Niko's latest stats on gamers in China.
Niko's latest stats on gamers in China.
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Niko Partners: 75% of China’s 720 million gamers live outside the biggest cities

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Seventy-five percent of China’s 720 million gamers live outside the biggest cities, according to a new study by market researcher Niko Partners.

Niko found that the 720 million figure is roughly 51.3% of China’s total population, a new milestone that shows how quickly China’s game audience has grown. That is up from 48.9% in 2019, 40.5% in 2016, and 29.7% in 2014. By comparison, 65% of the U.S. population plays games. The rapid industrialization and modernization of China has happened more obviously in the big cities, but the smaller cities are big by Western standards and a huge source of gamers these days.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.