Despite being a near $190 billion industry...
With the leading territories in terms of spending being North America and Asia:
https://archive.ph/3XaVd
The video game industry is seeing a masive decline in people's spending habits on those very territories:
https://archive.ph/Gpaxf
<A Wall Street Journal report from last month brought attention to market research that indicates Zoomers in the US are spending a lot less on video games in 2025 than they did in 2024. Data from the research firm Circana indicated that spending on games from January to April 2025 fell by 13% year-on-year among Americans aged 18 to 24, while weekly spending on video games dropped by about 25% from 2024 levels. While it is not as dramatic as in the US, a similar downward trend in interest and spending can be seen among Gen Z in Japan in the past few years.
And it doesn't have anything to do with economy...
<In the case of the US, The Wall Street Journal cites factors like the cooling job market, the burden of student loans, and rising credit card delinquency rates as reasons why young people are spending less on games (and hobbies in general). By comparison, Japan’s employment situation is less severe. As of June 2025, the unemployment rate stood at 2.5%, compared to 4.1% in the US, and the jobs-to-applicants ratio remained steady at 1.24. This suggests that Gen Z in Japan are under less economic pressure than their American counterparts (Statistics Bureau of Japan).
In fact, get this
the PC gaming market is actually shrinking :
https://archive.ph/Gpaxf
>Japan’s PC gaming population has decreased by 3 million in the past decade, studies suggest
And while people like to blame this on "prices" or "mobile gaming", it is admitted that the timing doesn't line up nor does it explain the "sudden" and drastic decline...
<The reasons for this long-term shift are not clear-cut. While PC gaming’s visibility in Japan has undoubtedly grown through the rise of Steam, other factors, such as the popularity of mobile gaming, may be influencing player preferences.
<Hardware pricing could also play a role, though the timing does not align perfectly with the decade-long decline.
But I would like to point out to people that, unlike the console market,
the entire PC gaming market has been almost exclusively digital in it's distribution since 2011 . And as should be remember with the game markets in regions like Asia, customers there extremely prefer and almost entirely demand for games to be phyiscally released. And if I may go even further with that, we're going to see the entire console market collapsing rather soon because, well, look as where Sony and Microsoft are prioritizing their sales of games:
https://archive.ph/J8hmz
<Microsoft's Xbox platform meanwhile hit a 91% digital share, so if you're wondering why some retailers are no longer stocking Xbox discs, there's your answer.
https://archive.ph/ttrsb
>Sony Reports Record Profits as PlayStation 5 Ships 80.3 Million Units, Digital Sales Hit 83%
And remember, this is the direction companies want to take video games, with the public kicking and screaming the entire way:
https://archive.ph/TC95N
<“But if we look at the past five years, five years ago live service games were almost non-existent for PlayStation Studios. We [now] have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie’s Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner.”
<“For Q1 the live service ratio was about 40%, for the full year it’s a little less, probably between 20-30%,” she said. “So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years you see that there’s definitely been a change.
<“Of course, we recognise that there are still many issues, so we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there’s less waste and it’s more smooth.”
But guess what games people are
actually playing:
https://archive.ph/U8yWJ
<The data shows that from January 2024 to December 2024, 67% of player hours on PC were spent on a game that was six or more years old. A further 25% of player hours were spent on games that were two to five years old, and the remaining 8% of time was spent on games that are less than two years old.
https://archive.ph/GXUaA
>The year's Steam Replay reveals 85% of Steam users in 2024 spent time playing games released in 2023 or earlier
https://archive.ph/KpdLr
>Sixty Percent Of Video Games Played In 2023 Were Six Or More Years Old, Research Finds
So here is my question, are you guys going to put up with companies who don't respect their players by continuing to buy and play new games and current gen systems;
OR will you be join the masses in withdrawing from this industry, only playing games and consoles that already exist and that you actually own, and watch as these companies collapse in on themselves with no survivors as a result of their own hubris?