UPDATED 18:10 EDT / APRIL 20 2015

NEWS

Top 25 public gaming companies earned $54.1 billion last year, industry up 10% overall

The video game industry shows no signs of slowing as the global game market grew 10.4 percent in 2014, according to research firm Newzoo.

Last year, the top 25 companies in gaming earned of $54.1 billion in revenue, accounting for about 65 percent of the $83.6 billion earned by the video game industry overall.

Chinese company Tencent Holdings Limited, which owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, leads the pack with $7.2 billion earned in game revenue, reflecting an incredible 37 percent growth over the previous year.

Other members in the top five companies include Sony Corp, Microsoft Corp, Electronic Arts Inc, and Activision Blizzard Inc, in that order.

Nintendo Co Ltd is one of the few top gaming companies that saw its numbers decrease, dropping about 13 percent. The poor performance of the Wii U and the lack of significant new titles likely contributed to the company’s lowered revenue figures, but Newzoo notes that Japanese video game companies, with the exception of Sony and a handful of others, performed poorly in general.

“The weak Yen obviously hurts the share of global revenues of Japanese companies when expressed in US$, but the Japanese industry also suffered from two fundamental weaknesses: being very exposed to the traditional console market with low growth and the three of Japan’s four mobile powerhouses Nintendo (-13% YoY), DeNA (-38% YoY) and GREE (-23%) being big in the “wrong” mobile sub-segments, notably feature phones and handhelds,” Newzoo wrote.

“Both issues are being addressed with a shift in focus towards iOS and regular Android games, but whether the partnership between Nintendo and troubled DeNA is the best route to global success on mobile remains to be seen.”

There was a strong showing for mobile games in 2014, with Candy Crush Saga creator King Digital Entertainment coming out ahead of Nintendo. EA also credited mobile games with some of the company’s success earlier this year, claiming a monthly active user base of 160 million people.

According to Newzoo, if Clash of Clans dev Supercell had been a public company, it would have come in at number 11 on the list, an impressive feat for a company with fewer than 200 employees.

More detailed information on how the industry performed can be found in Newzoo’s Global Games Market Report, which you can purchase here.

photo credit: smcgee via photopin cc

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