U.S. Online video gaming subscriptions are predicted to near $3B in annual revenue for leading publishers.
The increase in people turning to online gaming during the Corona-virus pandemic is proving to be a boom for the game industry. According to some recent research conducted by Parks Associates the revenue generated by the U.S. cloud gaming market will near $3B is subscription revenue. A growing 30% of U.S. households have expressed interest in gaming subscriptions.
The Dallas based IoT Market and Research Consulting Firm is reporting that a staggering 75% of U.S. households with broadband play some form of video game for at least an hour per week. That ramps up to 22 hours a week for those that classify themselves as “gamers.” The PC market seems to have had the biggest gains compared to consoles.
“There is a renewed interest in offering cloud gaming services that replicate Netflix’s value proposition by allowing consumers to stream games over the internet, across multiple platforms, and without having to download files or use local processing power.”
senior analyst Kristen Hanich
Kristen Hanich, a Senior Analyst with Parks Associates, estimates the video gaming market has the potential to generate more revenue when service-stacking. This is especially valid for add-on sales because players that play across multiple platforms have proven to be a key consumer segment target for new rollouts.
It would come as no surprise that the hours spent on playing online games has increased since the COVID-19 outbreak. The growth of PC online gaming is far surpassing that of consoles. In fact according to Park’s research, gaming consoles proved to be the only platform where an actual decline occurred from Q3 to Q1, 2020.
Here at GameGlance, we anticipate there will be a large increase in casual mobile gaming as well. More and more people are turning towards their mobile devices because of social distancing policies. In the recent past, people may have enjoyed chatting to friends and family in person. Whereas now they restricted to a degree from doing so, they are turning to mobile devices to fill the void. Additionally, when stay-at-home orders are relaxed more people will leave the home (thus the PC) and use their mobile devices as their means of engagement.
