A new report from DFC Intelligence has revealed more about gamers around the world and what platforms they currently play on. The report analysed consumers from a variety of regions including Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Europe and Asia with the goal of identifying the overarching modern consumer interests of gamers.
The results, as broken down by IGN, reveal nearly 3.1 billion people around the world now play games (around 40 per cent of the total population), with 8 per cent being “dedicated” console consumers and 48 per cent identifying as PC game consumers. That’s 1.5 billion people — although the report notes this statistic does overlap with people who used PCs as well as consoles and mobile devices.
Still, it’s an impressive statistic and highlights the growing popularity of PC gaming, as well as the move away from consoles. As we move into the next console generation, it’ll be interesting to see how much this PC uptake impacts the sales of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Of the regions analysed, Asia had the highest proportion of overall players with 1.42 billion paying game consumers. Europe was second with 668 million gamers, Latin America third with 383 million and North America next at 261 million. These consumers played games across PC, console and mobile devices.
While the report proved the video games industry as a whole is growing rapidly, it singled out mobile gaming as the highest growth sector. Asia boasted a 53 per cent base of mobile-only users, followed by 17 per cent in Europe and 11 per cent in Latin America.
Mobile gaming has blown up in recent years and continues to perform strongly as more AAA developers and publishers turned attention towards the platform, including heavy hitters like Apple and Nintendo. Several factors have buoyed this growth, including the launch of popular mobile titles like Pokémon Go and Mario Kart Tour, new mobile gaming services like Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass and the renewed attention on phones as gaming devices.
With mobile gaming contributing to 60 per cent of global gaming revenue in 2019, we’re sure to see its popularity rise in the coming years. Alongside PC gaming, it’s currently experiencing a major resurgence likely to shape the plans of all major developers in future.
You can view the full DFC report, including their analysis on video game consumption in 2020, behind a paywall here.
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