The gaming industry 2023 in numbers — infographics from GamesIndustry
Our colleagues from the British edition of GamesIndustry have collected in a single infographic the main figures of the gaming industry for the year 2023 coming to the end. We share.
The volume of the gaming market (based on the Newzoo database)
By the end of 2023, the revenue of the global gaming economy will amount to $184 billion (an increase of 0.6% compared to last year's results). Almost half of the turnover is due to the mobile segment. Games for smartphones and tablets will earn $90.4 billion during the reporting period (a drop of 1.6%). The second largest sector is console games with $53.2 billion (1.6% growth). At the same time, the PC games market will show the most significant growth - 5.2%.
Important: despite the fact that recently there has been a point of view about the growth of the niche of web games, according to the latest data, the global revenue of this sector fell by 16.1% to $1.9 billion over the year.
Digital dominance (based on the Newzoo database)
The figure is a single—digit dominant in the field of distribution. The revenue from this type of distribution accounts for 95% of the general game cash register. The last mainstay of physical retail is consoles. There is still a relatively high share of revenue coming from box sales — 17%. For comparison, on a PC, this share is 1%.
The highest-grossing games in physical retail (based on Circana, GfK and Famitsu databases)
The content of the top 10 highest-grossing box office games depends heavily on the region. In the USA, Madden NFL 24 is represented on the chart and the dominance of the Call of Duty series is noticeable. There was also a place for Diablo 4, Mortal Kombat 1, and even Starfield.
The Electronic Arts football series is traditionally strong in the UK, which received a rebranding this year due to the severance of relations with the International Football Federation.
As for Japan, nine out of 10 game titles in this locale are Nintendo exclusives. The only game for the Sony console that managed to break into the top was the new part of Final Fantasy.
Important: despite the fact that by the end of the year many Western publications and awards pretended that there was no release of Hogwarts Legacy, at the end of the year it is one of the main commercial hits. As for Baldur's Gate 3, its absence from the charts above is explained by the fact that the game was not released in physical retail.
Mobile Games Market (based on Sensor Tower database)
The top-grossing game publishers have undergone some changes. In particular, Playrix took the third place in the world in terms of mobile game sales, which managed to increase annual revenue from $2 billion to $2.38 billion, surpassing NetEase. Also, the company miHoYo got into the top five, beating Take-Two. At the same time, the top 5 highest-grossing games and the leading countries in terms of mobile revenue remained the same.
In terms of downloads, the situation has changed less significantly. Azur Interactive remains the leader in installations, capable of generating more than 1.1 billion installations per year. Only he was not affected by a noticeable reduction in the total base of installations. For example, at Embracer Group, the number of annual downloads fell from 1.1 billion in 2022 to 710 million this year. The drop in the volume of downloads is especially noticeable when broken down into regions. The drop amounted to one to two billion, depending on the country.
The highest—grossing games of the year are Monopoly Go! from Supersonic and Honkai: Star Rail from miHoYo. The first earned almost $ 2 billion, and the second — one and a half.
The most discussed games and companies (based on the ICO database)
Most often, Western publications in 2023 wrote about Starfield and Diablo 4. 50 thousand publications were published on both sides. Most likely, the higher-grossing Hogwarts Legacy did not even make it into the top 15, and Baldur's Gate 3 only took ninth place with 20,000 publications.
As for companies, Xbox and PlayStation were most often "lit up" in the media. 300 thousand and 279 thousand materials were devoted to them, respectively.
The most viewed trailers (based on the Fancense database)
The unequivocal leader is the announcement of Grand Theft Auto 6, which collected more than 100 million views in the first day. The closest thing to it was the game video Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with 38.5 million views.
