The general deterioration in the economic outlook is also leaving its mark on the computer games market: the industry’s growth has slowed down significantly.
After the boom of the first Corona years, the growth of the video and computer games industry has slowed down significantly. This is the result of figures from the Game industry association and the market researchers GfK and Data.ai.
In the first half of the year, the companies in the sector in Germany turned over around 4.55 billion euros, around 2 percent more than in the same period last year. In the first half of 2021, however, sales increased by 22 percent compared to the same period in 2020.
A big reason for the big growth in recent years was the pandemic – people spent a lot of time at home and accordingly spent a lot of money on digital distractions like games. According to Game Managing Director Felix Falk, the long-term effects of the pandemic are now becoming more noticeable, such as supply bottlenecks for important game hardware. Added to this is the general clouding of the economic prospects, which is also leaving its mark on the games market.
Above all, the growth drivers of the past few years have reported declining sales: with so-called in-app purchases, for example, 1.3 billion euros were sold, 7 percent less than a year ago. Sales also fell in the hardware sector, from 1.58 billion to 1.53 billion euros. On the other hand, the industry recorded increasing sales, for example, for subscription services related to games. Sales from the purchase of individual games also increased.
The video game fair Gamescom starts on August 23 in Cologne. For the first time since 2019, the industry get-together will take place with visitors in the Cologne exhibition halls. In 2020 and 2021, the trade fair was only held as a purely digital event due to the pandemic.
