A contemplative Juneteenth to you War & Peaceniks! Shall We Play A Game?
This is part two of a series on all four fronts in Streaming Wars II: Media’s new battle for your money and attention. We’ve covered Audio. Soon we’ll tackle Social and Video.
But, today: It’s Gaming Royale!
The data-strip above portrays the current state of the Gaming Industry ecosystem. While it isn’t every player or publisher in the space, these are the 14 most powerful companies in gaming… plus GameStop. Before we dig into what it tells us, some basic, relatively unknown facts about the Gaming Industry:
There are 3 billion gamers in the world.
The world’s heaviest gamers are not under kids under 18, but Adults 25-45.
Gaming generated $198 billion in revenue in 2021, making it the largest segment of the media economy – surpassing linear TV – worldwide.
52% of gaming is mobile.
Asia/Pacific does 51% of the world’s gaming. Latin America: 14%. EMEA: 27%. North America: just 9.8%.
In 1Q gamers streamed 8 billion video hours, about gaming. Twitch alone streamed 6 billion video hours in 1Q 2022.
The top ten gaming companies account for 64% of all gaming revenue.
Just four companies; Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, Apple and Google; account for nearly half of the world’s revenues in the world’s largest entertainment segment.
Now, let’s dig into the Gaming Industry data-strip and what it means looking ahead.
Every front of Streaming Wars II features a spectrum of combatants: legacy players, new-coming disruptors, genre specialists, and multifaceted multinational-ists. The Gaming Industry was actually the first media arena to feature this style of business-model-battle-royale. Microsoft, Sony and Tencent have long been both players and disruptors in the space, jockeying for leverage with studios like EA and platforms like Sony and Nintendo for decades.
The best way to handicap all these Ready Players is to look at how they play the game, using the Streaming Wars II Four Rules of Engagement:
Single Platform Players Will Struggle For Profits Against Big Tech Death Stars Who Do Not Need To.
Change Will Come From Where You Least Expect It.
Disrupters Will Get Disrupted.
The Universe Is Always Consolidating.
The intricate, complicated, cross-pollinated, somewhat incestuous nature of the Gaming Industry weaves these four Rules together even more so than the other three segments of the Streaming Wars. So, rather than take them on the rules one at a time, I’ll attack it like a massively multi-player online case study game (MMOSCG).
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