Newzoo Sees Moderate Market Growth With Declining Playtimes

The global market for PC and console games will grow by 2.6% to reach $93.5b in 2023. However, the moderate growth identified by Newzoo in its new report is accompanied by changes in gaming behaviour.

The games market has recovered after a slight dip in 2022, but truly significant growth is still not on the immediate horizon," said Tom Wijman, Lead Analyst at Newzoo. The Dutch market research company has just published its new report "PC & Console Gaming in 2024". Newzoo estimates that the global PC and console gaming market was worth $93.5 billion 2023. This is 2.6 per cent more than 2022. The console segment will account for 57 per cent, or around $53.1 billion, of the total, but its growth of 1.7 per cent will be lower than overall growth. "We remain cautiously optimistic as our data and analysis identified trends and winning strategies to find new players, compete for playtime, and connect gaming with mainstream media.", says Tom Wijman.

Looking more closely, Newzoo has identified some fundamental changes in the market that are having a lasting effect. Playtime, for example, continues to decline. In addition, players worldwide spend more than half of their time on titles that have been on the market for six years or more. A further 15 per cent of playtime is spent on games that are released every year, such as Call of Duty or EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA). This leaves just 25 per cent of playtime for new releases and games that are less than five years old. In fact, just 66 games will account for 80 percent of playtime in 2023.

A free version of the report can be downloaded from Newzoo.