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Video game industry

The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.[1]

The video game industry has grown from niche to mainstream.[2] As of July 2018, video games generated US$134.9 billion annually in global sales.[3] In the US, the industry earned about $9.5 billion in 2007, $11.7 billion in 2008, and US$25.1 billion in 2010,[4] according to the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record $191 billion; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to $188 billion in 2022; the industry is not recession-proof.[5]


The industry has influenced the technological advancement of personal computers through sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CPUs, and co-processors like PhysX. Sound cards, for example, were originally developed for games and then improved for adoptation by the music industry.

Industry overview[edit]

Size[edit]

In 2017 in the United States, which represented about a third of the global video game market, the Entertainment Software Association estimated that there were over 2,300 development companies and over 525 publishing companies, including in hardware and software manufacturing, service providers, and distributors. These companies in total have nearly 66,000 direct employees. When including indirect employment, such as a developer using the services of a graphics design package from a different firm, the total number of employees involved in the video game industry rises above 220,000.[6]

Value chain[edit]

Traditionally, the video game industry has had six connected layers in its value chain based on the retail distribution of games:

The "3D Revolution" where became the de facto standard for video game visual presentation, initially in the arcades during the early 1990s,[35] and then on home systems with 3D consoles and PC graphics cards in the mid-1990s.

3D polygon graphics

The widespread adoption of -based storage and software distribution

CD

Continuing advancement of speed and sophistication

CPU

Widespread adoption of -based operating systems, such as the series of Amiga OS, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS

GUI

Shrinking of hardware, with and mobile phones, which enabled mobile gaming

handheld game consoles

The emergence of the , which in the late 1990s enabled online cooperative play and competitive gaming

Internet

List of video games

List of video game websites

Hollywood and the video game industry

International Game Developers Association

(Cambridge University Press)

Playing the Game: The Economics of the Computer Game Industry

(Tom Sloper)

Sloperama: Game Biz Advice