We're Going to Spend Nearly a Trillion Dollars on Games this Year

The gaming world is growing, and nobody can doubt that—even though people complain about the rise of free-to-play and the fall of console gaming, plus the exorbitant cost of gaming on the PC, it seems the gaming industry is healthier than ever before… and looking at the numbers, thrown together by the fine folks at Newzoo, who have recently released some interesting statistics about the growth of the industry, we’re looking at games to soon become the top form of entertainment in the world!

First, the big number: Newzoo predicts that by the end of 2015, we’ll have spent a grand total of $91.5 billion USD worldwide on video games, which includes mobile titles, console titles, PC Games, and digital games purchased over Steam, GoG, and other online retailers. That is a 9.4% increase from last year, where worldwide we spent $83.6 billion on video games.

A pretty big number, but it’s hard to put in perspective, so let’s compare: in 2014, Hollywood earned roughly 38 billion in revenue worldwide.

Granted, that’s net revenue, while the Newzoo prediction is merely how much we spent on games, not accounting for how much those games and consoles cost to produce, so while the number seems pretty big I’m sure accounting for cost of production (whatever it may be) the numbers would be much closer to equal, with movies likely taking the lead.

Now.

More than just net spending, there was some other interesting tidbits in this article. Unsurprisingly, the fastest growing industry in the Gaming world is tablet and mobile gaming, which has seen a rise of 21% in the past year in number of sales. But you want to see something really interesting, check out the below graph.



That’s right: China, for the first time, will outsell North America and be the top grossing country in the world for game sales (even if it is by a ‘mere’ 200 million). Fascinating, but not surprising: PC Gaming has always been extremely popular in China, and with the recent lift on the ban of console games, even more gaming merchandise is currently flooding the streets. Most of China’s lead currently comes from PC gaming, but as the years pass, who knows how that’ll change.

Also interesting: Latin America, technically, had the largest growth percentage, growing eighteen percent, a full four percent more than Asia-Pacific.

So, what does this mean for us Americans? Right now, nothing: the exponential growth of the Chinese gaming world stems largely from PC/MMORPG gaming, a solid market that’s already been rooted in China for a long time—this doesn’t mean our companies will move to China, or that they’ve suddenly found success in China, it means the games and the companies already in China are getting even MORE popular.

But if this advantage gets larger (and it likely will, given the whole of Asia’s exorbitant population growth) then yes, we could start seeing some major migrations, if not in companies themselves then in the way games are made. It’s easy to forget that right now Western gaming style is the norm, but back in the 80s and 90s, when Japan was king, the practices of the gaming world were very different.

How things will change when China takes the throne for real… who can say?