What’s good for the world isn’t necessarily great for the video game industry. As the pandemic declines, people are redirecting their spending to pre-pandemic objects, which is likely to make the video game market contract in 2022.
That’s according to a new report from Ampere Analysis, which said it expects the gaming market to shrink 1.2 percent in 2022 to $ 188 billion. That’s pretty much the turnaround for an industry that grew 26 percent and added $ 39 billion in new spending between 2019 and 2021. However, “the sector landscape has become increasingly troubled during the first six months of 2022,” writes Ampere, stating that it is. “inevitably the consumer’s attention to gaming will in some cases become more diluted” as the pandemic ends.
Ampere also noted the negative effects of inflation, the rising cost of living and the growing possibility of another global recession as dragging the video game market down. “The idea that the gaming market is‘ recession-proof ’is a hoax,” the company wrote, although it concluded that spending would “spring up in 2023”.
Specific segments of the video game market can be assigned with the contraction. Mobile gaming is expected to decline by 1.3 percent, while computer gaming will decline by 3 percent, largely due to online cafes closing “in key Asian markets”. Removed pandemic restrictions caused many of those cafes to bounce back, but not as much as there was a pre-pandemic.
Console sales are largely expected to remain flat, and cloud gaming will continue to grow in 2022. Supply chain is also expected to lower the hardware segment for the rest of the year.
“After two years of huge expansion, the gaming market is poised to deliver some of that growth in 2022, as multiple factors combine to undermine performance,” wrote research director Piers Harding Rolls. “Even so, the year will end well ahead of pre-pandemic activity, and the outlook for the sector as a whole remains positive, with a growth forecast to return in 2023.”
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