Our, and most likely your favorite hobby has new sales numbers in and they're quite impressive. Gaming as a whole has generated $91 billion dollars worldwide for the year of 2016 according to a report from Venture Beat.
The specifics were broken down into type, with mobile gaming leading the charts at $41 billion alone or 18% of the entire make-up. This is mostly due to games like Pokemon Go, Clash Royale, and will likely continue to grow due to successes like Super Mario Run hitting 40 million downloads in four days. It is further helped by the fact that the mobile market has grown in maturity and quality since its conception.
Retail games clock in at $26 billion with free-to-play (which includes games like Team Fortress, Warframe, etc) at $19 billion. Other noteworthy categories include virtual reality and esports. Their contribution was substantially less, but at a quickly growing rate.
Virtual reality was an interesting statistic, as it still rated fairly well and is expected to rank much higher in years to come according to SuperData. Even with virtual reality's high price point and limited catalog of games, they expect Sony and HTC to take the spotlight next year in terms of VR. Early adopters helped boost their place in the list, and they can find good VR titles on their respective headset.
A not-so-surprising result was direct downloads. Digital downloads are becoming more and more mainstream, often becoming an option on par with buying a game in-store. at 6.6 billion in revenue, digital downloads, and this is just for consoles. PC gaming encompasses sales on marketplaces such as Steam. PC gaming sales earned $34 billion, thanks to games like League of Legends and Overwatch.
