This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.
Videos games are booming. This is hardly a secret. I've been talking about how the industry has seen a massive boost in the financial reports of companies like Ubisoft. I've pointed out that such as Activision Blizzard have been making record levels of revenue and profit, while still trying to cut costs on wages by firing experienced staff and hiring cheaper ones.
According to The NPD Group, the video games market was worth $11.2 billion in the third quarter (July to September) of 2020 alone. This marks a 24% increase in consumer spending over 2019. Games on spending have been made throughout every single category of the industry. These being hardware, accessories, physical software, digital console & PC content, mobile and subscription spending.
All areas within the video games industry has noticed sizable gains, but hardware and accessories are specifially mentioned as seeing double-digit percentage gains, with hardware seeing a 16% increase and accessories increasing by 35%. The best performing titles for the third quarer are, reportedly: Among Us, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Fortnite, Ghost of Tsushima, Madden NFL 21, Marvel’s Avengers, Minecraft, NBA 2K21, Paper Mario: The Origami King, Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.
Mat Piscatella, games industry analyst at The NPD Group, had this to say:
We continue to see more video game players, playing for more hours, across more devices. We can anticipate another record-breaking quarter in Q4, in large part due to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles entering the market with one of the fastest-selling consoles in U.S. history, the Nintendo Switch.
Much like what is said above, I've also been predicting a record breaking Q4 as the new console generation releases. Further to that, the Christmas period is always big for video games, with Black Friday also showing a large boost to sales. In another piece for The NPD Group, it is predicted that the US market for the games industry will hit $13.4 billion in consumer spending, which will in turn likely show most companies in the industry again showing record profilts and revenues.
