Newzoo: Gaming Market in 2024 and beyond
The next 3 years look brighter than the last 2. From the revenue & audience growth perspectives.
Revenue
Newzoo estimates that the gaming industry's total revenue for 2024 will reach $187.7И, growing by 2.1% YoY. The PC segment will grow by 4% YoY to $43.2B (23% of the market); the mobile segment will see a growth of 3% YoY to $92.6B (49% of the market); while the console segment will decrease by 1% YoY to $51.9B (28% of the market).
Newzoo forecasts that by 2027, the gaming market will reach a revenue of $213.3B. The average annual growth rate from 2022 to 2027 will be 3.1%. It is expected that the PC market will grow steadily, and the console market, after a decline this year, will return to dynamic growth.
Shooters are the largest genre in terms of revenue on PC - its volume in 2024 will be $7.4B (17% of the total segment revenue; +9.6% YoY). However, Newzoo does not include Battle Royale in this category. The second place goes to adventure games (13% of the total segment revenue; $5.8B in revenue; +21.2% YoY).
The situation is similar on consoles. Shooters account for 16% of total revenue ($8.1B; +6% YoY). Adventure games account for 15% of total revenue ($7.7B; -13.6% YoY).
Gaming Audience
The number of players in 2024 will reach 3.422B (+4.5% YoY). The highest growth is in the PC segment (+3.9% YoY - up to 900M players); followed by mobile (+3.5% YoY - up to 2.85B); the console segment has the lowest growth (+2.3% YoY). The increase in the number of players is largely due to developing markets.
53% of players in 2024 will be in the Asia-Pacific region (1.809B; +4% YoY). Next are the MENA region (559M; +8.2% YoY); Europe (454M; +2.4% YoY); Latin America (355M; +5.6% YoY); North America (244M; +2.9% YoY).
Newzoo forecasts that by 2027, the number of players worldwide will grow to 3.759 billion.
Consider subscribing to the GameDev Reports Premium tier to support the newsletter. Get access to the list of curated articles & archive of Gaming Reports that I’ve been collecting since 2020.
Trends
Cross-platform play. Releasing games on different platforms benefits PCs the most. Both PlayStation and Xbox consider PCs a "neutral" platform where they can release their games.
Developers are reducing the scale of their projects to lower development costs and meet the needs of the modern market.
The mobile ecosystem is starting to open up. The European DMA lays the foundation for diverse stores and payment methods on iOS and Android. However, real results will be seen in a few years.
The importance of community management is growing.
The future of F2P games on PC and consoles is uncertain. New games are struggling to capture an audience, while older projects are growing.
Almost all popular AAA games in recent years are based on established gaming IPs or major franchises. Success in the PC and console market is coming to indie developers and AA-level projects. These projects require fewer resources, and creators can experiment more as they are not under the pressure of large budgets.
Gen-AI continues to penetrate development more deeply. However, there are still few real use cases, and it is evident that the technology needs time to develop.
The preferences of young players are changing. For generations Alpha and Z, UGC (User-Generated Content) is becoming increasingly important.
It's difficult to comprenhend the contrast between the market and the development state, with more and more layoffs