Although it's been a turbulent year for developers and publishers amid all of the closures and layoffs, the video game industry as a whole is apparently thriving globally – so much so, in fact, that it's raking in hundreds of billions of dollars.
A whopping $200 billion or so, to be precise. The news comes as reports from analytics firm Newzoo (thanks, GamesBeat) confirm the global games market has earned $201.6 billion in revenue – up a good 9.1% year-on-year.
Most notably, this is the first time that the industry has netted over $200 billion worldwide, toppling all the estimations and expectations experts had for the year. Mobile gaming, unsurprisingly, makes up a bulk of this figure.
It has earned around $113.3 billion, up 10.7% from before, while console revenue sits at just $44.7 billion – up only 2.8% this year. As for PC gaming, it has seen the most significant boost of 12%, with $43.6 billion in revenue.
Spending on both base games and extra microtransactions has grown, too, alongside gaming subscriptions. That makes sense, seeing as more and more titles are opting to rely on such "additional" payments.
What makes less sense, however, if we're just looking at these numbers, are all of the recent closures and layoffs. Companies like Microsoft immediately spring to mind, with 15,000 employees laid off and reports of closures at Xbox circulating on the web.
There was South of Midnight and We Happy Few studio Compulsion Games, and redundancies at ZeniMax – not to mention all of the other alleged firings and shutdowns across the industry.
Sure, one has to take into account operating costs and whatnot – but it's still difficult to digest these figures from Newzoo. On top of it all, estimations and predictions point to an even more lucrative market in the coming years.
Could the number rise even higher in the billions? I suppose only time will tell… I just hope things smooth out a bit on the other side and the high figures reflect better where devs themselves are concerned.
Searching for some good news to look forward to for a change? Here are some of the biggest new games coming this year and beyond to keep on your mind.
