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✅Newzoo’s 2025 PC & Console Gaming Report shows gamers are playing fewer titles but for longer. Evergreen hits like Fortnite and Honor of Kings dominate time spent. China’s market hit ¥325.8B in revenue, with major influence from legacy titles and F2P games.

✅Console revenue is rising, expected to hit $92.7B by 2027, fueled by GTA VI and Switch 2. F2P dominates PC (58% of revenue), while consoles' subscriptions (Game Pass) grow.

✅But new games struggle—only 12% of 2024’s playtime came from them. Discoverability is now about TikTok, influencers, and viral buzz, especially in China, where 44.5% discover games via short videos on Douin.

👉 Chinese studios like Tencent, NetEase, and HoYoverse are shaping global gaming. Despite regulatory barriers, Chinese gamers remain highly engaged, influential, and among the top spenders globally. Understanding their behavior is key to future success.

As noted by Newzoo – “ …future industry successes will result from shifting market share rather than new audiences, with China representing the most significant potential market share.”

Game developers must understand Chinese players – their favorite genres, game discovery, and engagement. 

The global gaming community is more interconnected than ever, with Chinese players leading trends and influencing playtime and monetization. 

As 2025 brings new releases and innovations, it is crucial to observe what appeals beyond Western audiences. It resonates in the world’s largest gaming market, shaping the future of PC and console gaming.

Sources:
1. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/07/04/2908657/28124/en/China-Games-Market-Report-Series-Bundle-2024-Market-Models-and-Gamer-Behavior-Market-Insights.html

2. https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/the-pc-console-gaming-report-2025

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Chinese gamers and global gaming trends in 2025!

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The global PC and console gaming landscape is evolving rapidly, with Chinese players at the center of this transformation. In 2024, worldwide playtime reached record highs, even as overall spending experienced a slight decline. China’s vast gamer population and influential studios are increasingly shaping these trends – from the games we play to how we discover them. 

The latest Newzoo 2025 PC & Console Gaming Report, published shortly after GDC, offered valuable metric insights into the market, including global playtime, revenue, and genre shifts. Let's examine the global market and how China, in particular, has significantly impacted it!

Gamers spend more time but play fewer games!

Total gaming hours in 2024 grew by 6% year-on-year, with Q4 2024 marking the highest quarterly playtime ever recorded. Big AAA releases and premium titles fueled this surge.

Newzoo’s data reveals that new releases comprised only 12% of all playtime in 2024, indicating that 88% was devoted to older “evergreen” titles. 

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Fortnite, for example, remained the world’s most-played game, commanding 9.3% of total playtime (up from 9.1% in 2023). In other words, a handful of hit games dominate players’ attention, leaving a smaller slice of time for fresh titles. 

As Newzoo analysts claim, “Overall, playtime hours are growing but concentrated in AAA and at times cannibalistic; the battle for audience hours is fierce. “

These playtime trends hold across regions. Western markets saw engagement spike thanks to blockbuster launches and holiday events, while in Asia, the story is similar – gamers are sticking with long-running favorites. 

In China, for instance, authorities reported that the domestic game market hit its highest-ever revenue in 2024 (¥325.8 billion, about $44.8 billion). The number of gamers in China climbed to 674 million in 2024, and many of those players continue to log in to established titles like Honor of Kings or Peacekeeper Elite. Even single-player games, alongside new mobile hits, saw a resurgence in China’s post-lockdown market. 

The takeaway is clear: globally and in China, gamers spend more time than ever, but that time is heavily focused on a few popular games.

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Consoles and F2P are the market drivers!

Even though global consumer spending on PC/console games fell 2% in 2024 to $80.2 billion, the outlook is optimistic – spending is expected to rebound to $85.2 billion in 2025, en route to ~$92.7 billion by 2027, driven by console gaming. 

In 2024, console games accounted for the larger revenue share at $42.8 billion, while PC games contributed $37.3 billion. Each platform shows a different mix of business models. On consoles, traditional premium (pay-to-play) titles made up 46% of console revenue ($19.9B) – though this segment was down 14% year-on-year. In contrast, free-to-play console games generated 32% ($13.9B) of console revenues, up 4.5% YoY, and subscription services grew to 16% ($6.9B, up 14%). 

Meanwhile on PC, the free-to-play model reigns supreme – 58% of PC game revenue ($24.0B) came from F2P titles in 2024. Premium PC games comprised 28% ($10.7B) of PC revenue, slightly down 2.6% YoY. 

As Newzoo reports notes, “all business models are viable, but not at the same scale on every platform.” In other words, free-to-play is the engine of PC gaming monetization, whereas consoles still lean on big one-time game sales and growing subscription ecosystems”

Looking ahead, console gaming is expected to lead the next wave of growth. The highly anticipated launch of Grand Theft Auto VI and the debut of Nintendo’s Switch 2 (June 2025) are predicted to be huge revenue drivers that year. 

This doesn’t mean PC gaming is fading—PCs remain popular worldwide—but its revenue growth is relatively slow compared to consoles’ upcoming boost.

China’s console market is small (sales banned until 2015), while domestic channels dominate its massive PC market. However, Chinese PC gamers significantly impact global sales via Steam, with major free-to-play games like League of Legends and Genshin's Impact deriving much revenue from them.

New releases experience tough times!

