Join The Club
The gaming industry's in a bit of a state, defined these days by extreme consolidation, massive waves of layoffs as the pandemic boom fades into memory, and skyrocketing hardware prices we're calling the RAMpocalypse. But that doesn't mean less money's going around: quite the opposite, in fact.
A quarterly Global Games Market Report was published last Thursday by gaming market research firm Newzoo, and it states that the "global games market closed 2025 at $201.6 billion (+9.1% year over year), crossing the $200 billion threshold for the first time." This surpassed prior estimates from Newzoo, and is despite "weaker-than-expected" performance from Nintendo and generally "modest" console market growth.
In other words, PC led the charge with Newzoo's strongest recorded growth rate so far: $43.6 billion (+12.0% year over year). The report reckons the sheer variety of popular games across different price points is responsible: full price mega-hits like Battlefield 6 were balanced out by acclaimed, cheaper games like Clair Obscur. Microtransactions are a big slice as well, with games like Roblox raking in cash.
For comparison, console revenues were a bit higher at around $44.7 billion, but came with a much smaller growth rate of +2.8% year over year. As you might expect, mobile revenues were the highest with over double what PC or consoles brought in: a whopping $113.3 billion. Still, its growth rate remains just under that of the PC.
You can read the full analysis in the report, but the highlights are what you might predict: memory costs are making it harder to get into gaming, analysts expect GTA 6 to hit the market like an atom bomb, and Newzoo doesn't foresee PC having quite the stacked year it did in 2025 this time around (even with September full to bursting as it is with hotly anticipated games).
It's remarkably dissonant with, say, the current 'Xbox reset' which has Microsoft cancelling games and looking to ax studios left and right. With the console wars resuming and unions still battling to get a word in, it's hard to conclude all this cash is being used to sustainably bring the industry forward.
