Game Market Predictions: Figures from 7 Analytical Agencies

Game development today is not only interesting, but also profitable. The volume of the gaming market is already surpassing the film industry and catching up with the sports market, and the revenues of some gaming companies are estimated in billions of dollars. But what awaits the industry, and what are its prospects? In this article, I will provide short excerpts and graphs on this topic from leading world research agencies: SuperData , Digi-Capital , NewZoo , SensorTower , Zenna Apps , AppAnnie , J'son & partners .

Game Market Volume

According to SuperData analysts, games earned $ 64.7 billion in 2015, while mobile games earned $ 24.7 billion:



But Digi-Capital is more optimistic in their estimates and believes that in 2015 the size of the mobile market amounted to $ 29 billion, while by 2018 it will grow to $ 45 billion by 2018. This is reported by the Venturebeat resource.

Newzoo experts published a study in which the estimated size of the mobile games market is $ 30 billion:



Well, AppAnnie analysts estimated the volume of the mobile market in 2015 at $ 34 billion:



It is interesting to compare these data with the forecast from J'son & Partners, which they published in 2012:



According to this forecast, mobile games should earn $ 15.4 billion in 2016. The forecast is clearly erroneous, since in 2015 mobile games earned clearly more. This gives hope that analysts' forecasts for 2018 are also underestimated, and the games will earn even more.

Game Market Structure by Region

Diagrams of revenue distribution of mobile games by region from Digi-Capital and NewZoo:





Asia leads by a wide margin. China, Korea and Japan are among the four leaders in revenue in 2015. At the same time, China is growing fastest:

Most Earned Games and Publishers

An open SensorTower report provides data on the most profitable mobile games and publishers:



Not a single Russian company was in the top:

Russian market structure

NewZoo published an infographic for Russia, from which it follows that the volume of the Russian market in the revenue of all games for 2015 is $ 1.3 billion.



At the same time, the volume of the mobile market is $ 308 million of them. This is already Google data, which the company shared at the Mobile Day conference.

The most complete open data on the Russian mobile market is presented in the infographic from Zenna Apps:



If you carefully study this data, you can see a typo. $ 88.1 does not mean the size of the Russian market, but 88.1 million users of mobile Internet according to the forecast for 2018. Zenna Apps estimates the size of the Russian market in 2016 at $ 707 million.

If we talk not only about numbers, but about trends in the development of games, their launch platforms, genres and prospects for gamedev in Russia, then you can see a round table on this topic gaming industry. This story is described in another article on Habr .

Afterword

As we can see, analysts from different research companies can diverge for many billions of dollars in assessing market volumes, but they all agree on one thing - the market will grow and develop. And this is good!
If you have links to other recent figures on the game market or your own ratings, then share in the comments.