Global Gaming Market: Industry Trends and Segment Opportunities
A brief overview of the vast worldwide market opportunities presented by the global gaming sector.
The Gaming Industry Innovation Roadmap will document the many different segment opportunities that make up the overall sector.
The global gaming industry will be worth $321 billion by 2026, according to PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2022-26.
ExplodingTopics provides a list of the individual driving trends shaping the growth of the industry:
- Roblox Helps Scale Indie Gaming – Large-scale platforms like Roblox make it easier for independent studios to create and distribute games.
- Increased Diversity In Games – Games like Animal Crossing have helped bring in more women to the console, PC and esports gaming world.
- New PC Gaming Platforms Challenge Steam – The PC gaming industry is worth approximately $35 billion, and it’s dominance by Steam is being challenged by new entrants.
- Cloud Gaming Services Grow And Expand – Online streaming of games enables you to browse thousands of titles, and purchase a game instantly without needing to leave your house. The sector has grown by 400% over the last 5 years.
- Next Gen Consoles Battle It Out – The console giants Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch will largely determine the biggest gaming industry trends for the next few years.
- More Remakes And Reboots – Like Hollywood, the gaming industry is starting to realize that remakes and reboots sell well. And, unlike a completely new franchise, they’re less likely to bomb.
- Early Access Changes The Game Development Process – Developers use Early Access as a way to get feedback from actual players. Feedback that can ultimately change the direction of a game.
Cloud Gaming: Micro-cluster opportunities
The critical point about the roadmap and industry segments is that there is both opportunity for games and also for all the related infrastructure components and the innovations that enhance them.
‘Cloud Gaming’ is a great example of segment offering both ‘Gaming as a Service’ and technology infrastructure markets. ShadowTech explains what Cloud Gaming is, and Facebook and Google provide guides to the underlying technologies that power it. The global cloud gaming market size accounted for $691.6 million in 2021 and is anticipated to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 45.8% from 2022 to 2030.
Identifying and focusing on these specialized niches, rather than trying to address the whole gaming market, is a great way for Scotland to build innovation programs that yield practical, high value success.
For example Cloud Gaming offers a real-world Scottish success story that highlights the commercial opportunity: Cloudgine, an Edinburgh-based startup, was acquired by Epic in 2018.
As the news highlights Epic acquired them for the ability to enable their Unreal Engine to span out and harness Cloud resources to expand its processing capacity.
“Cloudgine’s tech uses cloud servers to enable console, PC, and virtual reality games to render content and interactive objects without worrying about the platform. This is a concept that has shown up in a handful of games, like Titanfall and Forza Motorsport 7. In those online shooters and racing games, the developers offload artificial intelligence routines to the cloud.”
The gaming sector is a major driver of technology advances, with the Blockchain and the Metaverse opening up yet more vast universes of new opportunity. Scotland, with it’s small size but relatively large game development capability, can identify and carve out hyper-scale niche specialisms that cultivate multiple commercial ventures, each with considerable revenue potential.
