Three Billion People Worldwide Now Play Video Games, New Report Shows

A new report by DFC Intelligence has revealed that, as of mid-2020, there are nearly 3.1 billion global video game consumers. With nearly 8 billion people around the world, this means that about 40% of of our population plays video games of some form. The fastest growing segment of these consumers are those who only play games on their smartphones. This accounts for almost half of all video game consumers. Of those nearly 3.1 billion players, only about 8% are dedicated console consumers, but this group has the highest per-user spending. 1.5 billion, or 48% of global video game consumers, are PC game consumers. It's important to note, however, that "this includes some overlap with gamers that also use console systems and mobile devices." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=top-10-best-selling-video-games-of-all-time&captions=true"] DFC's report also breaks down where these video game consumers live. Asia is the leading region and has 1.42 billion paying game consumers. Europe is second with 668 million paying game consumers, then Latin America with 383 million, and then North America with 261 million. Of those users, the following graph shows the breakdown of mobile only users. Asia consists of 53%, followed by Europe's 17%, Latin America's 11%, and MENA's 7%, and North America's 4%. As for what these 3.1 billion people are playing, we know that Ghost of Tsushima was the best-selling game of July 2020, followed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Paper Mario: The Origami King. These lists from NPD don't include mobile games, however, or free-to-play games like the mega-hit Fortnite. Speaking of Fortnite, its developer Epic Games is in a legal battle with both Apple and Google over their anticompetitive behavior, which led to Fornite being taken off both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/07/02/best-games-of-2020-so-far"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.