The mobile game developers were quick to take advantage of the multitouch-controlling and by 2009, Angry Birds pretty much broke the internet (whatever little of it we had back then). By 2012, Candy Crush was crushing it in the App Stores followed by another giant Clash of Clans soon after. As the number of titles raised accommodating a wide range of audiences — from grannies playing Candy Crush to an acne-phase teenager striking it in Clash of Clans — the technology diversified into AR-based games such as Pokémon Go and Wizards Unite. The most beautiful development of mobile games is that it is not limited to hardcore gamers and opened games to niche target groups that are more inclined towards casual and hyper-casual game genres.
Global Gaming — Crunching Numbers
According to a report by PwC Global, the Gaming industry is not the minority it once used to be, nor a subsidiary form of entertainment that media outlets and movies paint it to be. In 2020, when the entire world economy took a backseat with healthcare and covid-19 prevention taking the wheel, the gaming industry on the other hand flew right above the hot mess and dodged the traffic altogether. Gaming studios continued their busy streak and get this — almost half of the world population had engaged in games in the year 2021.
According to a Newzoo report, Global Gaming Industry hits $176 Billion in Market Size in 2021, showing a promising 9.3% year-on-year increase.
Let me paint a picture of where the gaming industry stands amidst the other torchbearers of entertainment as of 2021 from an India Television Dot ComReport. The music lovers grooving to the tunes of their favorite music whipped out a total spend of $26Bn, the cinema theatres are minting a box office collection of $60Bn and the television industry is at an estimated value of $150Bn. Notice a pattern? The form of entertainment easily accessible at home is clearly the winner. So, it comes as no surprise that the gaming industry towers the others with a whopping $175.8Bn market share. Well, actually it does come as a surprise given that the projected estimate of the gaming industry for the year 2021 was $90Bn and the actual numbers outdid the predictions by far.
So, it’s safe to say the biggest piece of the pie belongs to Video Games. A simpler reality check is — around 7.6 billion people are populating this planet, of which 4.9 billion people have access to the internet, of which 3.0 billion play games, of which 1 billion folks spend on video games.
Taking the World by Storm
The APAC region is the big daddy in the gaming niche contributing most of the new players, a staggering 1.6Bn, with a promising increase of 4.8% year on year. MEA and LATAM are picking up steam with 434M and 289M players and are growing at 10.1% and 6.2% YoY respectively. As for the US, while figures vary depending on the source and demographics, it is estimated that every 3 out of 4 Americans play video games on various consoles with more than half leaning towards mobile games.
According to a report by Cheddar, the APAC region takes the lead in revenue generated by global games with a $88.2Bn market share, followed not-so-closely by North America and Europe with a $42.6Bn and $31.5Bn respectively.
Crushing It Across Platforms
“The only constant thing in the world is change” — In a ball game that was owned by arcades and computers, we see Mobile Platforms (Smartphone+Tablet) sweeping the market share clean with $79.0Bn revenue generation which is a whopping 44% share, with a very promising 4.7% growth YoY. Console and PC games are closely tied at $49.2Bn and $33Bn.
It is interesting to note that the COVID pandemic negatively affected the Revenue potential for non-mobile platforms, owing to hardware shortages, as well as a low market performance of some AAA titles.
Video Games are built on the science of escapism, a quick on-the-couch getaway into a fantasy zone, a much-needed break from the constraints of real life, just like any other form of entertainment that people have embraced for centuries. If any old wives’ tale negates the potential of this skyrocketing industry, then we have 3.0 billion who will respectfully agree to disagree.
