10 Simple Facts Most Gamers Don't Know
Grand Theft Auto V sold more in 2020 than any year since launch.
Video games are arguably the most dynamic artform there is, given the seemingly geometric rate at which technology continues to evolve, ensuring there's always a new hotness for players and developers alike to make sense of.
At the same time, it's easy to lose track of the more simple truths - those industry facts and more straight-forward revelations which come and go in a fleeting moment.
The speed at which the gaming industry moves makes it easy to take things for granted while failing to take notice of the bigger picture, such that the majority of gamers likely aren't aware of these surprising facts.
From simple-yet-shocking revelations about the gaming market itself to unexpected accolades for your favourite IP, the sneaky developmental tricks behind your favourite games, and those corners of the industry everyone's currently turning a blind eye to, you absolutely need to know these fascinating gaming factoids.
If nothing else, these slivers of industry news will lend you some necessary perspective about current gaming trends and perhaps even where the artform itself is headed in the future - whether for better or worse...
10. The Mobile Gaming Market Is Bigger Than Console & PC Combined
If you're not much of a mobile gamer, it's incredibly easy to underestimate just how insanely popular - and more to the point, lucrative - the mobile gaming space has become over the last few years in particular.
A recent study by market researcher SuperData revealed that free-to-play mobile games generated $73.8 billion in revenue in 2020 alone, which eclipses the combined $52.8 billion total of PC and console gaming.
As such it shouldn't be terribly surprising that PC and console game publishers are so insistently inserting microtransactions into their titles wherever possible.
But beyond the mere annoying presence of in-app purchases, it also speaks to how successfully mobile game publishers have been able to predatorily prey on players and part them with their cash.
That's not to throw shade at all F2P mobile games, but it is a corner of the market that's so easily ignored by so many - especially in the West, where it isn't nearly as popular as in, say, China - and one which clearly merits greater regulation.