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Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco is just weeks away, set to take place on March 17th to 18th, 2025.
The two-day conference is expected to draw more than 750 attendees from all across the games industry, ready to learn from and network with over 70 of the world’s leading authorities in this space.
Ahead of the conference, we’ve collated some of the key data worth knowing about the US games market, such as player spending from the region and how, exactly, the various platforms stack up.
Beginning with mobile, US players spent $28.2 billion on the App Store and Google Play in 2024, up 14% year-over-year from the $24.8bn achieved in 2023, according to gross revenue estimates from AppMagic.
The US accounted for 33% of global spending across the two stores with the country seeing its second consecutive year of mobile growth, further reinforcing that a course correction is taking place after the post-pandemic spending slump of 2022.
In fact, 2024 marked a new record high for revenue on mobile games in the US, beating the prior peak of $27.1bn in 2021.
The data suggests that Apple users contributed 60% of the US market’s 2024 total, with $17bn of in-game spending having taken place on the App Store versus $11.2bn on Google Play.
US players spent the most in Scopely’s Monopoly Go. They contributed $2.7bn to the title in 2024 alone, while Dream Games’ Royal Match ranked second for US player spending at $1.1bn. Roblox came third with $920.1 million on mobile.
For comparison, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower said in its State of Mobile report that US in-app purchase revenue in mobile games rose by 9% year-over-year to $25.5bn. Downloads, meanwhile, declined by 7% Y/Y to 3.9bn.
Platform powerhouses
As for consoles, last year’s best-selling game in the US was Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 according to Circana data. EA Sports College Football 2025 ranked second, one of four EA games in the top 10. Those other EA titles included Madden NFL 25, EA Sports FC 25 and EA Sports MVP Bundle.
Sony’s Helldivers 2 was the third best-selling game in the US, while Take-Two Interactive and Bandai Namco also made the top 10 list with games like NBA 2K25 and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.
Notably, no Nintendo titles hit the top 10 in the US last year, unlike in the UK where the publisher dominated half the list. In fact, Nintendo games didn’t even break the top 20 in the country during 2024, as reported by Circana’s Mat Piscatella.
It’s worth noting, however, that Nintendo’s digital sales weren’t included in the rankings.
Piscatella also highlighted that Switch hardware spending fell by 38% Y/Y in December 2024, as did Xbox Series X/S sales. The PlayStation 5 declined by 18%. Overall, annual video game hardware sales were down 25% Y/Y, falling to $4.9bn.
At the same time, Piscatella claimed that overall spending in video games increased by 2% last year, with PC, cloud and non-console VR seeing 13% Y/Y growth in games sales in December.
NetEase’s Marvel Rivals was found to have the highest US-based monthly active users on Steam, followed by Helldivers 2 and Path of Exile 2.
US company Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 saw the fourth-highest MAU figures on Steam, followed by PlayStack and LocalThunk’s Balatro to round out the top five.
The latter title also released on mobile in 2024, winning Best Digital Board Game and Best Mobile Port at the Pocket Gamer Awards, as well as Mobile Game of the Year at The Game Awards.
United States of play
Games market research company Newzoo estimated that 244m people in North America played video games in 2024, based on projections made in August last year.
Newzoo also forecasted the US market as being 2024’s top spender in the games industry with $47bn in player spending, landing just ahead of China’s projected $45bn. Combined, these two countries would account for “nearly half of all consumer spending on games” last year.
Meanwhile, The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reported figures of 190m gamers in the US in 2023.
The ESA also highlighted that 61% of the US population played for over one hour per week that year, with an increasing number of female gamers over the past three generations.
Where 57% of Millennial women were found to play games weekly, 68% do so in Gen Z and 76% in Gen Alpha, closing in on male gamers’ 82%.
Behind the games
Of course, there’s still more to the US games industry than player activity and spending; the developers and publishers from the country are also key components of the market – selling many of the top titles worldwide in 2024, defining genres and providing plenty of jobs and economic impact.
According to the ESA, the games industry has created 262,800 jobs in the US alone. Though as with the rest of the global industry, the sector has been impacted by thousands of layoffs.
The US is home to a number of top games companies, including AppLovin, Activison, EA, Roblox, Take-Two Interactive, Zynga, Scopely and Valve, to name just a few. Many of these, including Tilting Point, SciPlay and Jam City, made our Top 50 Mobile Gamer Makers list in 2024.
Scopely has built one of the world’s most successful games in recent years in Monopoly Go. The hit title has helped push Scopely beyond $10bn in lifetime revenue, 1bn installs and 15bn hours of playtime, expanding the company into an outright mobile games empire. There are now rumours that Scopely may purchase fellow US studio Niantic’s games catalogue for $3.5bn, including Pokémon Go.
SciPlay has been making waves with casino games like Quick Hit Slots and 88 Fortunes, standing tall after over a decade of consecutive annual growth.
Jam City, meanwhile, remains one of the world’s top mobile games publishers on mobile with titles like Disney Emoji Blitz and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, though it has just sold Montreal-based Ludia.
US-based Activision and its owner Microsoft landed the best-selling console game of 2024 with the aforementioned Black Ops 6. The title not only topped sales charts in the US, but worldwide as well.
Going beyond
Elsewhere, the US is home to a series of developers, platforms, tools and services providers, including Unity, Fortnite maker Epic Games which is taking strides to open up the app stoeres, the fast-rising ad tech firm AppLovin, and Netflix, which offers games like Ustwo’s Monument Valley 3 in its subscription service.
The US games industry has faced significant challenges over the last few years, but it remains home to a number of the world’s top games companies and the market has returned to growth.
Learn more about the state of the games industry and meet with some of the sector’s top companies at Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco on March 17th to 18th.
