Games For 'Hardcore Gamers' Form Increasingly Small Part of the Market
A report revealing the shape of the US gaming market can lead to surprising conclusions. In particular, the progressive disparity among the major branches of the industry seems particularly interesting.
Prepared by a network of companies called PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), the report on the state of the gaming market in the United States brings a number of interesting conclusions. In addition to the slowest growth rate in years, attention is also drawn to the growing disparity between the "traditional" game market and the mobile and casual segments.
Slowing pace and clear disparity
According to the report, the year 2022 brought the U.S. game industry a total of more than $54 billion in revenue. This result represents an increase of just 2.4% over the previous year, which represents the lowest increase recorded in years.
Analyzing the document, a journalist from VentureBeat suggests that this may be influenced by the market situation, which is slowly recovering from the pandemic period. According to forecasts by PwC, the rate is expected to rise again in the coming years and remain at a level oscillating around 6% per year.
Much more interesting, however, seems to be the widening disparity between the two prominent branches of the industry over the years:
- "traditional" gaming focused primarily on consoles and PCs earned a mere 27.6% of the revenue of the entire, domestic gaming industry.
- The vast majority, as much as 68.6%, was earned on casual games and the mobile sector.
This relationship, moreover, seems to follow a kind of trend in the industry based on the growing disparity between the various sectors. According to PwC's forecasts, this stratification is also expected to continue in the coming years. By 2027, revenues from the casual market could more than triple the profits of "hardcore" games (22,8% to 73,8%). The main reason for this is expected to be the incomparably faster pace at which the "branch" of casual games is growing and generating revenue.
A somewhat forgotten, but also worth mentioning aspect of the industry remains esports. In 2022, this branch managed to generate $455 million in profit. Year after year, this sum has been growing steadily, but still remains some marginal, accounting for only 0.8% of the gaming industry's revenue.
Cautious conclusions for the future
Although reports of this type can provide us with an interesting topic for discussion and consideration of the condition of the medium, it is worth approaching them with a certain amount of distance. For we should remember that PwC's report focused only on the U.S. game industry. The distribution of forces in other parts of the globe and the conditions there (the mobile market in China, esports in South Korea) could lead to completely different conclusions.
The next few years will probably show whether the forecasts heralding the increasing dominance of the casual games market will prove true.
