Video games are a billion-dollar business and have been for many years. In 2020, the revenue from the worldwide PC gaming market was estimated at almost 37 billion U.S. dollars, while the mobile gaming market generated an estimated income of over 77 billion U.S. dollars. What is significant nowadays is that the first generation of gamers is now grown up and has significant spending power at its disposal. Despite the high average daily time spent playing games among kids, the hobby can no longer be considered solely child’s play. In fact, it was found that video gaming is gaining popularity among parents across the world as well, with a fairly even split in terms of the gender distribution of video gaming parents worldwide.
Some of the major players in the video gaming industry are Tencent, Sony and Apple, each generating billions of dollars in revenue every year, making them some of the most successful public companies in terms of gaming revenue. Sony’s PlayStation 4 is the bestseller among current generation consoles and, in 2020, the unit sales of the PlayStation 4 reached more than 112 million units.
Statista’s exclusive Global Consumer Survey holds further information on the video gaming habits of U.S. internet users (18 years and older). While 24 percent don’t play video games at all, almost 18 percent spend more than six hours per week playing video games. Some of the favorite video game genres in 2020 included action, strategy, and action-adventure. The most popular store for hard copy video games was GameStop, while Amazon was the most popular store for digital/online video game purchases.
