Online gaming is becoming more and more popular not only with children and teenagers, but with people of all ages and from all walks of life. However, just a decade ago this industry barely even existed, so it is crazy to see how far it has come in such a short space of time.
Industry Timeline
It was in the 1990s when online gaming first became aware to some people and did see a good number of people taking the past time up. This coincided with the increasing availability of the Internet throughout the Western world.
However, it was not until the year 2003 that more options became available to players thanks to the launch of the digital storefront called Steam. This let players not only purchase games online but also allowed them to post reviews. This was the first step in creating an online gaming community.
Just a year later and one of the biggest video games of all time was launched – World of Warcraft (WoW). This was the first ever massively multiplayer online (MMO) game to hit the market place and was responsible for clocking up more than 10 million different player subscriptions.
As mobile phones began to get better and smarter around the mid 2000s, more and more games began migrating onto this platform. Then in 2009 the video game Minecraft was launched and went on to become one of the top selling video games of all time – to date it has sold more than 176 million individual copies.
In the same year, Apple launched a feature where by players could purchase things within games on apps. This led to a boom in mobile and gaming and as of 2015, there were more than 1.5 billion players gaming on their smart phone across the world.
2016 saw the augmented reality Pokemon Go game launched, which went on to become the highest grossing mobile game of all time. The latest development to really impact the industry came in 2019 when Google launched their cloud gaming service called Stadia. This allows players to play with each other without the need for a games console.
Industry Value
As a result in all of these advancements and the ever increasing popularity of online gaming, the industry is now worth $152 billion. To get some scale to this, the movie industry is worth $43 billion and the music industry is worth $19 billion respectively. The value of the online gaming industry is only set to grow even further and by the year 2022, it is estimated to be worth somewhere in the region of $196 billion.
The two biggest consumers of video games and online gaming in general are the United States of America and China. Within these countries huge online gaming cultures have appeared with some players now committing to hours of game play each and every day. For these individuals, comfort is a super important thing and many of them do not think twice about spending hundreds of dollars on the right gaming chair. Those players currently in the market for such an item can get footrest gaming chairs here.