Is the game market generating $100B per year in revenues?

Recent estimates value the global games business somewhere in the range of $50 billion. But if you factor in the booming online gaming sector and look at the total market caps for all public companies, the global games industry is actually worth about double that, according to investment banker Paul Heydon of Avista Partners.

During a talk at Edinburgh Interactive, Heydon outlined the video game sector as he sees it. He noted that the total market cap of all public games companies globally had reached $105 billion and that online games (MMO, social/casual games, etc.) are now worth around 71% of the non-Nintendo PC/console sector.

Heydon breaks down the global games market as follows:

  • Nintendo – $34.96 billion
  • Other PC/console (without Nintendo) – $33.22 billion
  • Online – $23.46 billion
  • Mobile – $8.26 billion
  • Retail – $3.11 billion
  • Payment Services – $1.37 billion
  • Distribution/Accessories – $311 million
  • Outsourcing – $255 million

See Industry Gamers for more. Incidentally, $100 billion is how much the U.S. military wants to cut in spending over the next five years.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. 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.