author: Bart Swiatek
Video Game Industry in 2019 - Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077 and Minecraft
Journalists of Gamesindustry.biz prepared an extensive infographic, which presents the most important details about the video game market in 2019. The biggest winners include Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077 and Minecraft.
Gamesindustry.biz has prepared a summary of the past year in the industry. The focus was mainly on the financial side, but there was also room for some interesting details related to other areas (e.g. quality of games or their popularity among players).
A market worth almost $150 billion
In 2019, the video game market was worth nearly 150 billion dollars - 148.8 billion to be precise - which consitutes to quite an impressive 7.2% growth compared to the previous year. The biggest piece of this cake, 68.2 billion dollars, was contributed by mobile gaming (mainly smartphones, but also tablets, as shown in the graphics below). At the same time, it is the sector that recorded the biggest development (9.7% year-on-year).
Of course, consoles ($45.3 billion) and PCs ($35.3 billion) remain an important part of the video game market, with the former developing more than twice as fast (7.3% compared to 2.8%). The only shrinking sector of the industry is that related to browser games. It was worth $3.5 billion this year, 15.4% worse than 12 months ago.
Returning to the mobile games market for a moment - in terms of the number of game downloads, the top three publishers were Voodoo, Good Job Games and Say Games. However, the Chinese company Tencent earned the most from smartphone (and tablet) games, ahead of NetEase and King. Mobile gaming is most popular in India, the United States and Brazil, but it is the Americans, Japanese and Chinese who are most willing to spend money in similar productions (or on them). The most lucrative title was the MOBA Honor of Kings (Arena of Valor), and the most popular game was PUBG Mobile. Call of Duty: Mobile's record, which was downloaded 100 million times a week after its release, is also impressive (information about it is at the end of the infographic).
We don't want physical media. More than ever
The dominance of digital sales is also worth noting - in the case of PC, it generated 31 billion dollars (6.2% more than last year), which is slightly more than on consoles (30 billion dollars, but an increase of 14.5%). By comparison, physical sales on PCs and consoles, taken together, generated only $16.1 billion (5.5% less than in 2018).
Among the well-known platforms, the most games on physical media are bought by PlayStation 4 owners (note that the data comes from the UK). Xbox One was second and Nintendo Switch third. Only 0.9% of "boxed games" were sold on PCs, which probably does not surprise anyone at this point. Interestingly, in terms of revenue generated by the sale of games on physical media in the UK, Nintendo Switch outperformed Xbox One this year (which is probably related to higher production prices on big "N"'s platform).
The editors of Gamesindustry.biz have also analyzed the digital price tags, noting how many days it took to wait for the first discount for each title. The best result (69 days) was achieved by Capcom's hit, Resident Evil 2 Remake. At the other end of the list are Need for Speed: Heat, which was discounted 13 days after its release, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which could be bought cheaper... from the very beginning.
Resident Evil 2 is also one of the three best-rated games of the last 12 months (with a score of 93% - based on data from Metacritic). The second work that can boast such a high score is the Nintendo Switch port of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and the third is the PC edition of Red Dead Redemption 2 (despite its technical problems). The infamous title of the worst-reviewed production was taken by Eternity: The Last Unicorn (36%).
The most popular titles of 2019
The games that were most frequently hosted by the media in 2019 were Fortnite, Death Stranding and Apex Legends. The top five is closed by the controversial Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Borderlands 3. Sixth place went to Cyberpunk 2077. Interestingly, this is also the only title in the list that hasn't been released yet.
The work of CD Projekt RED also appears in the lists of games mentioned most often on Twitter (here it also ranks sixth, ex aequo with Mortal Kombat 11) and the most viewed presentations on E3 2019 (CP2077 dominates this list with 48 million views - 20 million more than second place - Marvel's Avengers). The most popular YouTube game, in turn, is Minecraft, which has overtaken Fortnite by 40 billion views.
Among the so-called Influencers, Jelly, PewDiePie and BCCTrolling have been most popular in the last 12 months.
New IP? Sony and not much except that
Out of six great publishers gathered in Gamesindustry.biz's summary, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Activision and Ubisoft, the first company created the biggest number of new IPs in the past year, as much as seven, (not always big - it should be remembered that the Japanese also supported PlayStation VR). This is all the more impressive as all the other companies together have launched five non-sequel games on the market. The most active publisher was Nintendo (16 productions, 2 new IPs). The most lazy one - Activision (4 items, one new IP).
Some tidbits
At the very end of this infographic, there are some interesting facts about the gaming market in the last 12 months. For example, of the 2520 games that were available on the Nintendo Switch console in the 39th week of the past year, as many as 1052 were released in 2019. The statistics of attendance at trade fairs are also interesting - the biggest events (GDC, E3, gamescom, Tokyo Game Show) were visited by 730176 people in total.
