Asia & MENA gaming markets approach $100B, 2B players in 2028 | Niko Partners
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Niko Partners has published its video game market sizing model results for Asia & MENA. Combined, the two regions generated $85.5 billion in revenue in 2023, up 4.6% year-on-year.
The firm expects the market to continue growing, albeit at a reduced rate. In 2024, Niko Partners is forecasting the region to grow 2.5% to $87.6 billion in revenue. Furthermore, it expects this pace of growth to continue through 2028. Over these next five years, Niko Partners anticipates the combined Asia & MENA games market to reach nearly $100 billion ($97.1 billion) with a CAGR of 2.5%.
“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.”
The model data is based on a Niko Partners survey of 7,700 gamers in the Asia & MENA region between November 2023 and April 2024.
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Niko Partners: Asia + MENA market differences
The Asia and MENA model includes 13 markets: China, India, East Asia (Japan and Korea), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philipines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and MENA (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates).
Combined, these markets account for 1.61 billion gamers in 2023 — over half of the world’s players. By 2028, Niko partners expects the number of gamers in these regions to reach 1.99 billion in 2028 at a 5-year CAGR of 4.4%. India accounts for 72% of this projected growth in gamers. Over the next five years, the country is likely to add 277 million more gamers (totaling 731 million), surpassing China’s current player count.
The MENA markets are expected to be the second fastest growing, while Japan and Korea should grow more slowly than other markets.
Platforms and Play time
Asia and MENA gamers skew towards mobile. The vast majority (93.7%) of these gamers play on mobile devices, while 35.1% play on PC and 4.9% on console. In 2028, there will be 1.87 billion mobile gamers, 606 million PC gamers and 100 million console gamers.
According to Niko Partners, Asia and MENA gamers account for over half of global player spending on mobile and PC.
Mobile gamers in these markets spent about $58 billion on the platform. This accounts for 57.8% of global spending on mobile. Likewise, these players spent just under $20 billion on PC games in 2023 or 50.4% of global spending on the platform.
Additionally, Niko Partners saw a rebound in average gaming hours per week in Asia, up 36.2% year-on-year. In comparison, the firm saw a 10% decline in average gaming hours per week in 2023. Niko Partners saw this growth in playtime across individual platforms with average hours played up 28.1% for PC, 19.3% for mobile and 12.0% for console.
Niko Partners’ Asia & MENA market model reports 2024 are available now.
