Italian games market reaches $1.8 billion in 2017

Italian Trade Body AESVI reveled statistics about the Italian games market, showing that €1.05 billion has been generated from game software, with an additional €428 million from accessories and hardware over the course of 2017.

The data is fuelled from the new GSD project, bringing digital and physical retail data together, as well as figures from AppAnnie, a mobile company, that show figures for mobile data.

The Italian accessories sector was primarily driven by the sales of controllers, and is now worth €94 million. Console hardware brought in €333 million in revenue generated, with the sales of portable consoles making up €16 million of that. The total home consoles sold in Italy in 2017 was 1.115 million, and the total portable consoles sold in the country over the same period was 135,747. Retro video game devices such as the SNES Mini made up 86,946 consoles sold.

Physical sales made up a third of the software sales market, generating €370 million during 2017 which shows how strong physical games sales still are in Europe. The biggest contributor to the software segment was digital smartphone software sales, generating €385 million and accounting for 37 percent of all game revenue for the year.

Interestingly Digital is the smallest section of the Italian game sales market, including console and PC sales. This sector has a 28 percent market share, which generated €294 million in 2017.

According to GameTrack consumer survey 52 percent of gamers play on their smartphones, with iPhone and iPad taking a smaller segment of this than Android devices. PC was the third largest segment with 26 percent of players, but consoles were the second largest segment with 48 percent.

The most used console, according to the Game Track survey, was the Playstation 4 with 31 percent of participants. Wii and Wii U came in second with 21 percent of participants, Playstation 3 had 18 percent of participants, and Xbox One and Xbox 360 had 14 percent of participants each. The Nintendo Switch, despite only being available for little more than a year, and not at all in the first three months of 2017, has 12 percent of participants.

The best-selling games for the year in Italy was FIFA 18, with Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy surprising everyone by coming in third place. The Sims 4 rose to be the best-selling game on PC, but Rainbow Six: Siege was the most downloaded game across the board, with the exception of Clash Royale on the App market.

AESVI Chairman, Paolo Chisari, told press that 17 million people had a gaming experience in Italy in the last 12 months, of which 41 percent were women, and 59 percent were men. While gaming is practiced across multiple age ranges, the core concentration is found in 25-34 year olds.

He adds that the releases of the Xbox One X and the Nintendo Switch have enriched the market over the last year. The continued performance of the Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro have also helped boost the technology used in games, and the technology used in gaming accessories.