“
There is a real decorrelation between the video game market and the state of the industry ,
”
underlines James Rebours, president of the Union of Video Game Publishers (Sell).
The figures, revealed on Wednesday, on French spending in 2023 on games, consoles, controllers, gaming PCs, virtual currencies for mobile games and other headsets for online gaming, contrast with the waves of layoffs affecting publishers and production studios around the world.
With an increase of 9.9%, a level close to the Covid years, the French video game market now reaches 6.1 billion euros.
The 5 billion mark was crossed in 2020.
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This figure has little in common with the stagnation of the American market (+1% according to Circana) or the modest growth of the United Kingdom (+2.9%).
But it can be explained in one word: the PlayStation 5. The first two years of life of the Sony console, released at the end of 2020, were marked by insufficient production capacities to meet the strong appetite of players.
The Japanese group therefore prioritized its stocks towards strategic Anglo-Saxon markets to the detriment of Europe, where consumers had to be cunning and patient to get their hands on the device.
It was only in 2023 that the situation returned to normal in France, where the catch-up effect was spectacular: according to Sell, console purchases skyrocketed by 72% in one year, to 1 billion euros.
We have to go back to 2007, at the time of Nintendo's Wii phenomenon, to find such a level of spending.
This growth is almost exclusively due to the PlayStation 5, the price of which was exceptionally lowered from 549 to 429 euros during Black Friday in order to convince the last undecided…
Also read: How the massive arrival of the PlayStation 5 could revive the video game market
The market was also driven by purchases of video games on consoles and PC which reached 1.5 billion euros, compared to 1.2 billion in 2022 (+25%).
The effect is particularly spectacular on purchases from digital stores integrated into consoles (+46%, to 737 million euros), while sales in physical format in mass distribution are holding up, a French exception (-1%, at 614 million euros).
“FC24” and “Hogwarts Legacy” top sales
“The game offering in 2023 was particularly qualitative ,
”
recalls James Rebours, between the surprise success of the Belgian role-playing game
Baldur's Gate 3
, the phenomenon
Zelda
: Tears of the Kingdom
(Nintendo) which marked the best start of the year in France or the return to consoles of the
Harry Potter
saga with
Hogwarts Legacy
(Warner).
With 1.1 million copies sold, the latter marks the second best seller of the year ahead of
Zelda
(973,000 sales, digital format excluded).
First place goes to the unbeatable football game
Fifa,
renamed this year EA Sports
FC24
.
Its 1.4 million sales, however, remain lower than those of the previous opus (1.7 million in 2022 for
Fifa 23
).
“
Fifa 23
had benefited from the World Cup effect, so it is difficult to gauge the effect of the name change
,”
underlines James Rebours.
But the good scores of the top of the class hide
“
many disappointments
”
in the rest of the ranking, whispers an industry player.
This is due to overproduction (711 new releases on consoles, or 18% more than in 2022), but perhaps also to budgetary decisions in times of purchasing power crisis.
On console, spending on microtransactions (largely the purchase of virtual currency on online games such as
Fortnite
) suddenly fell by 16% (234 million euros).
The French have also made drastic cuts (-46%!) in their PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass or Nintendo Online subscriptions.
Sell therefore remains extremely cautious in its outlook for 2024.
“
We expect a normalization of the market, after these exceptional results which are in part a corrective
”
to the anomaly of PlayStation 5 shortages, indicates James Rebours.
As usual, the lobby does not communicate numerical projections for the current year.
In the United States, the Circana firm is more forthcoming.
According to its most optimistic scenario, the American market will decline by 2% in 2024. But the decline could exceed 10%.