Analyst: Free-to-play games pushed digital game spend over $109 billion in 2019

Superdata released the first few snippets of data from its annual year in review report, tracing the financial gains and trends throughout the mobile, PC, and console arms of the game industry for 2019 as a whole.

Across the board, Superdata’s data estimates that digital games generated $109.6 billion in revenue throughout last year, with the bulk coming from mobile ($64.4 billion), followed by PC ($29.6 billion), and console ($15.4 billion).

Rolling XR and revenue from video game-focused content creators into the mix, the digital side of the industry saw $120.1 billion in revenue in 2019, up 4 percent year over year. XR alone saw a jump of 26 percent from last year’s report, an increase Superdata attributes to the appeal of standalone VR headsets like the Oculus Quest.

According to the firm’s data, Fortnite secured its second year in a row as the highest earning digital game, with an estimated $1.8 billion revenue generated in just 2019. Free-to-play games as a whole were responsible for the bulk of digital game spending last year, with the report noting that 4 out of every 5 dollars shelled out on a digital game was spent on a free-to-play title. Full rankings for those free-to-play titles and more insights from Superdata can be found in the report.