A new studyby Game, the German Games Industry Association, has delved into the German gaming market for 2021.

Germany was the largest gaming market in Europe, worth approximately $10 billion dollars during this period. Of this figure, $5.5 billion came from game sales and in-app purchases – a 19 per cent increase from 2020. $3.6 billion came from hardware – an 18 per cent year-on-year increase – while subscriptions increased 4 per cent to $730.6 million.

Mobile gaming proved to be the largest market in the country, providing 55% of the total and growing by 22 per cent year-on-year. $2.8 billion came from mobile games, with the majority of this - $2.6 billion – coming from in-app purchases.

Mobile users are the country's largest audience

In terms of subscriptions, revenue from traditional markets such as Xbox Live Gold and Nintendo Switch Online fell slightly from $446 million to $444 million, while services such as Xbox Game Pass, Apple Arcade, and Google Play Pass increased 21 per cent.

Smartphone users also saw the largest share of audience distribution, increasing four per cent to 23.5 million. This was followed by consoles (17.8 million, a 4.7 per cent year-on-increase), PC (14.3 million, a 5.9 per cent decrease), and tablets (10.7 million users, an eight per cent increase).

The market also welcomed more companies in 2021. The year saw 786 gaming companies in the country, an increase of 5 per cent from 2020. Employment also grew by 5 per cent, reaching 28,650 people in the German gaming industry alone.

Interestingly, 7 per cent of German gaming companies have less than 10 employees, suggesting that the country is home to many indie developers.

Earlier this year, we reported that the German cartel office is investigating Apple to determine whether the company’s ATT framework hinders competition while giving themselves an unfair advantage.