A GUIDE TO THE GERMAN GAMES INDUSTRY

INCREASE IN TURNOVER AND USERS OF ONLINE
AND BROWSER GAMES
After the market for online and browser games saw a
rise for two consecutive years in 2013 and 214, it saw
a decrease in the number of users in 2015. While the
turnover from subscriptions and premium accounts
rose by 4 percent to 146 million euros in 2015, the
number of users decreased to 15.7 million. Turnover
from sales and virtual items is not included in these
statistics.
34,3 m Germans play games
5.4 m
Figures in million users
20
28.9 m
15
14.5
15.5
14.0
16.3
17.4
15.7
Play occasionally
© 2016 BIU/GfK
10
194
183
Play regularly (several times a month or more)
139
140 146
5
0
124
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Users
Turnover
© 2016 BIU/GfK
Nearly every second German is a gamer: 34.3 million
people in Germany play computer and video games.
That’s 46 per cent of the total population. Almost half
of them (47 per cent or 16.2 million) are women.
Education level
GAMING PLATFORM PROSPECTS
The PC remains the top-ranked gaming platform
with 18.4 million active gamers in Germany. It continues
to be highly attractive for a large number of
different target groups, partly because of the various
virtual reality headsets, eSports and browser games
it supports, and because of genres like strategy
games, which rely heavily on mouse and keyboard
controls. During recent years the newer platforms
like smartphone and tablet have been growing
steadily, traditional platform usage like PC, handheld
and console is stagnating. In the last two years, the
number of gamers playing on smartphone increased
by 14 percent, and the number of tablet gamers noted
an increase of approx. 44 percent over the same
period.
24 %
33 %
23 %
20 %
Comprehensive school (7.2 m)
University-educated (7.0 m)
A levels (6.1 m)
O levels (10.2 m)
© 2016 BIU/GfK
11