All This Money and We Still Get Layoffs: A Depressing Look at Your Gaming Budget

OpinionNews

29 Sept

The video game industry is worth more than the American film, music, and book-publishing industries combined. So where the hell is all that money going?

I see these numbers flash across my screen every year, and it’s always the same story. The video game industry is a goddamn leviathan. We're talking about an entertainment behemoth valued at nearly $60 billion in the U.S. alone, a figure that makes those other industries look like a sad garage band by comparison. We’re collectively shoveling a king’s ransom into this machine, funding everything from the next masterpiece to the next live-service dumpster fire. So, let's take a look at the receipts, shall we? Let's see just how deep our collective pockets are.

The Price of Admission

According to the number-crunchers, a cool $59.3 billion was spent on games, consoles, and accessories in the U.S. in 2024. If you average that out across the 132 million households, you get a conservative estimate of $449 per home. That’s a new console every few years, a handful of full-price games, and maybe a fancy controller that won’t get stick drift in six months if you’re lucky.

But that’s just a baseline. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics points to an even higher figure. They lump gaming into a category called "other entertainment equipment and services," and in 2023, the average family dropped $653 into that bucket. It’s not a perfect one-to-one comparison, but it’s a useful proxy for just how much we’re willing to spend to escape reality for a few hours.

The Financial Food Chain

Of course, not everyone’s budget is created equal. The top 20% of earners are out there spending about $1,722 a year on this stuff, which is 2.6 times what the average household spends. Meanwhile, married couples with kids are dropping almost 50% more than average, hitting around $955.

It makes a grim sort of sense. The wealthy have the disposable income, and parents need a way to keep the little ones quiet. These are the demographics funding the next $70 price tag and the endless barrage of microtransactions. It’s a food chain, and we’re all somewhere on it.

Our Pandemic Piggy Bank

Remember 2020? When the world shut down and we all collectively decided to become gamers? The spending charts remember. Overall spending rocketed from $42.7 billion in 2018 to a staggering $61.2 billion in 2021. We bought consoles, we bought games, we bought anything that could distract us from the creeping existential dread.

Things have cooled off a bit since then, dipping back down in 2022. But we’re nowhere near pre-pandemic levels. The industry got us hooked, and now we’re just feeding the habit. A staggering 86.5% of our money went straight to software in 2024, proving that the real money isn't in the box, but in the digital bits and bytes we download to it.

By The Numbers: A Global Gluttony

The global picture is even more absurd. Projections show the industry is on track to pull in over $260 billion by 2028. And the undisputed king of this financial empire? Mobile gaming. It’s not even a contest. The revenue from ads in mobile games alone is expected to hit $34 billion by 2027. Below is a look at the global revenue breakdown, and it’s a sobering sight.

  
      Year
      Mobile
      Console
      PC
      Cloud & VR
      Ads (Mobile)
      Ads (Nonmobile)
      Total
    

  
      2017
      $64
      $29
      $33
      <$1
      $6
      <$1
      $132
    

      2018
      $75
      $34
      $33
      <$1
      $9
      <$1
      $151
    

      2019
      $85
      $34
      $32
      <$1
      $11
      <$1
      $162
    

      2020
      $107
      $43
      $33
      <$1
      $13
      <$1
      $196
    

      2021
      $114
      $44
      $36
      $1
      $17
      <$1
      $212
    

      2022
      $107
      $41
      $36
      $1
      $20
      <$1
      $205
    

      2023
      $108
      $43
      $37
      $1
      $24
      <$1
      $213
    

      2024
      $113
      $43
      $37
      $2
      $26
      <$1
      $221
    

      2025
      $118
      $45
      $39
      $2
      $28
      <$1
      $232
    

      2026
      $124
      $47
      $39
      $2
      $31
      $1
      $244
    

      2027
      $130
      $48
      $40
      $3
      $32
      $2
      $255
    

      2028
      $137
      $50
      $41
      $3
      $34
      $2
      $267
    

Note: All revenue figures are in billions of U.S. dollars. Data source: BCG (2024).

The Never-Ending Subscription

The latest trick up the corporate sleeve is the subscription service. Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus have turned gaming into another monthly utility bill, just like Netflix. And it's working. Microsoft boasted 34 million Game Pass subscribers as of February 2024, and Sony isn’t far behind with 47.4 million PlayStation Plus members as of March 2023.

This is the new frontier. A steady, predictable stream of revenue that keeps the machine humming. It’s a convenient deal for us, sure, but it’s an absolute goldmine for them.

So, Where's the Money Going?

I look at all these billions, these astronomical figures, and then I read the news. Layoffs. Studio closures. Beloved projects canceled. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. We’re pouring more money into this industry than ever before, and yet it seems more unstable and creatively bankrupt by the day.

This isn't about funding art anymore, is it? It's about feeding a beast that demands infinite growth. The future scares the hell out of me. A future where all this cash doesn’t lead to better games, but to more aggressive monetization, AI replacing talented developers, and executive bonuses being prioritized over the people who actually make the things we love. We're spending a fortune, and what we're buying feels less like entertainment and more like a front-row seat to a slow, painful collapse.

NLM Team