What did gaming look like in 2024?

As 2024 comes to a close, we look at some of the statistics for the year. Also, voting is open for The Games Letter’s top games of 2024. It’s limited to subscribers, so if you haven’t signed up yet, do it now to cast your vote for best video game, board game and more. Anyway, on to the news. Let’s go!

The gaming year in numbers

In a recent article, GamesIndustry.biz broke down the gaming year in numbers.  You can check out the infographic in its entirety at the link, but here are some interesting statistics from the article:

• The global games market value for 2024 is $184.3 billion, up 0.2% year-on-year (YoY).
• Physical games accounted for $8.5 billion of that, down 9.4% YoY.
• Fortnite, Helldivers 2 and Palworld were the most covered games by the media. 
• Monopoly Go was the top mobile game by mobile spending at $2.47 billion, while Free Fire: Winterlands was the most downloaded at 311 million installs.

In addition to the statistics above, there are a few more notable numbers. First, EA Sports College Football 25 became the all-time best-selling sports video game in US history. And finally the Nintendo Switch passed the PlayStation 2 to become the second-best selling console in history, trailing only the Nintendo DS.

Two HUGE video game sales milestones were reached in the US this November: - Switch surpassed PS2 in US lifetime hardware unit sales - EA Sports College Football 25 became the all-time best-selling Sports video game in US history (dollar sales) Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 8:03 AM

Side Quests (more stories worth reading)

📅 Steam users only spent 15% of their time playing games released in 2024. 

🎴 Thieves allegedly stole $315,000 worth of Pokémon and other trading cards.

💰 Sony became the largest shareholder in FromSoftware’s parent company Kadokawa, avoiding a full takeover of the company for now. 

📈 The Game Awards had its strongest year with 154 million livestreams, up 31% from last year. 

🏅 The Indie Game Awards announced their winners with Baltro taking their top spot, while the PlayStation Blog also announced their award winners. 

📰 Walmart is starting its own Game Informer-style gaming site called Restart.

₿ Ubisoft released a new game that has Rayman, Blood Dragon and NFTs. 

🏈 The owner of the New York Jets football team reportedly used Madden NFL’s player ranking to decide which players he wanted to pursue. 

🎮 The director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth says the development team originally wanted to release episodic story DLC for the game, but was told the next game in the series was their “highest priority.”

⚖️ Two Tencent-appointed Epic Games board members resigned amid a Department of Justice antitrust inquiry. 

👎🏻 Elden Ring Nightreign can be played single player or with three players, but not with two. 

🧊 Mariah Carey emerged from a block of ice in Fortnite to sing All I Want For Christmas Is You and start the game’s Winterfest celebration.

🖥️ Nvidia’s new PC app is causing large frame rate dips in many games.

🎮 Windows Central executive editor Jez Corden claims that “Xbox won’t have exclusives going forward.”

🐲 Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance will be de-listed from digital storefronts in February 2025. 

🎲 Polygon points out that campaign board games are shrinking, and it’s for the better.

🏀 The NBA’s Charlotte Hornets gave a kid a PlayStation 5 as part of a halftime skit, then took it away backstage. Spoiler: they eventually gave it back to him. 

📺 A Pacific Drive television show is in the works, while negotiations are underway for a Stalker 2 Netflix show. Meanwhile, Amazon renewed the video game anthology series Secret Level for a second season.

🍩 A small doughnut shop in Indiana is still using Commodore 64s as register systems, 42 years after their initial release.

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