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New consoles will drive global game business to $96 billion by 2018

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

The global game industry is expected to grow from $68 billion in 2013 to $96 billion in 2018, according to a significantly upgraded forecast by market researcher DFC Intelligence.

The five-year forecast has been upgraded from past estimates thanks to the strong performance of the market — including the launch of Grand Theft Auto V and the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft — in late 2013. DFC said both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will eventually sell more than 100 million units each. Previously, DFC predicted the game business would hit only $82 billion by 2018.

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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.