Most Individuals Barely Purchase Two Video Games A Yr, New Report Finds

More video games are popping out than ever earlier than. Over 18,000 separate retailer listings had been added to Steam in 2024 alone. Our listing of notable October releases hit 55, and there have been dozens extra video games we may have included. It’s an excellent factor that with the market so flooded, the common gamer can also be shopping for tons of video games. Oh wait, they aren’t! A brand new survey by Circana finds the vast majority of gamers within the U.S. purchase simply two video games a 12 months or fewer.

That knowledge level was shared last week (by way of GameDiscoverCo) by the agency’s head of gaming analysis, Mat Piscatella. The group’s upcoming Future of Games report for the final quarter requested respondents how typically they bought new video games. A whopping third mentioned they don’t even purchase one a 12 months. Only 4 % buy a couple of recreation a month. Did you purchase Hollow Knight: Silksong and Borderlands 4 in September? Congratulations: you’re a statistical outlier.

Piscatella was presenting the information within the context of the current Game Pass value hikes. While most gamers barely purchase video games in any respect, a small fraction of them spend a ton. “Hyper enthusiast, price-insensitive players are really keeping things going, especially in the non-free-to-play gaming space,” he wrote. We can think about this because the group who’s going to purchase each recreation on their most-anticipated listing it doesn’t matter what. In truth, they may even purchase the Deluxe Edition.

You can see this within the current monetary knowledge for gaming corporations like Sony. Despite console adoption stalling, they maintain making extra revenue on the identical current slice of followers. While some individuals purchase a Switch 2, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S and solely ever purchase a handful of video games for it, others are content material to maintain including to their backlog, a distinct segment idea as international to the common gamer because the Criterion closet is to most individuals who subscribe to Netflix.

We typically consider the gaming as, broadly talking, evenly divided and homogenous. We take the median participant and picture a whole viewers made up of them, versus the market being outlined by a number of completely different teams of gamers with distinctive habits, tastes, and conceptions of the pastime. It’s additionally straightforward to see why recreation studios have gotten so treasured about launch home windows. If the vast majority of individuals are solely going to purchase a few video games of 12 months, greatest to not go head-to-head with Call of Duty, Madden, or the subsequent Grand Theft Auto.

One apparent resolution to this downside? Better curation and discovery. There’s solely too many video games when you can’t assist the suitable individuals discover the suitable ones. Valve has put a variety of work into exploring that downside and Steam remains to be removed from excellent. The remainder of the platforms, sadly, aren’t even shut. And cellular, the largest platform of all, is the worst of the bunch.