Report: Digital Games Sales Reach $61B in 2015, Up 8%

SuperData Research reports that “in 2015 the worldwide digital games market totals $61B across platforms, up 8% year-over-year.”

But a couple of possible surprises:

  • The PC lives.
  • So does the console.

Of course, the biggest category is mobile, which earned $25.8B (up 10% YOY). The biggest percentage jump came in console games, “despite being one of the smaller categories at $4B annually.”

Other interesting trends:

  • “Sales figures points toward a shift in the industry as more consumers have adopted digitally distributed games and free-to-play.”
  • “Not all segments were posting positive numbers, as social games remained largely stable (-0.8%).”
  • “Subscription-based gaming continue on its downward spiral (-4%).”

Said SuperData CEO and founder Joost van Dreunen (as quoted by CNBC.com): “Sales figures points toward a shift in the industry as more consumers have adopted digitally distributed games and free-to-play.”

In terms of individual games, Riot’s League of Legends again was the big winner, raking in $1.6B. The report notes that “despite not being a household names in the west, games like CrossFire and Dungeon Fighter Online perform well thanks to the strength and momentum in markets like South Korea and China.”

The biggest publisher is no surprise: Activision. The report describes “a market picture in which Activision currently dominates. Earning the firm $2.9B in 2015, Activision controlled six of the 30 top spots across platforms, including the titles that came under its ownership following the acquisition of King Digital late last year.”

Another note: Don’t throw out the desktop just yet, as PC games out-earned mobile games.

SuperData Top 10 2015 (5)

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s