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The combined revenue of the world’s largest 25 video games companies hit $70.4bn in 2016, representing a year-on-year increase of 17 per cent.
Newzoo’s Global Games Market Report reveals that the largest of these was Tencent, whose $10.2bn revenues accounted for 10 per cent of this total. That would actually rise to 13 per cent in Supercell’s revenues were included.
The fastest riser among these 25 companies was NetEase, whose annual revenue was up 50 per cent year-on-year after a strong mobile performance in China. Indeed, in February of this year the company accounted for four of China’s five top grossing iOS games.
Sony placed second in the overall rankings and Activision Blizzard were third, with revenues of $7.8bn and $6.6bn respectively. The latter enjoyed the second highest growth, at 42 per cent, with the success of Overwatch credited.
The strongest growth came from the Top Ten companies, whose revenues increased by 24 per cent at $53.7bn, accounting for 54 per cent of the total. Newzoo says that while acquisitions such as Activision’s move for King contributed, the majority of this growth was organic.
Nintendo was the only Top Ten company that suffered a revenue decline, with the number dipping six per cent to $1.8bn. This was despite the huge success of Pokemon Go, which was not a revenue driver for Nintendo, despite the bump in sales it gave Nintendo’s other Pokemon products.
Super Mario Run’s $50m revenue was seen as a disappointment, while Fire Emblem: Heroes is failing to make an impact outside of Japan.
Newzoo adds that the Switch will have to continue its strong launch performance to turn around the company’s fortunes”.
Revenues for the other 15 companies were flat at $16.7bn. Within this group it was actually more traditional publishers like Take-Two, Square Enix, and Ubisoft who performed best, while mobile-centric companies such as GREE, Gung-Ho, and Mixi saw declines.
