The global game industry is now valued at $100 to $105 billion dollars, says Avista Partners. The investment firm gathered the collective worth of all public companies and found that among these, Nintendo is the most valuable, the company says, with a market capitalization of $34.9 billion.
That's more than the rest of the PC and retail console business combined, Avista's Paul Heydon said in a
recent presentation at Edinburgh Interactive Festival. Excluding Nintendo, PC and console game companies are collectively have a market cap of $33.2 billion.
The third-largest share of the game industry's total market value goes to the online space, encompassing MMOs, social and browser-based games and valued at $23.4 billion. According to Heydon, that's a healthy 71 percent of the size of the general PC and console space (the pie slice that's minus Nintendo).
Mobile gaming companies are collectively worth $8.26 billion, and retail companies together are valued at $3.11. Payment services -- those companies that offer virtual currency and/or a platform on which it can be traded, for example -- come in at $1.37 billion.
Distribution and accessories businesses come it at $311 million, and outsourcing firms take the smallest share of gaming's global market cap at $255 million.
Avista Partners' graph below, from Heydon's presentation, shows each segment within the global gaming industry (click for larger version).
