And by 2024, ABI Research anticipates that 5G and other new services will drive total cloud gaming market revenues to $4.5 billion and the number of active cloud gaming users to 42 million.

Subscriptions are becoming increasingly important to the video game industry: That’s the lesson from Sony’s launch of its new service, which is set to take on Microsoft’s Game Pass.

Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of VMware points to expansion into emerging cloud and IoT segments. Similarly, Sony’s purchase of gaming studio Bungie for a more modest $3.6 billion indicates a continuing trend in gaming IP acquisition. And let’s not forget Elon Musk’s contentious Twitter acquisition for $43 billion, which remains in limbo.

On the consumer side, for example, Flurry Analytics reported increased numbers of users and sessions in gaming apps on its mobile app analytics platform in March and Q2. These trends led us to revise our mobile phone gamer estimate upward for 2020. Pre-pandemic, we had expected 2.6% growth in the number of people playing games via mobile at least monthly in 2020.

Amazon Games has instead focused on cloud-based gaming, which could be a good fit given the parent company’s leadership in cloud computing through its AWS unit. Twitch was founded in 2011 as a spinoff of the Justin.tv livestreaming service. From its inception, Twitch focused on gaming streams and esports, which had been especially popular on Justin.tv.

Digital gaming and viewership of gaming video content (GVC) has become more popular amid the pandemic. In 2021, some of this activity will see modest growth, while interest in other forms of gaming will taper off.

Similarly, the trend toward cloud gaming, where two users play each other at a distance and with very little latency, could accelerate. According to a January 2020 survey by Nokia, half of adults in South Korea, the UK, and the US found the idea of cloud gaming subscriptions very appealing. AR and VR subscription models were also appealing to nearly three-quarters of respondents.

For example, Snapchat’s Snap Camera enables users to use Snapchat Lenses on their computer while streaming video and during Zoom or Google Hangouts video calls, and it may soon be possible to use Google Lens visual search functionality within YouTube or cloud gaming service Google Stadia.

Xiaomi, known for its internet of things (IoT) devices, has been developing its ecosystem, including augment and virtual reality and cloud gaming. Tencent and Roblox have teamed up to develop a next generation of content creators and programmers in the “gaming and education” genre. Soul, a social media platform, has plans to create a metaverse for young people.

ES: Pricing, performance, and ease of use dictated who owned the market in the early days of personal computing. Today, VR ecosystems and platforms continue that trend as the metaverse takes shape: Consumers, developers, and content producers will eventually decide the future of the metaverse, but they will be limited by hardware’s capabilities. We look at the state of VR hardware, the key players, and how gaming could serve as a gateway to VR/AR adoption.

Of US gamers, roughly a quarter have a game subscription service and/or game cloud streaming service, according to February 2022 data from SurveyMonkey. Dating apps is the second-largest category of mobile subscriptions (after OTT video) and grew 35% YoY in Q1 2022, according to Lexi Sydow, head of insights at data.ai (formerly App Annie). Mobile app subscription makes subscription management easier.