China has the biggest PC gaming industry in the world even with its problematic licensing issues. PC gaming in China is sitting at a whopping $16 billion industry and the number of PC gamers in China will soon become bigger than the entire population of the United States.
By 2023, there will be an estimated 354 million PC gamers in China playing online games, according to Niko’s 2019 China PC Online Games Market Report. The report not only touched on the boom of PC gaming in 2018 but also the projected future for the industry in China by 2023.
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China has been growing at a rapid pace since 2001 when it comes to the PC gaming market and it was only worth $100 million back in the day. The biggest surprise is that even with all the drama surrounding the heavy government regulations in the country, the market continues to grow at a substantial rate year on year.
In March 2018, Niko Partners predicted a drop in the industry after the Chinese government froze licensing of new games in the country. In spite of that, the industry still skyrocketed. To put it into perspective, the entire gaming industry in the US in 2018 including PC, console and mobile gaming is worth $30.4 billion with China’s PC industry alone at $15.2 billion.
According to PC Gamer, foreign games accounted for 60 percent of China’s PC gaming revenue in 2018. China has over 138,000 internet cafes. Esports in the country is the strongest driver of growth sitting at $6.1 billion in 2018 and projected to reach $9.5 billion in 2023.
