02 German video games market

Around 9.4 billion euros were spent on games, games hardware and online gaming services in the German video games market in 2024. This represents a decline of 6 per cent compared to the previous year. The market thus experienced a pause in growth.

The slowdown in growth in 2024 followed a period of strong overall development: in total, revenue in the German games market has increased by over 50 per cent since 2019. This means that the German games market has reached a new level, with Germany remaining the largest market in Europe and the fifth largest worldwide.

Games for PCs, consoles and mobile devices generated sales revenue of 5.5 billion euros in 2024. This is 6 per cent less than in the previous year. The decline was especially steep in game purchases, which saw a 17 per cent drop in revenue, to 921 million euros. One reason for this was that, compared to 2023, a year of numerous blockbuster releases, fewer major titles were released in 2024. The submarket of in-game and in-app purchases generated around 4.6 billion euros in revenue in Germany in 2024, a decline of just 3 per cent after strong overall growth in the preceding years. Whether as free-to-play or full-price games, ever more titles are offering additional content. This takes wide-ranging forms – from ‘skins’, which can change the appearance of a game character, to season passes providing unlimited access to content over a period of weeks, to full expansions with new campaigns or missions. In-game purchases allow video game players to individualise or augment their game experience. Additionally, this business model is an important source of revenue for games companies, not least as it enables them to reduce the economic risk brought on by the sharp rise in development costs in recent years, and to develop further projects.

A large proportion of sales revenue from games in Germany in 2024 can be attributed to mobile games for smartphones and tablets. Last year, revenue from these apps in Germany rose to 3 billion euros for the first time. Gaming on smartphones and tablets has thus reached a new high as it continues its successful course of recent years. Since 2019, the market for mobile games in Germany has grown by 63 per cent. In particular, the high accessibility and variety of games have led to a sharp rise in sales. Almost all mobile games are based on the free-to-play principle, a model which makes mobile games available to anyone at no charge. Players may then opt to pay for additional content, such as levels or cosmetic features, in the form of in-app purchases. The mobile games market also offers a wide selection of games for casual and experienced players alike – from complex and technically demanding games to esports titles.

Games for consoles generated around 1.9 billion euros in 2024, making this the second largest category. At around 1.5 billion euros, PC games form the third largest source of revenue. With regard to the various business models, spending behaviour differs across game platforms. For example, 98 per cent of revenue from games for smartphones and tablets comes from in-app purchases. By contrast, the largest share of console revenue, at 38 per cent, is generated by online gaming services, which can now be subscribed to on every console. Over one third of console revenue comes from the purchase of individual games. Around 70 percent of PC game revenue is generated through in-game purchases and slightly less than one fifth from the purchase of games themselves.

The submarket for online gaming services grew to 965 million euros in 2024 – an increase of 12 per cent over the previous year. This segment includes categories such as paid subscription services for PCs, game consoles and mobile devices – services that provide access to a broad selection of games, or enable cloud gaming or functions like online multiplayer gameplay and the saving of game progress in the cloud. The growth in sales over the past five years shows the huge interest in these online services: revenue here has more than doubled from the 2019 level of 461 million euros.

Around one quarter of video game players in Germany aged 16 and over already use one or more subscription services in parallel. For the majority, the reasons include the opportunity to easily try new games. About 8 in 10 players who use subscriptions say that they try out games more often as a result. For around 79 percent, subscription services have also led to the discovery of games that they would not have come across otherwise, and some three quarters of subscription users have purchased games that they previously discovered through their subscriptions.

Sales revenue from games hardware decreased by 10 per cent overall, to about 2.9 billion euros. The largest decline was in game consoles. Here, sales amounted to €807 million, 26 percent less than the year before. One reason for this is that many models of the current console generation which had not been consistently commercially available for several years became available on an ongoing basis again for the first time in 2023. Players therefore snapped them up, leading to a catch-up effect before demand normalised in 2024. In a further demonstration of this effect, sales revenue from accessories for game consoles rose by 6 per cent, to 391 million euros. The market for gaming PCs and laptops was stable, with revenue of 540 million euros, or just 1 per cent less than in 2023. Accessories for gaming PCs – including special input devices like gaming keyboards or mice, graphic cards, etc. – didn’t fare quite so well, with revenue falling by 4 per cent, to just under 1.2 billion euros.

Downloads account for 7 of 10 PC and console games purchased in Germany. In 2024, the share of downloads jumped by 8 percentage points, from 60 to 68 per cent, a new record. Just under one third of games in Germany are purchased on physical media. Among PC players, especially, downloads have become the preferred means of buying games: nearly all games for PCs, around 99 per cent, were acquired digitally in 2024. Most console games, on the other hand, were purchased on physical media. While the share of download purchases rose in this category as well, from 40 per cent in 2023 to 44 per cent last year, physical media still accounted for over half of purchases of console games (56 per cent). The strong growth in the share of downloads can be attributed in part to the ‘digital only’ development of the last several years. Ever more blockbuster titles are being released initially or exclusively in digital-only versions, and indie and early-access games are often distributed almost exclusively digitally.

Players’ choice of game acquisition via physical media or download isn’t just a question of the gaming platform they use, but also of their age. In Germany, download purchases are particularly widespread among the 20- to 29-year age group, who buy more than three quarters of their games for PCs or consoles digitally. Physical media, in contrast, are popular for game purchases above all among older players. In 2024, players aged 50 to 59 bought nearly half of their PC and console games on physical media.

After years of strong growth, the German games market took a breather in 2024. Individual market segments such as online gaming services continue to develop very dynamically. This, together with further impetus in the form of new game consoles and blockbuster games announced for the near future, indicates that the decline in sales revenue seen in 2024 is likely to be short-lived.