The paid competitive gaming or PCG market is expected to reach $16 billion by 2024, according to a report launched this week at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. The industry is growing 6X faster than the overall global mobile games market with a CAGR of 31.9 per cent from 2021 to 2024.
The overall global mobile gaming market is expected to reach $223 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.9 per cent.
India is the second largest paid competitive gaming (PCG) market and is projected to grow to $3.5 billion by 2024.
The report, a collaborative effort between video game and gamer data firm Newzoo and the Mobile Premier League (MPL), chronicles the rise of the promising gaming segment and trends in this space. It is based on a consulting analysis by Newzoo and a customised research conducted by the company in 2022 on 24,562 respondents across 12 of the largest gaming markets.
The gaming industry has undergone a paradigm shift since the introduction of the pay-to-play model in the 1970s and the subsequent free-to-play model in the 2000s. Today, there are four distinct ways to monetize games: Subscription Services, Rewarded Ads, Play & Earn, and PCG.
Tony Habschmidt, head of consulting at Newzoo, said, “This shift highlights that publishers are embracing new and innovative models, while players are expecting new and inventive forms of interaction with their favorite games.”
Habschmidt added that the PCG has become a burgeoning example of this, and focuses on offering players the ability to monetize their experiences with and through other players, opening up the potential to be rewarded for their skills. As new players are drawn to it from traditional forms of gaming and from adjacent entertainment realms like sports and social media, PCG will democratise and redefine the industry.
According to the report, the US, India, Mexico, the UK and Germany are forecast to be the top markets for PCG. The US, which is currently the largest gaming market in the world, is also leading the way in PCG, with an estimated value of $3 billion in 2021. It is projected to grow at a CAGR of 29.4 per cent, reaching $6.6 billion by 2024 (representing 33 per cent of the total mobile gaming market).
India is the second largest PCG market and is projected to grow to $3.5 billion by 2024. India along with Mexico are the fastest growing PCG markets with a CAGR of 33.3 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively. The UK and Germany are growing at a rate of 21.9 per cent and 20.6 per cent, respectively.
It also said mobile is gaming’s biggest and fastest-growing segment, by player numbers and revenues alike. In 2021, the global gaming industry saw 2.8 billion mobile gamers contributing over 50 per cent of the global gaming revenue and is forecasted to grow even further to $113.0 billion by 2024 with 3.1 billion players. PC gaming had 1.4 billion players in 2021, expected to rise to 1.5 billion by 2024, and console gaming had 871 million players in 2021, projected to increase to 943 million in 2024.
Cross-platform play is popular, with significant overlap between the platforms. Newzoo estimates that there will be over 3 billion gamers globally by 2024.
Read all the Latest Business News here
