A recently published study shows that the German gaming market will also record significant growth in 2023. Nevertheless, sales surprisingly fell in some places.
Those: Canva
Anyone who has been following what is happening in the gaming industry in recent months may have noticed that there have already been layoffs and cutbacks in many places. While sales of games, games hardware and gaming online services increased by six percent compared to last year, the number of games sold fell by 8 percent. Development studios in particular are now feeling this. In many places these have already been reduced in size or even closed completely. More top-class titles were published within twelve months than ever before. Nevertheless, some sales expectations were not met, particularly due to this variety of outstanding games.
2023: A year of contrasts
The numbers come from game.de, the association of the German games industry. The data is based on surveys by the consumer panel services GfK and data.ai. In the case of GfK, this includes, among other things, an “ongoing survey of 25,000 consumers about their purchasing and usage habits for digital games”. According to this information, the biggest growth drivers include game consoles and their accessories as well as in-game and in-app purchases. In concrete terms, the German games market was able to generate 9.97 billion euros. Nevertheless, some areas suffered at the same time. The sales of the games market are broken down as follows:
Those: game.de
Online gaming services, i.e. network, cloud and subscription services, recorded negative sales. This division recorded negative growth of -1 percent. Overall, these numbers can be viewed as stabilization.
More consoles, fewer PCs
In the area of games hardware there is also a rather mixed picture. While sales of game consoles have made a big leap forward in 2023, sales of gaming PCs continue to decline. Nevertheless, the largest share of the hardware division is accessories for gaming PCs.
A total of 1.255 billion euros were generated through the sale of input devices, monitors, graphics cards and VR headsets. Nevertheless, this area recorded a decrease of seven percent compared to 2022.
Those: game.de
According to Felix Falk, this is not worrying. The managing director of the game association said that many gamers had already invested in their PCs and laptops during the corona pandemic. He noted that many of them felt that they were technically well equipped for the time being. He further explained that the increase in sales of game consoles was probably due to the fact that the PlayStation 5 was now permanently available in stores and the offers had been used accordingly.
So far there are no predictions as to how the game year 2024 could develop. However, since no release of new consoles has been announced yet, there could be a decline in sales. The successor to the Switch is not scheduled to appear until 2025.