Christopher Hughes
Research expert covering Australia and New Zealand
Video gaming in Australia - statistics & facts
As is the case with most of the digital media industry globally, the Australian video games industry has seen a shift towards digital content in recent years, with sales of most digital products on the decline. It is possible that the coronavirus pandemic has both contributed to and accelerated this shift, with the resulting lockdowns meaning that people were required to remain at home, needing to find ways to occupy their time. Global market revenue has seen steady, significant year-on-year growth, particularly with mobile games, over the last few years, and this growth is predicted to continue until at least 2027.
The Australian video games industry
The total value of the video games industry has fluctuated in recent years, peaking in 2022 at 4.21 billion Australian dollars. Despite global growth in the mobile games market, consoles still reign supreme for Australian gamers, with around 70 percent choosing to play games on a console, compared to just over 50 percent using their mobile devices to play. As for the games themselves, the biggest selling titles aren’t all annually released titles, such as FIFA or the latest entry into the Call of Duty series. Instead, some older titles remain popular. For example, Mario Kart 8 remains a big selling game, despite having originally been released as far back as 2014. Elsewhere Grand Theft Auto V, originally released in 2013, remains near the top of sales charts even today.Digital vs Physical
Digital sales of videogames dropped between 2019 and 2021, however sales grew a little in 2022, suggesting that the market is beginning to recover. In the game downloads category, which includes downloadable content, character skins, level packs and other enhancements for already purchased titles, sales have remained steady over the last few years at around 1.5 billion Australian dollars. The value of physical sales has been consistently lower across the last five years than digital sales, hovering every year at either just above or just below the one billion Australian dollars mark. Despite increasing consumer preference for digital, gamers still need to purchase hardware to play games. Gaming hardware sales have enjoyed almost yearly growth, dropping only in 2019, and peaking in 2022 at just over 600 million AUD.
