Every year a firm by the name of PwC goes through the stats and makes predictions about games, technology and entertainment. A growth rate of 6.3% compound annual growth rate for the U.S console game market has been predicted. The nitty gritty details are available on the website for everyone to look at, but the break down is pretty basic. The $21 billion console game industry (as of 2016) is expected to grow up to $28.5 billion by 2021. PC microtransactions on the other hand are expected to grow from $3 billion (as of 2016) to $4.2 billion by 2021 at a rate of 7%. PwC does believe that VR and esports will grow faster than both.
Even the casual gaming industry is doing well, going from $7.9 billion (as of 2016) to a whopping $12.1 billion by 2021. That’s 9%. Those numbers might seem small, but that’s a heck of a lot of money from people who aren’t all that serious about gaming. PwC predicts that social and casual games will surpass console games sometime this year.
Now, the technology for VR is kind of new, but that doesn’t stop people from buying it. PwC say that VR is expected to grow from “” as of 2016 to $4.6 billion by 2021. Pretty good for new tech. The firm also predicts 68 million VR headsets will be in use by 2021 at a whopping 69.2% CAGR.
Esports, on the other hand, are taking the cake. Over the years they’ve grown more and more popular with games like Starcraft 2 and LoL/DotA and more recently Overwatch increasing its popularity. Just the ad revenue from these esports streams is expected to go from $33 million in the States alone to $148 million by 2021. That’s just ad revenue. And that’s just in the U.S!
It’s good to be a gamer.
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