The gaming industry is accelerating: $54 billion per quarter and no slowdown

The global game market continues to demonstrate stable and positive dynamics. According to the latest estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence, in the first quarter of 2026, the total revenue from the sales of game content worldwide increased by 3.6% year-on-year, amounting to a significant $54.14 billion. Thus, the growth indicators of the industry maintain a stable positive momentum. This output includes sales of video game software, microtransactions, in-game content, and various types of gaming subscriptions (such as Xbox Game Pass). The purchase of physical components and playing iron was not taken into account when compiling the statistics.

Leaders of the game market

The ranking of the largest publishers in the global arena is still confidently headed by the Tencent holding. The revenue of this Chinese giant was $9.6 billion for the quarter, which exceeds last year’s financial success by 8.4%. Their compatriots from NetEase also ended the period with a profit: growth by 12.3% increased the company’s earnings to $3.62 billion.

At the same time, the developers of single-player games demonstrated record rates of financial growth. Capcom posted an impressive 89.8% jump in revenue, bringing in $451.8 million thanks in large part to the highly anticipated release of Resident Evil Requiem. The second big winner was the studio Pearl Abyss – its profit rose by an incredible 468.6% to $328.1 million due to the successful global launch of Crimson Desert.

Major console platform statistics

The positions of the three key platform holders at the beginning of 2026 were distributed as follows:

• Nintendo: earned $1.31 billion, making a significant jump of 37.7%. Key drivers were sales of the new Switch 2 system and the launch of the long-awaited Pokémon Pokopia title. At the same time, the popular multi-platform Roblox strengthened the overall statistics, showing a revenue of $1.44 billion (+39.3%).
• Sony: received $2.87 billion in revenue from the gaming segment (a slight increase of 6.3%). And although experts characterized these indicators as quite typical and balanced for the home platform market, the company’s net operating profit fell immediately by 41.66%. This was mainly due to a huge $765 million write-down of Bungie’s assets.
• Microsoft: The Xbox-branded gaming sector showed a slight decline of 0.2%, showing a quarterly profit of $4.12 billion.

Mobile still dominates

Regarding the distribution of the total volume of income by specific types of game platforms, statistics show a noticeable imbalance of power:

• Smartphones hold absolute global leadership. Revenues from mobile game content increased by 2.5% year-on-year and exceeded the mark of $30.53 billion.
• The PC platform has become the main driver of the overall speed of scaling in the gaming industry. Financial sales of the segment increased by a record 7.8% (approximately $12.11 billion), which allowed to expand the engaged market share from the previous 21.5% to 22.4% before the beginning of the year.
• Home consoles show the slowest movement in the market with a sluggish overall gain of 1.3%. Sales of games in this sector amounted to $9.81 billion

The growing relevance of single story games against the dominance of service games

Despite the obvious financial triumph of games-as-a-service (GaaS), the traditional single player is regaining its previously lost positions. As experts from S&P stated in the official report, unconditional financial records, as before, are tightly accumulated in the hands of a limited group of corporations with stable multiplayer game worlds and a strong reliance on the audience of the Asian region.

At the same time, the first quarter of the current year, which ended, clearly provided the industry with important facts: modern gamers are just as interested in single-player story games without endless grind mechanics, if the studios offer a truly high-quality and well-developed single-player product.