In a stark turnaround from the decline seen in 2019, video games in Germany showed staggering double-digit value growth in 2020, driven by console games (digital), mobile games, and online games, as well as AR/VR headsets. While the growth rates of online and mobile games can be mainly explained by the extra demand enforced by the time spent at home due to the pandemic, as well as the overall trend of consumers being more willing to spend money on games, when it comes to AR/VR headsets, growth was more intrinsic, although slower than expected.
Overall, video games software is a highly fragmented area with many players fighting for their share of value sales. High levels of competition put pressure on all developers to consistently drop titles which will help them grab consumer attention.
Even though e-sports, which mainly consists of leagues seen in FIFA, CounterStrike, Call of Duty, League of Legends and Fortnite, saw rising popularity in 2020, it still cannot be considered mainstream, as, for the majority of the German population, traditional sports remain their main focus. Furthermore, the e-sports scene suffered during COVID-19 as football clubs which engaged in e-sports prior to the pandemic had to drop their e-sports divisions due to budget constraints.
The pandemic was a boon to video games due to increased time being spent at home, translating into more consumers turning to video games for in-home entertainment in 2020. 2020 value growth would have been even higher were it not for the supply shortages in consoles, as well as issues seen in AR/VR headsets where Facebook decided to pause selling its Oculus headsets due to ongoing discussion with German regulation authorities linked to Facebook log-in requirements.
The static consoles landscape in Germany will be driven by launches from Sony and Microsoft in 2020 and Nintendo in 2021. While Sony and Microsoft released their PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X respectively in late 2020, Nintendo is expected to launch its Nintendo Switch Pro in early 2021.
Even before the pandemic, console games (physical) was already seeing declining sales in Germany, but they were still higher than sales of console games (digital) as they were still preferred by the majority of German consumers, with less than EUR1.00 spent on a download for every EUR4.
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Understand the latest market trends and future growth opportunities for the Video Games industry in Germany with research from Euromonitor International's team of in-country analysts – experts by industry and geographic specialisation.
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This report originates from Passport, our Video Games research and analysis database.
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