Although gaming managed to weather the economic turbulence of 2022 better than many other industries, video game revenue rose a modest 5% to $208.6 billion, showing the lowest annual growth rate since 2017. However, it is expected expect the entire industry to recover significantly this year. and witness much stronger revenue and user growth.
According to data presented by Sports Lens, global gaming revenue is expected to grow 11% year-over-year and reach $233 billion by 2023.
After a strong 2023, revenue growth will continue to fall by 2025
In recent years, the gaming industry has shown impressive resilience to global economic shocks, with revenue and users increasing while other sectors have taken big hits. However, for the first time in its history, the gaming industry saw its user base shrink last year. The number of players plummeted by 176 million, and this huge drop affected revenue growth.
According to a Statista survey, 2022 saw the lowest annual revenue growth in the past five years. By comparison, 2018 and 2019 saw revenue increase 11% year-over-year, while 2021 set a new record. In that year alone, global game revenue rose an impressive 27% year-on-year, resulting in a market volume of $198.6 billion.
Although 2023 will see a significant recovery, with gaming revenue rising 11% to $233.5 billion, revenue growth is expected to slow again over the next two years. Statista expects the entire market to witness revenue growth of 9% in 2024. However, by 2025, the growth rate will drop to just 6%, with revenue rising to over $270 billion globally. .
Digital video games, the largest segment of the market, are expected to generate $222.2 billion this year, up 12% from a year ago. Physically sold video games are forecast to generate $11.3 billion in revenue in 2023, just 1% more than last year, but still well below the $13.4 billion seen in 2021.
More than 225 million new players in 2023
Last year, the gaming industry lost 176 million users due to a variety of obstacles and challenges, including inflation, the end of Covid-19 lockdowns, and regulatory issues in China. Statistics show that around 2.99 billion people played video games in 2022 via consoles, computers or mobile devices, up from 3.17 in 2021.
However, Statista expects the number of gamers to grow by 225 million by 2023, with the total number reaching 3.22 billion worldwide. Most of that growth will come from the digital gaming segment, which will have more than 2.6 billion users, up from 2.4 billion a year ago.
According to Statista, the number of gamers will continue to grow in the next two years and will reach more than 3.5 billion by 2025.
