COVID Hurt the Gaming Market in 2021; 2022 Could be a Record Year
Thanks to the pandemic, 2020 was a record year for the gaming industry. This year, however, the coronavirus dealt it a severe blow. All due to numerous delays.
- The pandemic has delayed the release of many big games;
- This lead to disappointing sales results in 2021;
- The accumulation of delayed launches has the potential to make 2022 a record year.
Gamesindustry.biz has published an interesting article based on data from analytics group Global Sales Data. It deals with the impact of the coronavirus on the gaming market. While in 2020 the pandemic pushed the industry's performance to record levels, 2021 is much worse due to the long delays of releases.
The coronavirus has made us play more. Last year, the situation benefited games that were already nearing completion when the pandemic broke out. At the same time, sanitation requirements and the switch to remote working slowed down the development of new titles and so there were few major launches in 2021.
What the data relates to:
Global Sales Data collected boxed game sales data from 23 countries, mostly European, including the UK, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Digital results, on the other hand, come from 49 countries and were obtained from the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo Switch eShop and Steam.
The numbers below include results from these markets only.
In the countries surveyed by Global Sales Data, 31 million game boxes and 26.7 million digital copies were sold from January 1 to the end of August 2019. In 2020, these results increased to 33 million and 45.3 million, respectively. This year, on the other hand, saw big declines - boxed versions dropped to 28 million and digital to 34.5 million. The reason for this is the delay of major launches and the fact that publishers have reduced the scope of ad campaigns.
Many of the games that were supposed to debut in the first half of the year have suffered months-long delays. Early releases of titles like Deathloop, Far Cry 6. Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Back 4 Blood, New World or especially Halo Infinite, would have bolstered industry revenue for the year. On top of that, there's a slew of releases that have been delayed to 2022, such as Horizon Forbidden West, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts Legacy, God of War: Ragnarok, Ghostwire Tokyo, Gran Turismo 7, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction, Dying Light 2, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, The King of Fighters XV or Lego Star Wars: The King of Fighters XV or Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
There were simply fewer big launches this year than in 2020. This is well illustrated by a breakdown of the top five debuts between January 1 and August 31 in 2020 and 2021.
Top debuts in 2020 and 2021
2020:
# | Game: | Box sales during the first week: |
1. | 818,000 copies | |
2. | 513,000 | |
3. | 321,000 | |
4. | 269,000 | |
5. | 153,000 |
2021:
# | Game: | Boxed sales during the first week: |
1. | 292,000 copies | |
2. | 249,000 | |
3. | 189,000 | |
4. | 138,000 | |
5. | 122,000 |
As you can see, the best debut of this year wouldn't even make it into the top 3 in 2020. Overall, the top 5 of this year's first week sales were on average 52% lower than the top 5 last year.
The industry was helped by the launch of new consoles, but the effect was limited by fewer major game launches. Between January 1 and August 31, 2021, 1.9 million boxed copies of PlayStation 5 games and 0.4 million Xbox Series X/S games were sold.
Only Nintendo Switch is doing great - in the aforementioned eight months, gamers purchased 13.5 million boxed copies of games for this portable console, an increase of 6% compared to the same period of 2020. PlayStation 4 recorded a 37% drop (to 9.3 million), Xbox One a 46% drop (to 1.7 million), and PC a 52% drop (to 0.9 million).
From January 1 to August 31, 2021, the biggest bestseller was Super Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury. This is the only game in the top 10 that debuted this year.
2022 promises to be a record year
All these delays mean that 2022 should see an accumulation of launches. Especially the first half of the year is expected to provide many debuts bigger than usual. Therefore, analysts expect the industry to set new sales records.
