Who, what, when, where?
Increasingly, we have seen how digital gaming has become integrated into the lifestyles of younger generations, but it has a significant user base across all ages. With that, the global video game market is projected to grow by over 3.4% to USD190bn in 2025. Newzoo, a global leader in video game data, predicts a compound annual growth rate of around 3.3% through 2027. We expect this growth to be supported by the next generation of console releases and major game launches. The gaming market is structurally diverse, with its main platforms consisting of mobiles, consoles, and PCs.
Mobiles are currently dominating in terms of revenue, with projected revenues of USD94bn in 2025. This is driven by the ubiquity of devices and free-to-play (F2P) game economics, which consistently incentivise users to spend their money via microtransactions. Console gaming revenues should reach USD51bn, by leveraging strong IP franchises, subscription tiers, and hardware renewal cycles. PC gaming is projected to reach USD43bn, supported by esports, in-game customisation cultures (players who modify their game’s code to their liking), and easily accessible multiplayer games.
From a geographical point of view, Asia-Pacific accounts for the largest share of revenues, with around USD90bn, primarily driven by mobile-first penetration in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. North America trails behind with USD51bn, and Europe is further behind at USD34bn. A lack of mobile gaming adoption has been the dominant reason for Europe’s trailing performance. The broader reason for geographical revenue differences is premium ecosystems (Console/PC), which look for a high average revenue per user (ARPU) and deeper brand depth, while mobile platforms chase scale and behavioural monetisation.
Key trends driving the video game industry
1. User-generated content and customisation
The video game industry has long shifted from selling standalone products to selling entire ecosystems. Sales of standalone products were normally one-offs and users only bought back into the franchise when the next game was released. Nowadays, mouth-watering recurring revenues have become the goal, franchises have been able to monetise many aspects of the game that assure them steady cash flows, through permitting users to build user-generated content. Players are currently spending billions of hours every month to become their own creators in games and add customisations, inevitably leading to some sort of connection, or dependency, to the games. More time in the game, translates into a higher likelihood of incurring additional spending.
2. Subscription business model
Subscriptions are becoming an ever-present monetisation method across industries, and video games are following suit. This shift is structural and reflects deeper behavioural patterns in how humans spend, play, and stick around. Subscriptions offer users access to a wide library of games for a monthly fee. This is particularly appealing to the price-sensitive gamer who is seeking variety. Yet, it is also a strategic move for platforms as they can lower acquisition costs and increase retention. With a sunk cost already paid, players feel the need to play more, which in turn, can build more attachment to the platform. From a publisher’s perspective, subscriptions smooth revenue volatility and create a stable monetisation base. This is ultimately very useful in a hit-driven industry.
The goal isn’t to get someone to spend once but instead to build a daily ritual. What is emerging is a rulebook for modern monetisation: incentivising daily logins with credits, reward progression, building social loops, and offering scalable in-game purchases that do not tip the scales too much in favour of the more affluent players.
3. Dynamic ecosystems
The most valuable and played games are not static titles, they are evolving, dynamic ecosystems, with live-service operations. Success hinges on the operational sophistication of live-service models to drive engagement, monetisation velocity, and community stickiness. Live-service operations involve a constant cadence of content updates, time-limited events, and incentive-driven missions. These mechanisms extend the time that players will stay in your game, open their wallets further, and embed them into your monetisation structure. At one end, publishers benefit from recurring revenues, and, at the other end players gain access to continuously evolving content. However, publishers need to watch out – player fatigue and monetisation ethics require careful steps not to cross the boundary from engagement to exploitation. As gaming as a service (GaaS) is adopted by more and more game developers, it becomes apparent that it represents more than a business model – it is a transformation of games into a live continuous form of media that never truly finishes. Companies who don’t make this transformation will be left with fewer players in their games.
4. Upgraded infrastructure
A competitive edge is increasingly determined by the developers in control of the framework implemented to build these games. Through built-in ads, allowing developers to run ads easily in their games, analytics, and AI plug-ins that force platform dependence, these tools are integrated further into operations and developer workflows. They further become foundational for companies to scale and differentiate. What emerges from this separation is a split between open-ended, user-scalable ecosystems and IP-gated, vertically-integrated walled gardens. Each of these structures represent a viable path to capturing value, but only those who own both the content and infrastructure are in pole position.
Outlook: the next level
The past decade has seen games turn from packaged goods into ever-present platforms. But what 2025 really confirms is that games are now something more: systems. Systems of engagement, of monetisation, of identity. The studios who win today aren’t those who just build games, but instead those who build behaviour.
We have seen the rise of recurring revenue through subscriptions and battle passes, the shift from one-time unit sales to behavioural monetisation, and the operational sophistication required to run games as live services. AI is also now entering the fold – however, it is not yet rewriting the playbook to accelerate the pace of iteration and enable new creative workflows.
What connects all these shifts is one core truth: gamers are no longer static. They are engaged in fluid, living ecosystems, which are updated weekly, monetised continuously, and deeply personalised. The goal is no longer just to entertain, but to embed. To turn play into habit and habit into value. Gaming is no longer about escape; it is about immersion. And that changes everything.
The video game industry, although old, is not yet near its full potential. As technology progresses and immersion alongside computing power increases, the value in creating and interacting with digital worlds will only continue to rise. Strong recurring revenues and gaming psychology frame the fundamental thesis. We see video games, and their related infrastructure, as a core component of our Digital Content thematic universe.