Niko Partners: There will be more than 1 billion gamers in China by 2022

In the next 5 years, the Chinese mobile games market will maintain and strengthen its global leadership. According to the analytical company Niko Partners, by 2022 the number of gamers in China will exceed 1 billion people, and mobile games will generate more than half of all gaming revenue.

According to the forecast of Niko Partners, in 2022, the turnover of China’s national gaming industry will reach $42 billion.

Revenue from online games for PC in 5 years will grow from the current $15.5 billion to $17.4 billion by 2022.

Mobile gaming revenues will rise from $16 billion to $24.7 billion over the same period.

Development of China’s gaming market by 2022, Niko Partners
Midcore and casual games will remain the main sources of income from mobile.

At the same time, esports and “royal battles” will be ahead of other genres in terms of growth rates.

Questions to the report

The Niko Partners report and the exclusive material of the Venture Beat publication on this document do not match some data.

For example, Venture Beat talks about 768 million players in China by 2022, although it follows from the Niko Partners infographic that the total audience of Chinese gamers (on mobile and PC) will exceed 1 billion people.

In addition, the data differ from Niko Partners themselves: in the text, the company predicts a five-year growth in mobile revenue to $27.4 billion, and in the infographic it gives a number of $33.8 billion.

China’s gaming market today

China is the largest video game market in the world by revenue and audience.

According to Newzoo, in 2017, the turnover of the Chinese industry reached $27.5 billion, which is more than 25% of the size of the global mobile games market, which was estimated at 109 billion.

Last year, there were about 600 million players in China. This is almost twice as much as the entire population of the United States.