As the year comes to an end, year-end statistics are trickling out from every which way. Over the weekend, the China Game Industry Annual Conference’s China Games Party has released info on how much revenue the Chinese game industry has brought in over the course of 2013. Chinese video game companies pulled in over $US13 billion last year, 13 billion.
Of course the China number only represents, well, China. In comparison, according to Gartner’s numbers from October, global gaming revenue is expected to hit $US93 billion. The report says that mobile games are the fastest growing segment of video games. Also, note that Gartner’s report also takes into account console games — in China, console games sales don’t really factor in. Mobile games are growing, but the biggest bread winner this year are still online client-based games.
Indeed, the majority of the $US13 billion, about $US8.7 billion, came from online client-based games. In the graphs provided by Chinese gaming site 173173.com, we can see that alongside client-based games, significant revenue came from browser-based games and mobile games.
GamesInAsia editor Charlie Custer aptly sums up the significant role the PC played in all this:
The results may come as a surprise to those who see mobile as the future of gaming, especially in Asia, as they prove that overwhelmingly, China’s paying gamers are still on the PC platform. In fact, if you count browser games as PC games as well (since they often can’t be played easily on mobile devices), then PC games accounted for more than 80 per cent of the revenue generated by China’s games industry this year.
On top of the rise in revenue, it’s also shown that domestic game makers from China are also growing. 173173.com reports that domestic Chinese game developers made up the bulk of the revenue brought in during 2013.
The report doesn’t take into account how much revenue came in from international markets, but with China’s domestic markets getting better and with Chinese companies taking an interest in foreign companies/markets, we can only expect China’s gaming industry to continue growing. I mean… the games are getting better, even though many of them are outsourced.
Top Photo: Geschaft|Shutterstock
Comments
3 responses to “China’s Video Game Industry Pulled In Over $US13 Billion. Yes, Billion.”
I’m thinking most of the money will be from f2p MMOs.
I wonder how much of the mmo revenue is from gold farming via slave labor etc in the prison system?
13 dollars per person in china isn’t really that impressive.
Well, one of them is TenCent, which has the majority stake League of Legend’s creator Riot and runs the local server as well. Pretty sure they make a hell of a lot alone.