Console Gaming Market Grows on the Pandemic; Up 19% Over 2019
The video game market is one of the few that has seen a lot of growth during the pandemic. Sales in 2020 were 19% higher than 2019, crossing the $50 billion threshold.
- The console gaming market grew 19% in 2020, crossing the $50 billion threshold;
- The leader for the last year is Sony, thanks to a huge customer base and good monetization of services.
The console game market saw growth in 2020, largely due to the pandemic. Ampere Analysis reports that spending on services, games and hardware grew 19% (to $53.9 billion) compared to 2019.
In the report, an excerpt of which is quoted by Gamasutra, there is a rather surprising information. Sony's ecosystem, which boasts such results thanks to game sales and the appropriate monetization of its services (PlayStation Plus subscription and PS Now), was responsible for 46% of spending on the game market in 2020.
The big gainer was Nintendo, which thanks to the great performance of its Nintendo Switch console boasts $7 billion that people spent on hardware alone, which helped offset poor digital distribution game sales and an unattractive online service offering.
23% of last year's spending went to Microsoft, which owes it primarily to the Game Pass service. Unfortunately, the Redmond giant is reluctant to share exact figures. However, as Ampere Analysis notes, subscription services are on the rise, so big revenues from Game Pass in the future are very much possible.
