The data trends company Superdata Research has published a report on the state of digital gaming in Asia. Digital gaming is experiencing a considerable boom in the Far East, accounting for 38% of the global gaming market at just under $20 billion in worth.
Currently spending $8.8 billion, or 45% of market share, Japan constitutes the largest portion of the digital gaming sector. However, China’s gaming market is reported to be growing at five times as fast a rate as the rest of Asia. As they are only slightly lagging behind Japan with 38% of market share totalling $7.5 billion, China can be expected to overtake Japan in the very near future.
Japan has less than a tenth of the population of China, yet they spend far more on mobile gaming, giving them the biggest presence in the digital gaming market. South Korea has a share of 11%, while the remainder of Asia totals 6% of the market.
Mobile gaming is by far the most valuable area of digital gaming, with 59% of the total $19.6 billion industry. Only 5% of the market is attributable to console games, whereas about a quarter stems from PC gaming, including free- and pay-to-play games.
With such large figures of money to spend on gaming, Asia, China particularly, contains a wealth of untapped sales. It remains to be seen just how Western developers will attempt to further breach this market, but Asia will certainly become a critical focal point for the global gaming industry in the future.