Praise be to lootboxes!
A new report from market research group SuperData claims that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds earned over $700 million USD in 2017. While the game officially launched in December, its early access release was in March, so it had roughly nine months worth of revenue to get to that total. If we factor in the last reported sales figures of 30 million units, that means microtransactions picked up a huge amount of slack.
In the same report, SuperData also claimed the esports games brought in around $756 million USD in total profit. Overwatch and League of Legends are bringing in the most views, but it looks like esports will become a billion dollar industry in 2018 if market growth continues.
If you thought the mobile gaming industry would have died down, then this next figure is going to make you sick. According to SuperData, 2.5 billion people played free-to-play games between mobile and PC platforms and around $82 billion USD was brought in from various in-app purchases. The final claim is about virtual reality, which saw a 37 percent growth due to price cuts last year. SuperData also mentions how Sony’s VR solution saw increased adoption thanks to things like Resident Evil 7 and Skyrim VR being premiere titles for the platform.
That mobile figure really blows my mind. Coming from a purely greedy standpoint, I can see why major publishers are so eager to shove microtransactions in every game. Hopefully we can move away from such business practices this year, but I have a feeling we’ll start seeing “smarter” implementations following the Battlefront II fiasco.
Study: ‘PUBG‘ Made More Than $700 Million Last Year [Rolling Stone]
