CLOUD GAMING TO PASS THE BILLION-DOLLAR MARK FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS YEAR

This year marks a particularly exciting milestone, as cloud gaming will pass the coveted billion-dollar mark for the first time, ending at $1.4 billion cloud gaming in revenues in 2021, according to Newzoo’s update for its latest “Global Cloud Gaming Report”.

According to the company, even more growth is coming. The market is on track to exceed the 5-billion-dollar mark in 2023 as technology and infrastructure continue to improve. To that end, cloud gaming’s serviceable obtainable market will hit just shy of 200 million this year.

Part of 2021’s massive jump in revenues is due to increased cloud gaming activity from companies big and small. For example, Microsoft launched xCloud as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate; Amazon and Facebook entered the market with their own services; NVIDIA resolved the early licensing issues with its GeForce NOW platform, which now supports over 800 titles; and smaller, independent cloud gaming services successfully targeted markets around the world, including emerging regions (via partnerships with local telcos).

The high frequency of new services—as well as the big feature improvements for existing ones—mean there will be 23.7 million paying cloud gaming users by the end of 2021.

‘’With people spending more time at home due to the lockdowns, video games became a key source of entertainment and way to socialize,” commented Nabil Laredj, VP Business & Head of Licensing at Blacknut, a leading B2C cloud gaming provider.

“When we compare the data between Q1 and Q2 2020, our D2C service saw a five-fold increase in session length and three times the number of games sessions. Overall, the increased engagement trend was maintained all year, and Blacknut has seen its number of active users grow by eight times in 2020,”  added Andreas Hestbeck, CEO of RemoteMyApp, a B2B cloud gaming solution and gaming content aggregator for businesses worldwide.

“Speaking of cloud gaming’s future, we’d like to again reiterate that it’s unequivocally promising, even in our pessimistic revenue scenario. While some of the bigger first-to-market services faced challenges, these growing pains are common and necessary in young, fast-moving markets like this one. Simply put, cloud gaming is here to stay, and its importance and prominence will only grow. Luckily, there’s a one-stop-shop for all things strategic in cloud gaming,”  Newzoo says in its Global Cloud Gaming Report.