Niko Partners, the world’s leading market research and consulting firm covering video games, esports, and streaming in Asia and MENA, announced the immediate availability of their 2023-2028e video game market models and forecasts.
The market models cover the 13 country markets that Niko tracks: China, India, East Asia (Japan, Korea), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), and MENA (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates). The analysis is published in Niko’s annual Asia & MENA market model reports.
These updated models show that there will be nearly 2 billion gamers in these markets by 2028, up from 1.6 billion in 2023, and these gamers generated more than half of global players and player spending on mobile and PC games in 2023. The two regions generated $86 billion in games revenue from gamer spending in 2023, up 4.6% YoY and outpacing global market growth.
Key takeaways and 2023-2028e aggregated data and trends from the market models:
- The Asia & MENA market is set to grow in 2024 and through 2028 with India, MENA and Southeast Asia being the fastest growing regions. India will likely add 277 million more gamers by 2028, accounting for 72% of total growth in gamers across Asia & MENA in the 5-year period, surpassing China.
- Asia & MENA mobile games revenue accounted for approximately 57.8% of global player spending on mobile games in 2023. ($100.5 billion Global Market Size). 93.7% of gamers in the Asia & MENA regions play on mobile devices, while 35.1% play on PC and 4.9% on console.
- Asia & MENA PC games revenue accounted for approximately 50.4% of global player spending on PC games in 2023. ($39.2 billion Global Market Size). In China, the world’s largest games market by revenue, PC gaming comprises more than 28% of total spending.
- India is the fastest growing market we track, followed by MENA-3 (KSA, UAE, Egypt). Japan and Korea will grow more slowly than the other country markets we track.
- According to our survey, we have already seen a rebound in average gaming hours per week in Asia, up 36.2% YoY. This is after average gaming hours per week had declined by a further 10% in 2023.
- Details on all 13 market models with 5-year forecasts are available in Niko’s market model reports and on NikoIQ, our interactive online knowledge base. Key takeaways for the sub-regions and country markets are found at https://nikopartners.com/asia-mena-market-model/.
“Asia and MENA remain critical in the global games market, and drivers to the growth in these regions include localization, increase in participation by female gamers, government support for esports, growth of out-of-app monetization of mobile games, and rising spending power.” said Lisa Hanson, CEO of Niko Partners. “In order to gain meaningful access, companies must get to know the local market realities and clearly understand the context behind the data they use for their strategic planning.”
