180 billion dollars was the revenue of the video game industry in 2021.

93.2 billion came from mobile gaming.
52% of revenue

50.4 billion came from console gaming.
27.9% of revenue

36.7 billion came from PC gaming.
20%

Comparing that, in 2012, the video game market had total combined revenue’s of 63 billion globally, putting the industry at a 186% increase in ten years.

Breaking that down, wanted to see it by segment, to see where the most growth came from.

Consoles

37 billion was the 2012 revenue.
Up 36% in ten years.

PC

20 billion was the 2012 revenue.
Up 83.5% in ten years.

Mobile

12.7 billion was the 2012 revenue.
Up 633% in ten years.

For gaming, the growth in both console and PC gaming is impressive, but nothing even close to mobile gaming, which is growing at such insane levels, it could be over 70% of the gaming market before the end of the decade.

Reading this, it brings up a really big question and that’s are companies wasting money on the metaverse?

Facebook rebranded to “Meta”, betting on a metaverse future.
10.5 billion dollars has been invested in metaverse startups.
280 billion is expected to be the market cap for private companies developing products in the metaverse by 2025.

The metaverse excites people with this vision of making a virtual reality internet run by VR, but looking at the gaming market, the numbers show it could be a niche market, versus what consumers want.

A simple example of this would be mobile gaming before smart phones entered the picture, the GameBoy & Nintendo DS.

Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 in 1996.
33 million units sold.
393 games were made for the system.
52 games sold over 1 million units.
1 sold over 10 million units.

Nintendo released the GameBoy Color in 1998.
118 million units sold.
915 games were made.
53 games sold over 1 million copies.
5 games sold over 10 million copies, with the original pokemon games selling 46 million copies, putting it at 4x Mario 64 which was the number one for the Nintendo 64 at 11 million.

Those systems both lasted five years before being replaced by the GameCube and the GameBoy advanced, but for Nintendo, GameBoy was a way bigger hit, selling both more units and software.

Next up, the Nintendo DS versus the Nintendo Wii.

The Wii came out in 2006.
101 million units sold.
1565 games were made for it.
63 games sold a million copies.
8 sold over 10 million copies, not counting Wii Sports, which came with it.

The Nintendo DS came out in 2004.
The DS sold 154 million units on the original model and DS lite.
2957 games were made.
73 games sold over 1 million copies.
10 games solver over 10 million copies.

While closer over the Nintendo 64 vs the GameBoy, the DS still outperformed the Wii by a noticeable amount in units and software sold.

This is why the Nintendo for the Switch, found success competing with Sony & Microsoft by making that system a hybrid of mobile and console gaming, with a visible lean on mobile.

Which looking at the current gaming market, it was a good move.

103 million Nintendo Switches sold.

Which is set to break the lifetime sales on the PS4 this year, which sold 116 million units.
It also has sold over 2x the total sales of the Xbox One, which had lifetime sales of 51 million units.

Again, a huge case for mobile winning.

This makes me a huge skeptic against the potential metaverse and VR are being hyped for, where I think most people pushing it tend to be older millennials, who don’t really have a concept of what is actually fun, but are just making excuses for something that doesn’t seem to be capturing interest.

This week, more hours will be spent on Candy Crush versus what will be spent playing VR games in North America for the rest of the year.

I obviously see a fun future in VR, but there’s this trillion dollar bet, where it seems the numbers show people want better mobile games and not a $500 headpiece that causes headaches and they can’t use for over 30 minutes.