The year 2024 underscored the power of blockbuster franchises and legacy hits in the gaming industry. Major AAA releases still make waves – Call of Duty is a prime example, as the latest installment gave a measurable boost to playtime in late 2024. Sports games and annualized series (EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, etc.) also contributed significantly to new release sales and engagement, proving that there’s always a market for the next iteration of popular franchises. 

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However, the data shows that new releases in aggregate made up only 12% of gameplay time for the year. Most gamers’ time went into older titles that keep rolling out new updates, events, and content. Games like Fortnite, GTA Online, Minecraft, and Roblox (which even expanded to PlayStation in 2024) have become perennial platforms.

This old hits dominance means that a new title launching in 2025 competes with other new releases and established games. It requires something novel or culturally viral to attract players. This, for sure, is raising the bar and challenging new game marketing teams.  Such phenomena occurred in 2024 with the surprise hit Black Myth: Wukong, an ambitious action RPG from a Chinese studio that captivated global audiences. 

In China, the hype for Black Myth: Wukong, often hailed as the country’s first big-budget AAA action game, showcases how Chinese-developed titles can influence global discourse even before their release.

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/2358720/

A new game often cannibalizes playtime from existing titles; for example, time on the latest Call of Duty may reduce playtime for older shooters. Gamers have a fixed leisure budget, with established hits claiming most of it. This drives publishers to invest in live-service models to keep titles relevant for years. 

The urge to be discovered

With players sticking to fewer games and so many new titles launching every week ( 19k games launched in 2024), discoverability has become a peak challenge. Developers and publishers can no longer rely on platform storefronts alone to get exposure. 

As a result, off-platform marketing is more important than ever – directing traffic from YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and other channels to your game’s page. 

In fact, we see this vividly in China: 44.5% of Chinese PC gamers discover new games by watching short videos on platforms like Douyin.

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Studios and publishers leverage influencers, community events, and viral content to differentiate themselves. The era of relying solely on Steam for organic discovery is waning.

In terms of monetization, the free-to-play model has proven its dominance in scale, but it brings hurdles. F2P games often reach tens of millions of players quickly, but retaining and converting those players to spend is tough when attention spans are short. 

Successful free-to-play launches in 2024 (like HoYoverse’s Honkai: Star Rail or EA’s The Sims 4 ) combined strong IP, high-quality gameplay, and favorable market timing. 

In markets like China, where free-to-play is ubiquitous, spending is rising: 62% of Chinese PC gamers spent more money on games in 2024 than in 2023, and nearly one-fifth said their spending was over 30% higher than the previous year. 

China’s growing impact in the global market

No discussion of the global gaming market is complete without emphasizing China’s enormous influence. China is by far the world’s largest gaming audience, with roughly 668–674 million gamers in 2023-2024, which is almost half of the planet's gamers!

 It’s also a revenue giant: China now ranks as the second-biggest market by game revenues (just behind the U.S.), contributing around $47 billion in 2024 (roughly a quarter of global game sales). 

The cultural and economic significance of Chinese players is profound. Their preferences can single-handedly make a game a global success, or their absence can limit its potential. 

Chinese studios and publishers have also become major movers on the world stage. Tencent and NetEase, but not only, also  MiHoYo, proved that a Chinese studio can create a global phenomenon with Genshin's Impact. In early 2025, a NetEase-developed title, Marvel Rivals, even topped PC engagement and revenue charts in Western markets, showing that Chinese-developed games can excel with international IP.

Chinese developers are increasingly creating AAA-caliber experiences that resonate beyond their home country, and global gamers are taking notice.

However, understanding China’s gaming impact comes with unique challenges. The Chinese gaming ecosystem still faces and probably will face even stricter government regulations in the future. 

Data transparency is another challenge; China’s regulations and fragmented platforms lead to exclusions in market analyses, obscuring the global landscape. 

Moreover, Chinese gamers often access games through different channels. Steam’s global version – which isn’t fully sanctioned in China – is used by about 79% of Chinese PC players to get their games since the official Chinese Steam is limited in content. 

This means a large swath of Chinese playtime and purchases occur on international servers, effectively integrating with the “global” player pool. Chinese player behavior (like leaving reviews, driving Steam concurrent user records, etc.) directly affects global gaming communities. Developers launching on Steam often find surges of interest from China if their game strikes a chord. 

Despite the hurdles, Chinese players' cultural and economic importance cannot be overstated. They have a passion for gaming that rivals any region – Chinese gamers average about 12.4 hours per week of gameplay. 

To appeal to this audience, add Chinese language support and culturally relevant content (e.g., in-game Lunar New Year events, characters inspired by Chinese lore). 

Conclusions

The 2025 PC and console gaming outlook features intense competition and immense opportunities. Gamers globally are investing more time, which is concentrated among top titles. Growth will stem from new hardware and console games, while PC gaming thrives in a free-to-play ecosystem. 

Future industry successes will result from shifting vertical market rather than builing completely new audiences, with China representing the most significant potential “lopcla” market.

Game developers and Western publishers must understand Chinese players – their favorite genres, game discovery patterns, and engagement behavior. The global gaming community is more interconnected than ever, with Chinese players leading trends and influencing playtime and monetization. 

As 2025 brings new releases and innovations, it is crucial to observe what appeals beyond Western audiences. This resonates in the world’s largest gaming market, shaping the future of PC and console gaming.

Sources:Newzoo 2025 PC & Console Gaming Report, GamesIndustry.biz coverage by Sophie McEvoy, Niko Partners via Game World Observer, South China Morning Post, GDC State of Industry Report.