Half the world's population now plays video games - we're winning

It’s official, half of the world’s population are gamers, which means we’re halfway there to world domination.

A new market report by analyst firm DFC Intelligence has estimated that 3.7 billion people play video games, with the number of gamers rising by 700 million in the last three years.

While there could be a number of factors contributing to this growth, a safe bet would be the introduction of the latest console generations, Xbox Series X/S and PS5, gaming subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation+, as well as a stronger presence of video games in everyday media, such as the highly rated The Last Of Us TV show.

Interestingly, only about 10% of that statistic contributes to the gaming industry’s revenue, making the number of actual active consumers around 370 million strong, still a pretty impressive number.

This figure can then be condensed even further when taking into consideration what platforms are played on, the most popular brands or genres, and the divide between single-player and multiplayer gamers.

It’s estimated that in 2022 the video game industry generated $184.4 billion in revenue. Mobile gaming was largely responsible for this, earning $92.2 billion (50%) of the earnings, followed by console gaming which generated around $51.8 billion (28%), and PC gaming generating about $38.2 billion.

As gaming continues to push the boundaries of visuals, storytelling, and fun, it’s more than likely that more and more of the population will become gamers, we’re inevitable and there’s nothing that can stop us now.