German gamers spent €9.4 billion on video games, {hardware}, and gaming providers in 2024, representing a decline of 6% year-on-year.
That is in accordance to the 2025 annual report by The German Video games Trade Affiliation (Sport), which famous that the market “skilled a pause in development” final 12 months.
The German video games market
Revenues
Software program: €5.5 million, down 6% year-on-year
{Hardware}: €2.9 million, down 10% year-on-year
On-line and subscription providers: €965 million, up 12% year-on-year
Software program revenues – which embody full-game gross sales, in-game purchases and subscriptions, and add-on content material – declined 6% to €5.5 billion in 2024.
The vast majority of this income got here from cell video games on smartphones and tablets, which reached €3 billion for the primary time final 12 months. Since 2019, the German cell video games market has grown by 63%.
As for subscription providers, the report famous that round one quarter of gamers aged over 16 use a number of, with eight in ten gamers saying “that they check out new video games extra usually in consequence” of utilizing providers like Xbox Sport Go and PlayStation Plus.
Purchases dropped 17% total to €921 million, which the report urged was due to there being fewer main titles launched final 12 months than in contrast to 2023.
Taking a look at spending behaviour, 93% of income for cell video games got here from in-app purchases. For consoles, 38% of income was generated by on-line gaming providers, with over a 3rd coming from the acquisition of particular person video games.
As for PC income, 70% was generated by in-game purchases with barely lower than one fifth from the acquisition of titles.
Hottest platforms
Smartphone: 22.9 million (up 0.8%)
Console: 20.5 million (up 9.6%)
PC: 13.1 million (down 2.9%)
Pill: 10.3 million (up 3%)
Taking a look at {hardware}, total income decreased by 10% to €2.8 billion. Consoles noticed the biggest decline at 26% to €807 million year-on-year.
The report famous that this drop was probably due to the present era of consoles being extra accessible to buy, in contrast to the “catch-up impact” that occurred final 12 months following low provide and excessive demand.
Downloads continued to be the most well-liked type of buy for gamers in Germany, with seven out of ten PC and console bought digitally. The share of downloads jumped from 60% to 68% final 12 months, which is a brand new document.
Sport famous that 99% of PC video games have been bought digitally in 2024, whereas most console video games have been purchased bodily. General, bodily media accounted for over half of purchases made on consoles.
Greatest-selling video games of 2024:
- EA Sports activities FC 25 (Digital Arts)
- Name of Responsibility: Black Ops 6 (Activision Blizzard)
- Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Sport Studios/Sony Interactive Leisure)
- Farming Simulator 25 (Giants Software program)
- Tremendous Mario Get together Jamboree (Nintendo)
- Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero (Bandai Namco Leisure)
- The Final of Us Half 2 Remastered (Naughty Canine/SIE)
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 (Capcom)
- EA Sports activities F1 24 (Digital Arts)
- Star Wars Outlaws (Ubisoft)
Taking a look at player numbers, 37.5 million individuals throughout all age teams play video video games in Germany. Gamers over the age of 60 grew from 6.4 million in 2023 to 7.7 million final 12 months, whereas eight out of ten individuals who play video games are over 18.
As for gender distribution, 48% of those that play video games are girls and 52% are males.
The German video games trade
Whole variety of corporations: 910 corporations, down 4%
Whole variety of staff: 12,408 staff, down 2%
The report urged the 4% drop in German corporations both creating or publishing video games was due “the consolidation of the worldwide video games market” and the “unreliable availability of federal funding”.
Of the 910 corporations, 454 work solely in sport improvement whereas 52 are publishers. The biggest corporations in Germany are Nintendo with 935 staff, Ubisoft with 660, and InnoGames with 350.
The whole variety of staff additionally declined by 2% to 12,134 in this 12 months, in contrast to 12,408 working in 2024. Sport urged present market circumstances and “repeated funding utility stops” have been the explanations for this lower.
“From the angle of the German video games trade, 2024 can actually be described as bumpy,” mentioned Sport managing director Felix Falk in the report’s opening feedback.
“The German video games trade [relies] to a big extent on worldwide publishers and companions to realise their tasks”
“Though the wave of consolidation in the worldwide video games sector slowed final 12 months, tasks continued to be cancelled, staff laid off and studios closed worldwide.
“These developments pose a problem for the German video games trade in explicit, which is dominated by small and medium-sized studios that rely to a big extent on worldwide publishers and companions to realise their tasks.”
Falk continued: “That is very true when, as in 2024, the absence of long-term video games funding in Germany brings value disadvantages of 30% in contrast to related worldwide areas.”
Earlier this week, Sport reported that the German video games market had already grown 4% year-on-year in the primary six months of 2025 to €4.6 billion.