In 2022, 3.2 billion players will help the global games market generate $184.4 billion, down -4.3% year on year. By 2025, this will grow to 3.5 billion players helping the market generate $211.2 billion. The following section shines a spotlight on our player and payer numbers while also highlighting how we split revenues per segment and region. Newzoo in their report also looks at the market’s overall growth toward 2025, touches on our latest numbers for the VR market, and provides a breakdown of global game revenues per form of monetization. popular video games

Of the 3.2 billion players, 55% of them come from the Asia Pacific zone. This is hardly surprising given that it is the most populated area on the planet. In Europe, Newzoo estimates that there are 430 million gamers. Note that for this study, Russia is included in the data from the Old Continent. The fastest growing region is the Middle East/Africa zone, with an 8.2% jump in the number of players, or 488 million.

VR Hardware Adoption and VR Game Revenues

With the 2022 Global Games Market Report release, we update our active VR hardware and VR install base numbers, as well as our VR game revenue estimates and forecasts. Our active VR hardware install base is defined as consumer VR headsets capable of 6DoF positional tracking and used at least once in the past 12 months. We exclude enterprise headsets that can also be used to play VR games and headsets that use only 3DoF tracking; for example, all smartphone-based VR headsets such as Samsung Gear VR and entry-level standalone headsets such as Oculus Go.

Video game revenue down

There are more and more players on Earth and their number has exploded in recent years. This phenomenon is obviously due to COVID. With the confinements, a lot of people got into it in order to keep busy.

Paradoxically, the sector’s revenues fell in 2022. This is explained by the prosperous year 2021, perhaps too much. Video gaming raked in $184 billion this year, up from $192 billion in 2021. Interestingly, the $184 billion figure is below the pre-COVID forecast ($189 billion). It’s the first time in fifteen years that industry revenue has fallen, but all the data has been skewed by the pandemic.

Finally, it is interesting to see the revenue split to understand how the market works. Unsurprisingly, it is the mobile platform that is the most popular with 50% of total revenues. It must be said that the smartphone is the easiest way to access video games, especially in developing countries. We also note that the consoles are slightly more profitable than the PC, despite a decline of 4.2%.

Newzoo does not believe this decline is a long-term trend. According to its forecast, there should be 3.5 billion gamers in 2025 and the market should earn $211 billion.

Popular Video Games

While hundreds of millions of video games are shipped every year, only three video games in history managed to sell more than a hundred million copies in total. The following ranking of the best-selling video games shows the Top 3 of the all-time best-selling video games in the world.