In-game spending Cross-entertainment product strategy
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The 20,000 Foot View: Games revenue growth is about to slow, with in-game spending the sector set to retain most momentum. Simultaneously, other entertainment sectors will actively seek to monetise digital fandom. Future games revenue will need to tap opportunities beyond games-related spending alone, and the wider entertainment demands of consumers. Integrating cross-entertainment thinking into games product strategy and games design will be crucial to long-term competitive differentiation and revenue diversification for games companies.
Key Insights
- The oncoming attention recession along with longer-term drivers will cause global games revenue growth to slow from in 2021 to in 2027
- In-game spending will account for an increasing share of global games revenue, from in 2020 to in 2027
- The future growth potential of in-game spending lies in catering to consumers’ wider entertainment, expression and digital existence needs
- Games companies are ideally positioned to cater to these needs, just as other entertainment sectors are looking to reinvent their own fandom monetisation activities for the digital era
- Working with entertainment partners will enable games product teams to create features yielding incremental engagement and revenue for each industry
- To bridge games’ feature design and cross-entertainment thinking, product teams must concentrate on digital consumer needs that occur across entertainment
- For younger generations (the mainstream consumers of tomorrow), these needs revolve particularly around managing attention overload and consumption friction, digital expression, and co-creation
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Discord, FaceTime, GTA, Instagram, Microsoft, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Voicemod, YouTube
Note: MIDiA’s definition of global games revenue excludes hardware and any subscriptions purchased outside games.