Global games market forecast to hit $100B by 2019

The global game market is expected to reach $100 billion by 2019, according to a new estimate by the Open Gaming Alliance, a nonprofit trade group focused on gaming.

The group released the data at an event at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) today in San Francisco. DFC Intelligence, a separate research company that did the analysis, expects that the PC game business will become the single largest part of the industry at $37 billion by 2019, up 35 percent from $28 billion in 2015.

But another market research firm, Newzoo, already has gaming pegged as a $99.3 billion market this year, certainly putting DFC’s $100 billion estimation into reach next year, if not this year.

“A major driver of industry growth is not just software but hardware,” said DFC analyst David Cole, in a statement. “The emergence of eSports and virtual reality is driving consumers to buy high end PC systems to not only play games, but watch others playing games.”

Other numbers weren’t available from the report. The OGA will release the full report to its members later.

“I’m very optimistic that 2016 will be the year that PC gaming finally breaks the $30 billion milestone in software revenues,” said OGA board of director member Matt Ployhar (Intel Corp) is also remaining very bullish on PC gaming, in a statement. “Not only was there a bumper crop of new PC game releases such as Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto V, and Metal Gear Solid V performing really well on PC for 2015, but this year another incredible lineup of games is on deck with World of Warcraft Legion, Civilization VI, Doom 4, and Dishonored 2. Strong release schedules like this also tend to bode well for vendors on the hardware side of the business, too.”