Newzoo announced today that it is updating its Global Games Market Report 2023 with its final adjusted estimates and analysts’ forecasts for the year. According to the market research company, this is the last adjustment to the 2023 market report before the 2024 report is published in July. In the last adjustment in August 2023, Newzoo predicted that the games market would generate $187.7 billion in 2023. However, Newzoo’s latest report puts its new estimate at $183.9 billion, down 2%.
According to Newzoo’s revised estimates, mobile gaming accounts for less than half of the overall revenue at $89.9 billion, which is down 2.1% YoY. By contrast, revenue from PC was up by almost 9%, and the PC and console market combined generated $94 billion, which is up 3.1% YoY. Newzoo’s Tom Wijman attributes this growth in part to the boost from cross-platform release strategies. As an example of this in action, Sony revealed in its recent earnings report that Helldivers 2, which it launched on both PC and PlayStation, was its fastest-selling first-party title. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella noted that Steam accounted for 60% of the game’s sales in February.
One major change appears to be that gamers are playing for much less time in 2023 than they were during the pandemic — average quarterly playtime has dropped by 26% since Q1 2021. Also, while the games industry is offering more games than ever, gamers aren’t necessarily playing those games en masse. In 2023, 43 games captured 90% of new game revenue, and 66 titles account for 80% of global playtime.
That said, Newzoo predicts that the games market’s growth will rebound. In fact, its adjust report predicts that games revenue will increase to $207 billion by 2026. They also believe that the market will grow by 6% year-over-year in 2025, a higher estimate than in the past report. As stated, Newzoo’s 2024 predictions for the gaming market is due out in July.