Worldwide Gaming Market Now Worth $91 Billion

In their year-in-review for 2016, SuperData Research has crunched the numbers and revealed that the gaming industry is as big as it has ever been, generating $91 Billion in 2016. Of this whole $91 billion pie, the bulk was made up of mobile gaming market earning $40.6 billion this year thanks to the massive popularity of Pokemon GO and other blockbuster games. The top earners were Monster Strike which earned a $1.3B total, followed by Clash of Clans at $1.2B then by Clash Royale at $1.1B. Although games such as Game of War: Fire Age and Mobile Strike did not break the $1B mark this year, they nonetheless earned considerably well at $0.91B and $0.90B respectively. Mobile games revenue is projected to reach $54.5B by 2019 and remains considerably strong in the Asian region in 2016, accounting for $24.9B of the $40.6B total. The North American market in comparison is at a distant second with only $6.9B followed by Europe with a $5.7B share of the pie.

It also comes as no surprise that PC gaming has surged this year with the popularity of eSports and growth of free-to-play games, reaching $34B in revenue. Games like Blizzard’s Overwatch fueled a lot of enthusiasm, coupled with the launch of next generation graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA that boost performance by a considerable 40% leap. League of Legends continues to be the king of the hill in terms of PC gaming revenue and among all the free-to-play PC games which account for $18.6B of the $34B pie, the title earned $1.7B followed closely by Dungeon Fighter Challenge at $1.1B and Crossfire at $1.1B. World of Tanks and DOTA 2 remain popular in the free-to-play market as well, although both are at a distance 4th and 5th earning less than the top three even when combined at $0.40B and $0.26B respectively. The now seven year-old League of Legends earns an estimated $150M a month while DOTA2 earns $23.4M a month in 2016, demonstrating how faithful MOBA players are to established titles and how difficult this segment of the market is for new titles to penetrate. Just like the mobile market, the Asian region accounts for the bulk of the gaming revenue at $12.5B, which is more than the rest combined. Europe and North America earned $2.8B and $2.2B respectively.