The Video Game Industry in 2020
By Chris Price
The year 2020 was a hard year for most industries with the covid-19 pamdemic and the lockdown of business. But The video game industry had one of their best years financially. Not only that, video games became an important activty in people’s lives. The Nintendo Switch console sold out at the very start of the pandemic; Playstation 5 and XBOX series X which were released at the end of the year sold out online and at all retail stores. While other entertainment industries such as movies had major financial losses the video game industry had a massive growth around the world.
Fifty-five percent of North Americans played video games in 2020 and approximately twenty-seven percent of them used games to stay connected with family and friends or to make new friends by playing online video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: War Zone and Fall guys.
Mobile games that are played on cellphones and tablets are massively popular and make up a huge portion of the video game market. Mobile game developers benefited from a very lucrative year. It was a seventy-three million dollars business in 2020. Although Mobile games are more popular in Asia than in North America, their popularity continues to grow worldwide.
Subscription services (such as Playstation plus, xbox live and Nintendo Switch Online) have become more prominent in the past year with Call Of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Sports game titles such as NHL, NBA 2K and FIFA. The post launch support to play many of these games on line can be very successful for long term revenues.
High quality single player games also did extremely well in 2020 and brought a lot of money to the game developers. A prime example of this is Cyberpunk 2077. This game became a big success because, not only did it sell this game, it helped to launch the next generation of game consoles (Playstation 5 and XBOX series X).
Video Games are being enjoyed by more and more people and during this past year the sales of these video games have increased so much that video game companies are having a hard time keeping inventory of both games and consoles in stock.
Reference:
https://www.inverse.com/gaming/2020-video-game-statistics-superdata-nielsen
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 