Market research and data tracking firm NewZoo has released their 2023 PC and Console Gaming Report, and it provides an interesting snapshot of an industry in a bit of a transitional mode. The gaming industry saw out-of-control growth during the pandemic, which fizzled a bit in 2022, but 2023 saw a return to modest growth with the PC/console market reaching $93.5 billion, up 2.3 percent over year-on-year. This growth was largely driven by the PC market, which was up 3.9 percent year-on-year, while the console market was up 1.7 percent YoY. The PC market accounted for 43 percent of industry revenue, while consoles were 57 percent.
Over the next three years (2024 to 2026) NewZoo predicts the industry will continue to grow modestly at a rate of around 2.7 percent a year, or $14 billion over the three years. According to NewZoo, most of this growth will come from the console side of things, as install bases for current-gen machines increase and Nintendo releases their anticipated Switch follow up.
Interestingly, one of the challenges the industry faces going forward is its own past successes. Basically, every new game that comes out has to compete with existing live service behemoths like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. This is particularly true on PC, where the average age of the 2023’s top 10 games in terms of monthly active users was a whopping 9.6 years. PlayStation and Xbox don’t fare all that much better, with their top 10s being 7.4 and 7.2 years old on average. Seemingly the only place people actually play new games is the Switch, which has two 2023 games in its top 5 (Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Bros. Wonder) and an average age of 3.9 years for its top 10.
Overall, games over 6 years old accounted for over 60 percent of playtime in 2023. Even in cases where new games were being played, a lot of time went to annualized franchises like Call of Duty and EA’s various sports games. A mere 8 percent of play time went to entirely new, non-annualized games, with Diablo IV, Hogwarts Legacy, and Baldur’s Gate III topping the list.
It definitely feels like this is an industry waiting for the next big thing. Overall, playtime has been trending downward (26 percent down) since 2021, and again, part of that is just a return to normalcy after the pandemic, but part of it is people getting a little tired of the same old things even as nothing has quite stepped up to replace them. What will that next big thing be? We shall see.
What do you think about the overall trends in the gaming industry? Where do you see things going over the next few years?
