The global gaming market has grown steadily over the last decade, but it has shown unprecedented growth in the last few years. If the expert estimations turn out to be accurate, then the industry’s revenues will grow close to US$196 billion (£142 billion approximately) by the end of 2022. As of early 2021, gaming as an industry was already generating more than US$160 billion (£116 billion approx.) annually, so the estimates are not at all farfetched. Several other studies estimate gaming to net more than $200 billion in revenues by the end of 2022.
What is Fueling the Gaming Sector’s Growth?
Gaming as an industry is growing for numerous reasons, which range from the availability of new technology to an increased need for entertainment at home due to recent circumstances. A closer look should be able to shed more light on how these reasons are fueling the segment’s rapid growth.
Advancements in Developer Technology
Game developers now have access to more powerful hardware and software resources, which is allowing them to create games that even they would not have thought possible just 2 – 3 years ago. For example, Nvidia’s AI-powered Turing technology started to change how games could be designed back in 2018 by enabling developers with unique and intelligent hardware resources. On the other hand, free-to-use game engines such as Unity allowed the creation of visually stunning games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps from indie developers.
Availability of Affordable, High-End Mobile Technology
Today, we have modern, flagship smartphones that are more powerful than fully-fledged laptops released less than three years ago. More importantly, even the low – mid-tier smartphones are now capable of running nearly everything from mobile casino games to competitive shooters without a hitch. On combining the technological enhancements and greater affordability factor with the fact that billions of people own smartphones in 2021, it is not difficult to see why the mobile gaming industry is growing at such a rapid rate. In fact, it is the fastest-growing subsector in gaming, as well as being the largest revenue generator.
Affordability of High-End Gaming via Consoles
Earlier, high-end visuals were mostly restricted to PCs, which cannot provide anywhere close to the cost/performance advantage that modern consoles have over them. It has been estimated that both Microsoft and Sony sell their consoles at a loss, but they break even later with membership fees, online gaming fees, and games sales. Naturally, their low entry fee business model is allowing a much higher percentage of gamers to be interested and involved in practical 4K, HDR gaming.
This is not the complete list of reasons, of course, but it does help us understand the growth and the lofty predictions in a better light. In the coming years, several new factors may also become plausible reasons behind gaming’s global growth, but for now, these are the prime factors rocketing it towards the US$200 billion (£145.1 billion approx.) revenue mark by 2022.
