Report Suggests A Majority Of The Gaming Community Plays Older Games Over New Releases

A new report on the state of the PC and console gaming market in the year 2023 suggests that a majority of the gaming community plays older games over new releases.

The latest annual report comes from market researcher Newzoo, in which the sampled data indicates that the gaming community is mainly indulged in older titles released several years ago over more recent ones. Based on the gathered data, a total of 66 games were responsible for around 80% of overall playtime among the community in the year 2023. In addition, out of all the games that were played during last year, 60% were titles that were released 6 years ago, or even earlier.

Even more interesting is the fact that only 5 games, namely Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Minecraft, and GTA V, all of which were released 6 years ago or earlier, were responsible for 27% of the overall playtime in 2023.

The report states that the PC and console market grew by 2.6% in 2023, though the overall playtime saw a drop from the previous year. 23% of the aforementioned playtime was spent on games released in 2021 or later. Out of that percentage, over 50% of time was spent playing annual releases, such as Call of Duty, FIFA (now known as EA Sports FC), NBA 2K titles, while just 8% of the time was spent on non-annual releases.

The sources of Newzoo’s data is mainly its Game Performance Monitor, which provides MAUs, play time, viewership, revenue, and other detailed game-level data for 10,000+ games on PC and console. The data paints a rather grim picture of the game industry and its future trends. Younger gaming audiences appear to be focused on popular live service games like Fortnite and GTA V, and the market for new single-player games continues to shrink.

For further details on the state of the PC and console gaming market in 2023, check out Newzoo’s full report.