According to data presented by SportsLens.com, the number of people playing video games is expected to grow by 100 million year-over-year and hit 1.1 billion in 2023. This means that one-seventh of the World’s population plays online games.
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Gaming has often been stereotyped as isolating and unsociable, but the pandemic has shown that this could not be further from the truth. Millions of people picked up their controllers and keyboards to escape the boredom and isolation of COVID-19 lockdowns, searching for a way to entertain themselves and maintain social connections. Online games were the number one choice for many.
Statista survey suggests that there were around 835 million online gamers three years ago. After the pandemic hit, this number jumped to over one billion in a matter of months and continued rising. In 2021, there were already 1.1 billion online gamers, but the number slipped to 1.07bn in 2022, one of the most challenging years for the entire game industry.
Although annual user growth will slow down, more than 67 million people are still expected to join the online gaming community by 2025, with the total number of users reaching close to 1.2 billion people.
While China and the United States alone generate 46% of total online gaming revenues, the US is not even in the top three countries when looking at the online gaming reach among the population. In 2023, the US online gaming industry is projected to have around 74 million users, with a user penetration rate of 22% – less than China, South Korea, or Japan.
You can read the full report by clicking here.
