PwC says games are expected to grow 4.4% per year through 2025.

PwC: Games grew 10% in 2020 and will grow 4.4% per year through 2025

Games are the gateway to younger consumers, and that became even more obvious during the pandemic. Games grew revenues 10% in 2020, according to professional service firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The game industry is forecast to grow at a 4.4% compound annual growth rate through 2025.

That’s a healthy growth rate, considering the movie theater box office revenues fell 71% in 2020 and the overall global entertainment and media industry fell 3.8% in 2020 to $2.0 trillion, a shrinkage of more than $100 billion (though this should bounce back somewhat as the pandemic abates, as Black Widow‘s opening box office shows) By comparison, the global economy shrank 5.1% in 2020, according to the PwC annual Global Entertainment & Media Outlook, which provides five-year outlooks for 14 entertainment and media segments across 53 territories.

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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.