German Games Market Shrank 2024 by 6 Percent to €9.41 Billion

The German games market declined in 2024. According to the game - The German Games Industry Association, hardware and game sales in particular fell. However, game's Managing Director Felix Falk is optimistic about 2025.

However, Felix Falk did not venture to say whether sales of games and game production in Germany would increase again in 2025. The managing director of game merely said that he was optimistic about the current year.

For the past year, however, Falk had more bad news than good news to report. Instead of breaking through the €10 billion mark, which the market narrowly failed to reach in 2023, sales fell by 6 percent in 2024. Across all sectors, the German games market had a volume of €9.41 billion.

In 2024, the two largest market segments in particular performed negatively. Sales of games hardware fell by 10 percent to €2.94 billion. Sales of games fell by 6 percent to €5.50 billion. The only positive development was in the area of online gaming services, which includes, for example, the subscription services of console manufacturers. Here, sales rose by 12 percent to €965 million.

"After years of frequently strong growth, the German games market took a breather in 2024. This was due in part to the fact that there were fewer game hits last year and that the demand for game consoles has normalised again. The greatest growth is seen in online game services like cloud gaming – which underscores the perpetual dynamics and innovative strength of the games industry. In combination with new game consoles and blockbuster titles that have already been announced, this promises renewed overall growth in the near future," says game managing director Felix Falk.

A closer look at the segments shows that the classic sale of games, whether physical or digital, continues to decline sharply. German consumers spent only €921 million on games in 2024, 17 percent less than in the previous year. Surprisingly, however, spending on in-game purchases also fell, albeit by a comparatively small 3 percent.

In hardware spending, the decline is mainly due to the console business. This experienced an extraordinary boom in 2023 after the delivery problems for new consoles were finally resolved. Since the pent-up demand was met in 2023, the market returned to normal levels in 2024. In fact, the console accessories submarket shows that the console base is there and active. Sales of console accessories rose by 5 percent year on year.

At its press conference, game also emphasized that the current decline in consumer spending should not be overstated. Compared to 2019, sales in all market segments rose by at least a mid-double-digit percentage.

The development of the German games market is thus in line with to the development in other key markets in the world. In 2024, sales in the US video game market fell by one per cent to 58.7 billion dollars, mainly because hardware sales fell by 25 per cent. And in the UK, too, the video game market shrank in 2024, by around four per cent to 4.62 billion pounds.

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