The video game market reached a total of $109 billion in 2016—a 56 percent increase in just five years, according to Newzoo’s 2017 Global Games Market report. China leads the industry in terms of users and revenue followed by the United States, and mobile games have become the most popular platform—if only by one percent.

Gamers Around The Globe

The share of total revenues claimed by each region has remained almost unchanged since 2016, Newzoo observed. As usual, the Asia-Pacific region represents the largest gaming segment—earning nearly half (47 percent) of all global game revenues. In 2017, Newzoo predicts that Asia-Pacific will bring in $51.2 billion, which represents a 9.2 percent year-on-year increase.

North America is the second-largest region in the video game market, taking a 25 percent share of the market to earn $27 billion this year—a year-on-year increase of four percent. North America has a total of 180.5 million gamers, 58 percent of whom are payers spending an average of $256.10 each per year.

At 24 percent, the Europe, Middle East and Africa segment aren’t far behind and is growing at a higher rate of eight percent year-on-year. While Latin America represents only four percent of the global game market, the region is growing at a rate of 13.9 percent year-on-year and will reach $6.3 billion by 2020.

Platform Perspective

Move over consoles, mobile gaming (smartphone and tablet) is the largest segment in 2017, accounting for 42 percent of the total global market with $35.3 billion. The segment also has the most gamers, Newzoo reports, with 2.1 billion. Mobile is expected to hold its titles as the largest gaming segment, growing with a CAGR (2016-2020) of 13.9 percent to claim 50 percent of the market by 2020.

At 41 percent, consoles represent the second-largest segment with revenues of $33.5 billion 2017, followed by boxed/downloaded PC games (23 percent), tablet games (10 percent) and browser PC games at just four percent.

Browser game revenues will decrease by 9.3 percent to $4.5 billion as gamers continue their transition to mobile, Newzoo predicts. Boxed/downloaded PC games will experience a slight drop (1.3 percent) this year to $24.6 billion.

May Game Sales

US video game spending in May—which includes hardware, software and accessories—fell 11 percent compared to one year ago to $542 million, according to NPD Group. Led by the Sony PlayStation 4, hardware spending grew seven percent from May 2016 to $147 million.

“Nintendo Switch continues to be the primary catalyst for hardware spending gains, as it has since launching in March 2017,” said NPD’s VG industry analyst Mat Piscatella.

Software dollar sales in May fell 20 percent versus one year ago to $271 million due to a slim line-up of new game releases.

Injustice 2 was the best-selling game of the month across all platforms, followed by Mario Kart 8 and Grand Theft Auto V. NPD’s figures did not include digital sales for Mario Kart 8.