Di Lovepreet Sunda
During the various lockdowns, a lot of people all around the world have spent many more hours inside their homes. A situation of this type has led to an increasing use of the internet and, consequently, of devices such as smartphones, PCs and consoles. As a result of this situation, the number of gamers and the time they spend in front of gaming devices has increased dramatically. Statistics reveal that millions of adults have played on their mobile phone for the first time during this period. According to Nielsen Games Video Game Tracking (VGT), the number of gamers who say they are playing video games more now due to the COVID-19 pandemic has increased since March 23, 2020. The increase was highest in the U.S. (46%), followed by France (41%), the U.K. (28%) and Germany (23%). During 2020, the gaming industry had a revenue of 180 billion, becoming the leading moneymaker in the United States and in the world. The most popular pc games were Dungeon Fighter Online, Crossfire and League of Legends. Games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, NBA 2K21, Grand Theft Auto V have excelled on consoles while on mobile have been played more games like Free Fire, Pokémon GO, Peacekeeper Elite. The number of Twitch channels also increased, doubling, and reaching 123,000 in February 2021 and the number of streamers is close to reaching 10 million. In Italy last year the revenue reached 2 billion and 179 million, a growth of 21.9% compared to the numbers for 2019. Unexpectedly, the number of players in Italy decreased slightly, from 17 million in 2018 to 16.7 million in 2020 but the time dedicated to video games increased, with an average of 8 hours per week.
