Analysts see game revenue crawling to $229bn by 2030, with PC doing the work
S&P Global Market Intelligence's Kagan unit forecasts global game content revenue rising from $204.4bn in 2025 to $229.1bn in 2030 - a 2.3% annual rate, driven by squeezing more out of existing players rather than finding new ones.
The research arm of S&P Global has put a number on the industry's next five years, and it is a modest one. Kagan, S&P Global Market Intelligence's media research unit, projects global game content revenue growing from $204.4 billion in 2025 to $229.1 billion in 2030 - a compound annual growth rate of 2.3%.
Growth from the players you already have
The mechanism matters more than the headline figure. Kagan attributes the growth to deeper monetisation of the existing audience - live-service retention, subscriptions and in-game purchases - rather than to new players entering the market. In other words, the forecast assumes the industry has largely stopped growing its user base and is now growing its take per user.
PC leads, cloud grows fastest
PC is the strongest platform in the forecast, rising from $42.25 billion to $49.23 billion at a 3.1% annual rate - above the market average. Cloud gaming is the fastest-growing segment at 9.7%, though it starts from a small base. Asia-Pacific is expected to hold the largest regional share throughout.
The Xbox figures are the bleakest in the report as relayed: Kagan cites a 29% year-on-year drop in Xbox hardware revenue, and expects PC to cannibalise Xbox software revenue by 2030 - a forecast that reads less like a warning to Microsoft than a description of the strategy it has already chosen.
What could go wrong
Kagan flags rising console hardware prices, inflation, higher development costs and lengthening production cycles as the things most likely to drag on even these numbers. Every one of those has been visible in 2026 already.
Why it matters
A 2.3% growth rate is roughly flat in real terms, and it is the assumption publishers are planning against. If the money is going to come from monetising the same players harder, that is a forecast about what games are going to feel like to play, not just about spreadsheets.
Why it matters
A 2.3% annual growth rate is barely above inflation, and Kagan expects the money to come from monetising existing players harder rather than from a growing audience - which shapes what publishers greenlight.