New Delhi: The global video game market is expected to grow over 17 per cent to $93 billion this year with growth in gaming consoles and software sales, research firm Gartner said.
"The worldwide video game marketplace - which includes video game console hardware and software, online, mobile and PC games - will reach USD 93 billion in 2013, up from USD 79 billion in 2012," Gartner said in a release.
Driven by strong mobile gaming and video game consoles and software sales, the market is forecast to reach $111 billion by 2015, it added.
The research firm said mobile games are the fastest growing segment of the (gaming) market, with revenue set to nearly double between 2013 and 2015 from USD 13.2 billion to USD 22 billion.
"As mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) continue to grow, mobile game category will show the biggest growth due to the entertainment value provided by games compared with other app categories," Gartner Research Director Brian Blau said.
This growth is fuelled by healthy sales of premium mobile devices globally and consumers' desire to play games on these multi-function devices that are capable of displaying increasingly sophisticated game content, he added.
Gartner said "2013 is an important year for the game industry as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are releasing their next generation video game consoles to a market that may be moving in another direction due to the popularity of mobile devices".
Sony and Microsoft will be releasing their game consoles in November and pent-up demand for them has caused a temporary reduction in console hardware sales during 2013, Blau said.
But, the growth will resume in 2014 and sales of existing console hardware are forecast to grow from USD 15.9 billion today to USD 22.7 billion in 2015, he added.
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