NewZoo has shared its Console Gaming Report 2023, a report in which it does an interesting analysis of the state of the video game world over the past year, and leaves us with some very interesting details about the state of the industry and the habits of players. Old games are triumphant and in general the predictions for the gaming sector are positive for the coming years as they continue, although modest growth is expected.

Between 2024 and 2026, there will be an average growth of 2.7% per year, which means that the PC and console gaming sector will go from 93.5 billion in 2023 to an impressive $107.5 billion. Much of this growth will be driven by PC gaming, which was the main growth driver in the sector as early as 2023.

Good prospects for the world of video games, but what are users playing? The data we have for 2023 reflects a clear passion for older games, by which I mean those titles that have been on the market for more than 6 years. When we look at the lists of games that gamers spent the most hours playing that year, we have a clear winner, Fortnite, a title that was released in 2017.

We also have League of Legends on PC, which came out in October 2009, and GTA V, which came to consoles and PC between 2013 and 2015. The average age of the most played PC games is 9.6 years, a fact that reflects the enormous popularity of these titles, which have become true classics. Looking at data from Xbox and PlayStation, the average age of games is 7.4 and 7.2 years, respectively.

The only platform that bucks this trend is the Nintendo Switch, as we have newer titles in the top 10 games of 2023 list and we also have a larger number of big triple A franchises that are not released annually. In this case, the average age of the most popular games 3.9 years.

Generally, these are games older than 6 years 60% of hours played in 2023, and annualized franchises such as Call of Duty and FIFA were the most current games with the most hours played. Only 8% of total game hours in 2023 were dedicated to non-annual triple A series such as Diablo IV, Starfield, and Baldur’s Gate III, among others.

I think this all largely reflects the players’ interest in them titles to which they have been devoting a considerable part of their free time for many yearsas well as the huge popularity maintained by franchises like GTA, FIFA and Call of Duty, where time doesn’t seem to pass.

AI generated cover image.