Newzoo: In 2024, PC gamers spent only 8% of their gaming time on new releases
For its presentation at GDC 2025, the analytics firm Newzoo prepared an overview of the state of the gaming industry. Below are key insights about the PC market.
Counter-Strike 2
Note: Newzoo's research is based on a survey of 73,000 gamers and data from over 10,000 games.
- In 2024, the number of PC gamers reached 907.5 million people, an increase of 34 million compared to 2023.
- For comparison: the console gaming audience last year amounted to 653.1 million people.
- Despite the growth in the user base, PC owners predominantly play older titles. From January to December 2024, gamers spent 67% of their time in games older than six years.
- 25% of gaming time was spent on projects released in the last 2-5 years, and only 8% on fresh releases (games less than two years old).
- Among titles older than six years, successful live services dominate. 7.1% of playtime is devoted to CS:GO/Counter-Strike 2, followed by League of Legends (6.4%), Roblox (6.2%), Dota 2 (5.8%), and Fortnite (5.4%).
This partly aligns with Steam's statistics. According to Valve, in 2024, only 15% of the platform users' gaming time was spent on new titles. The share of releases from 2017-2023 was 47%.