Revenue – general numbers
- The gaming market in 2023 will earn $187.7B. It’s 2.6% more than last year despite all the troubles the market experienced (and continues to handle).
- Newzoo is optimistic that the gaming market stabilized after the post-pandemic crisis. By 2026 its size will reach $212.4B.
Revenue – platforms
- Most revenue is still coming from the mobile market ($92.6B), but in 2023 this segment will grow only by 0.8%. Newzoo analysts suggest that mobile gaming growth will be limited at least by 2026.
- The console games segment in 2023 will show the highest growth numbers – by 7.4% to $56.1B. There are 3 success factors: release of postponed titles; some hits arrived; new consoles shipping returned back to normal.
- The PC games market will grow by 1.6% and reach $37.1B. Browser PC games are on a declining trend for years, in 2023 they’ll decrease by 16.9% YoY to $1.9B.
- The number of paying users of Cloud Gaming will reach 43.1M by the end of 2023. By 2025 this number will reach 80.4M.
Regions
- The Asia-Pacific region is the largest by revenue in the world. It’s responsible for 46% of the overall revenue ($85.8B – +1.2% YoY). Next are North America (27% of the market; $51.6B – 3.8% YoY growth); Europe (18% of the market; $34.4B – 3.2% YoY growth); Latin America (5% of the market; $8.8B – 4.3% YoY growth), and MENA (4% of the market; $7.2B – 6.9% YoY growth).
- The Asia-Pacific region is also the largest in terms of audience (53% of the worldwide audience lives there; 1.79B gamers; in 2023 it will increase by 5.7%). It might be a surprise for someone, but the MENA market is the second largest by audience (17% of gamers live there; 574M people; +12.3% YoY). Next are Europe (13% of the audience; 447M; +3.6% YoY); Latin America (10% of the audience; 335M; +6.1% YoY), and North America (7% of the audience; 237M; +2.4% YoY).
The gaming audience worldwide
- The number of players in 2023 will increase by 6.3% and reach 3.38B. By 2026 it will surge to 3.79B.
- 84.4% of this amount in 2023 will play on mobile devices; 26.3% – on a PC; 18.6% – on consoles.
- The number of paying users will increase by 7.3% in 2023 with 1.47B people in total. By the end of 2026, the number of paying gamers will increase to 1.66B with a +4.7% CAGR.
Companies
- Tencent ($7.56B), Sony ($4.38B), and Apple ($3.68B) are leaders in gaming revenue among public companies.
Transmedia
- Transmedia releases are positively affecting games MAU. In cases that the Newzoo team reviewed, the MAU of titles that received transmedia attention was increased by 40% on its peak. After stabilization, MAU growth was about 33-38%.
Trends
- The live-service games are huge on PC and Consoles. The competition for the user’s time is cut-throat.
- AI is stepping into the industry. Now its effect on the final product and production processes is low, but almost all market players are sure that the AI implementation will grow.
- The role of complimentary consoles – like Steam Deck – probably will increase.
- Mobile developers are forced to find new ways for generating revenue because of platform regulations. PC/Console releases are a part of those moves.
- UGC and the creative economy continue to grow. Influencers’ influence (hehe) is on the rise, and they started to open their own gaming studios.
- VR/AR is expected to boost after the Apple announcement of Apple Vision Pro.
- Saudi Arabia is one of the gaming industry growth leaders with Savvy Gaming Group being an investment leader in 2023.
