Total revenue of €9.38 billion was generated in Germany in 2025 from games, gaming hardware and accessories. This represents a 4% increase on 2024. According to the game, performance varied significantly across segments. Some calculations have changed due to a change in data service provider.
The German games market is growing. That is the key message conveyed by game – The German Games Industry Association at its press conference to present market data on the German games market for 2025. A total of €9.382 billion was generated in 2025 at retail price from games, as well as gaming hardware and accessories, and gaming subscriptions such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Network. Of course, the devil is in the detail, as not every segment developed at the same rate. Revenue from online gaming services, for example, rose by 7% and broke through the €1 billion mark for the first time.
According to game’s market data, the greatest growth, however, took place in the games hardware sector. This sub-market rose by 12% to €3.403 billion. However, even within this category, there were varying trends. Whilst revenue from game consoles rose by 26% to €1.021 billion following the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, revenue from console accessories fell by around 10% to €360 million.
As these figures relate solely to revenue and not to unit sales, it is not possible to say definitively whether the increase is due to higher sales volumes or higher prices. According to Felix Falk, however, it is likely to be a combination of both, as he explained when asked.
The core market for games software is bucking the trend. Data from game shows a 1% year-on-year decline here. This is primarily attributable to traditional games sales, where turnover fell significantly – by 13%. In 2025, retail sales of games – both physical and digital – generated just €807 million. By contrast, revenue from in-game and in-app content rose by 1%.
However, this sector caused journalists the greatest headaches. As game openly stated right at the start of the press conference, there had been a change in methodology regarding data collection. This was necessary because the previous partner in this area, Data.ai, had been acquired by SensorTower. They apparently use a more conservative methodology there to estimate the sales data for in-game content that is not publicly available.
This has significant consequences: in order to be able to make a comparison with the previous year, game also had the older data reported using the new methodology. As a result, there is a shortfall of around €500 million in revenue when looking at the figures reported by Data.ai and SensorTower for in-game content in 2024. This makes a long-term analysis difficult, even though the game correctly notes that it does not affect the trend in which the market is developing.
