Despite reduced commuting, mobile gaming thrived in 2020, raking in revenue and comprising eight of the top ten free-to-play titles in global revenue. The mobile gaming sector accounted for 59 percent of all gaming revenue last year, totaling more than $73.8 billion globally. This represents a 10 percent year-over-year growth. North American mobile gamers continued to play Pokemon Go (which brought in a record $1.9B in 2020) and Candy Crush Saga ($1.7B), while Asian markets preferred titles such as Peacekeeper Elite ($2.3B), the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile, and Honor of Kings ($2.5B).
Free-to-play games generated 78 percent of total games revenue, representing a nine percent year-over-year growth. Most of those earnings came from the Asian market. However, premium game title revenue saw a much steeper annual increase at 28 percent driven by highly-anticipated releases such as The Last of Us: Part II, Doom Eternal, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
In the world of premium games, Call of Duty and sports titles generated the most revenue, accounting for six of the top ten earners in 2020. In the No. 1 spot, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare brought in $1.9 billion, nearly double FIFA 20’s $1 billion in second. Nine of the ten top earning premium titles featured a multiplayer option, though single player games still performed strongly. DOOM Eternal ranked No. 10, bringing in $454 million. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons held the No. 7 spot with $654 million in revenue.
Sales of standalone virtual reality (VR) devices, such as the Oculus Quest 2, grew 19 percent year-over-year, but were impacted by supply issues, causing shipments of headsets to drop 15 percent. Those with VR units engaged with them 71 percent more often than last year, while VR game revenue as a whole increased 25 percent year-over-year.
Gaming video content, such as Twitch streams and YouTube videos, reached 1.2 billion viewers in 2020, accounting for $9.3 billion in revenue. Brands and celebrities stepped into the gaming space in new ways, creating virtual events for those stuck at home to participate in. Fortnite held a Travis Scott concert which accumulated 45 million views across five events and also hosted a crossover event with Marvel featuring major characters in-game.
Meanwhile, Lil Nas X performed an in-game concert in Roblox, garnering 33 million views while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed Among Us in what is now one of the most-watched streams in Twitch’s history with over 5.6 million views to date.
With the rollout of a vaccine and more people leaving their homes, SuperData does not anticipate 2021 will have the same growth trends as 2020. However, it does predict gaming and interactive media will increase two percent year-over-year. As a whole, the games industry has continued to increase in total global revenue every year for the past decade.
Photo courtesy of Naughty Dog