Newzoo is reporting that game revenues will grow to $70.4 billion worldwide this year, representing a 6 percent year-on-year increase. At the same time, the number of people who play games is expected to surpass 1.2 billion by the end of 2013.
Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region should see the highest growth at about 11 percent, while North America and Europe will show very modest growth. The market for smartphone and tablet games will grow 35 percent to $12.3 billion, easily outpacing any other segment while the PC grosses the largest share with 39 percent or $27.6 billion.
Asia-Pacific is expected to become the largest game market in the world at $25.1 billion $3.0 billion. The North American market will increase slightly to $22.8 billion followed by gains in the EMEA region with $19.5 billion and a growing Latin America that is still relatively small at $3.0 billion.
“Over the past year, we have received an increasing number of inquiries about the availability of a consistent and clearly defined set of numbers showing the ‘total picture’ for the games market: not just revenues, but also the absolute numbers of players as well as paying players broken down in segments and regions,” adds Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo. “I am very pleased we are now able to provide this resource to our clients using our new Global Data Model, which we started to develop in 2012.”
Consoles will be $30.6 billion or 43 percent of global games revenues, including all DLC spend and business-to-consumer second-hand trade. Traditional PC gaming (downloads and boxed) is expected to contract slightly to $6.0 billion, offset by 14 percent year-on-year growth for MMO games at $14.9 billion.
Meanwhile, game revenues generated by tablet and smartphones will gross 18 percent of the global games market, surpassing $12 billion. This amount is roughly double the amount spent on games for handheld consoles, and tablets are expected to have 78 percent growth while handheld console games will have a 21 percent decline.
Newzoo noted that the computer screen (encompassing boxed or downloaded, casual, social and MMO games) generating 39 percent of all revenues compared to 36 percent for the TV or Entertainment Screen. Meanwhile, the Personal Screen or mobile phone will show global growth of 22 percent over last year and account for 12 percent of global games market revenues.
