2022 will be the first year in a long time that the global gaming market shrinks. That’s what market researchers say. For many years, revenue figures had been steadily increasing, with the revenues of 2020 and 2021 particularly high due to COVID-related lockdowns, but 2022 marks the break of that trend. It will be a corrective year. Revenue on PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile shrinks.
Market researchers say: According to researchers from Newzoo, the gaming market will shrink in 2022 compared to 2021. It is estimated:
- the gaming market will generate a total of $184.4 billion in 2022 (down from $192.7 billion in 2021) – that is 4.3% less than in 2021.
What is the basis for these numbers? Newzoo states it has analyzed the financial results of 150 publicly traded companies, focusing on the first 6 months of the calendar year 2022.
After 2 very hot years, 2022 will be a rather cold year in gaming
What is causing the shrinkage? Newzoo says: 2022 is a “corrective year,” as the gaming market was significantly boosted in 2020 and 2021 due to the lockdowns resulting from the fight against the global COVID pandemic:
- Therefore, 2020 and 2021 were much stronger in gaming than originally projected.
- However, 2022 is now slightly below the expectations that were set in 2020 for growth in the coming years.
- Overall, gaming from 2020 to 2022 has grown significantly more than projected before the pandemic, and is expected to grow again in the coming years.
Consoles and mobile shrink – PC grows slightly
Where is gaming not declining? According to Newzoo, PC gaming will not decline in 2022, but will grow slightly by 0.5% compared to 2021.
This is because PC gaming does not rely on hits as much as other platforms: The top games would run on PC for years. There continues to be growth in China and Japan.
Who is hit hardest? According to Newzoo, the mobile market is hit hardest by the shrinkage: Compared to 2021, the market would shrink by 6.4%.
Especially in the second half of 2021, people invested a lot of money in mobile gaming, which is not expected in the second half of 2022, according to Newzoo.
The console market is also expected to be 4.2% worse.
First shrinkage since records began
What is special about this shrinkage? The special thing is that market researchers cannot pinpoint when the gaming market last shrank.
Newzoo states that the gaming market is now shrinking year over year for the first time since records began. The company has been around since 2007.
Other market researchers, the group “Ampere Analytics,” had already published data in July 2022 showing that the gaming market more than doubled from $95 billion in 2015 to $191 billion in 2021, in just 6 years.
Ampere Analytics stated that gaming is not immune to economic turbulence such as inflation or recession. It is “inevitable” that gaming will be negatively affected by this. However, games still offer a lot of value for the money, so gaming is likely shielded from the worst impacts of a global market slowdown.
Overall, however, market researchers believe that the shrinkage in 2022 is only an exception, and that gaming will continue to grow.
Perhaps gaming will also grow in 2023 based on these MMORPGs:
4 new MMORPGs that are definitely set to be released in 2023
