Global Video Game Market Report 2027

The global video game market is projected to approach $300 billion by 2027, according to a ResearchAndMarkets.com forecast reported in April 2022, with mobile accounting for more than half of that total. The projection puts mobile at $153.5 billion on an 11.5% CAGR, consoles growing at 9.2%, and PC at 5.1%. China is expected to reach $82.4 billion by 2027 at a 10.3% CAGR. For context, Newzoo put 2021 global revenues at $180.3 billion, up 1.4% year over year, with mobile surpassing $90 billion (up 4.4%) and cloud gaming forecast to reach $6.3 billion by 2024.

A companion analysis from AppMagic examines 2021 genre performance in the Tier-1 West region (US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France). It covers games aimed at global audiences and ranks the top 20 genres by in-app net revenue and by downloads, drawing on a classification of more than 150,000 apps. Ad revenue is excluded from the revenue figures.

On revenue, Slots, Match-3, 4X Strategy and Team RPG form a dominant top four. Slots remain extremely hard to enter, as none of 63 new releases reached the top 20. Royal Match took roughly 9% of Match-3, while Zen Match's tile variant generated over $6M monthly. All notable new 4X hits came from Asian publishers, often using Western franchises. Cookie Run: Kingdom earned $21M in December. Supercell's strategy titles doubled the segment's monthly revenue to $70M. Action RPG/MMORPG shows short product lifespans despite 110 new releases. Farm games stand out as a growing, low-competition genre with only nine new releases and $62M in monthly revenue. Pokémon GO generated $320M, down 9%, and accounts for 95% of location-based AR.

On downloads, Hypercasual leads with 2,700 new releases, three times the 2020 count. Love Fantasy reached number one in Match-3 downloads using ad monetization. Retro Bowl and Rocket League Sideswipe (12M December downloads) were standout sports launches. Runners are dominated by established franchises, while Solitaire and Word Puzzle appear friendlier to smaller developers, though Word Puzzle is declining.